I ran the new Tiamat encounter(?) last night, with a GF, GWF and CW, and another DC. With Astral Shield on the ground, Blessing of Battle, Exaltation, and Divine Glow all in play; my entire team was wiped in (roughly) one shot. So what's the point?
I think that they need to have these one shot kills otherwise the game will be too easy. With the endless power creep in this game and life steal, every character quickly becomes an immortal self healer like Wolverine from the X-Men - something needs to kill us. I wish they could introduce enemies that would have physical/magical immunity or for example be strong against frost damage but weak to radiant damage, that it would force parties to have to work together to counter enemies and not just see each next mob as the same hot knife through butter challenge.
With the one shot kill perhaps they could make the dailies like divine armour and hallowed ground give you immunity from the one shot kills, if you are hit your health is reduced to 1 point about death for example. The HR has the useful fox cunning, it is reasonable to ask that the cleric is provided with such powers that other classes will seek for protection for the harder enemies.
I think that they need to have these one shot kills otherwise the game will be too easy. With the endless power creep in this game and life steal, every character quickly becomes an immortal self healer like Wolverine from the X-Men - something needs to kill us. I wish they could introduce enemies that would have physical/magical immunity or for example be strong against frost damage but weak to radiant damage, that it would force parties to have to work together to counter enemies and not just see each next mob as the same hot knife through butter challenge.
With the one shot kill perhaps they could make the dailies like divine armour and hallowed ground give you immunity from the one shot kills, if you are hit your health is reduced to 1 point about death for example. The HR has the useful fox cunning, it is reasonable to ask that the cleric is provided with such powers that other classes will seek for protection for the harder enemies.
I'm not against big, brutal hits. I just want to be able to do something about it. So I think we agree
There seems to be quite a lot of voice over Sunburst and Knockback ability. I'm not seeing, overall, that players want it gone, just a lot of disagreement about the mechanics of when:
1.) Knockback once, with cooldown
2.) Knockback three times with NO cooldown
3.) Knockback once after Empowerment, with cooldown
That is boiling the tactical options down to its essence using the current mechanics. Part of the problem is that this mechanics change requires players to change how they think about when a power is used. For example, if you don't want Knockback, but you DO want to use Sunburst, then you HAVE to use it in Divine Mode and consume a pip. Well, what if you ran out of Divinity? Do you use it anyway? Or -- and I'm not sure if some players realize this is an option -- hold onto the power until it is more tactically advantageous to use it (i.e. either when you have the Divinity to switch to non-knockback or when knocking back would not greatly impede the rest of your party's performance).
On Live, I used to have Sunburst slotted because, in Divine Mode, it proc'd Linked Spirit and it was the only effective way to do so. However, I found myself rarely--if ever--using it because of Knockback. I wanted to buff my team, but I didn't want to throw mobs around. I finally just gave up on that tactic and slotted an offensive power to help with divinity gain. However, there were numerous instances where that Knockback DID help save my team when they got swamped in mobs, so having that option is still important.
I suspect a better compromise may be something along the following:
FEEDBACK/SUGGESTION: Sunburst
Normal: Slight push and a brief DAZE (Movement on, attacks off). Max 5 targets.
Divine: Further push and a short STUN (movement off, attacks off). Max 5 targets.
Empowered: Full Knockback (further back with more Empowered charges) and short STUN (movement off, attacks off). Max 5 targets +1 per charge of Empowered.
In this sense, Sunburst can still see regular Normal use, you can use it in Divine mode for a useful effect, and you can consume a point of Empowered for knockback. The set-up might take slightly longer if you need Knockback quick (Tab, Power, Tab, Power), but at least you still have the option. Important: The range of who is affected by Knockback should extend beyond the expected range of full pushes in Divine mode so that you can, if desired, knockback the same mobs you just stunned (when in the above "gotta hurry and get this out" scenario).
In essence, this consumes the same amount of Divinity to get the Knockback -- one pip minimum -- you just need a little more work to get the Knockback out, and it still has a cooldown so you can't constantly knockback (useful as that may be).
Something I think some players aren't realizing is that you have the option of only using one or two pips of Empowerment to improve a power. Yeah, most powers are optimal when fully Empowered, but realizing you have the option of holding back is kind of important for certain tactics.
I'm still trying to wire my brain around that myself, but realizing that playing a Cleric is a careful game of resource management is helpful. Most other classes do not have to do that. Fighters and Rogues just consume their resource when it's full; Rangers and Wizards don't have a resource to consume, just a build up until it's capped--be it Chill/Arcane or powers coming off cooldown; Warlocks I couldn't say, haven't played the class much. Guardians are the only other class with a resource that must be carefully managed (Guard Meter) to be effective (you can't defend if you run out of it). But Clerics have always had to pick and choose what power gets bolstered and make sure they don't blow their pips on powers that would be less effective in a given scenario. The new mechanic doesn't change that much, just the Divinity comes in faster through at-wills so we potentially have more of this resource to play with.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Feel free to correct any errors if I am lacking other perspectives.
For all the PvE players complaining about the change, just use other AoE heals such as Bastion (buffed substantially), Healing Words & Divine Glow. Sunburst now doesn't proc feats and doesn't give divinity, there is no reason to use it even if it doesn't have knockback.
Suggestion: Divine Sunburst does very little damage and doesn't stack, it's close to useless; Give divine SB knockback with CD.
arandompandaMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 107Arc User
edited October 2014
Been here since the day NW went live. DC has always been my primary class. I personally greatly prefer the new Sunburst. Think it's much better than the version on live. It works just fine in groups and this is after extensive testing. I don't do PvP. It gives a wrong picture to think the only DCs who prefer the PTR Sunburst are PvPers. There are old-time PvE DCs who prefer the PTR Sunburst too. I just think blue-mode Sunburst needs its cast time reduced.
I haven't had a problem adapting to the new mechanic. And I don't think most DCs will have a problem adapting either. I do hope the devs keep the current PTR Sunburst for live. Failing that the option I outlined in Feedback earlier might be an ok compromise. I see it as less than ideal for use with the new mechanic but it might reduce resistance by other DCs who don't want to change. I can see myself slotting the new Sunburst even more than I do now for group play if it goes to Live unchanged from PTR. I won't be knocking enemies back during group play in any situations other than the exact situations where I do it with non-divine Sunburst on Live now. The new mechanic opens up so many new options for how to play Clerics it'll spawn a whole new set of guides for different play styles.
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arandompandaMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 107Arc User
The Devs answer of putting it (knock-back affect) into the default SunBurst Encounter strikes me as the best option because the only real change in the Encounter power for players to adapt to (regarding THAT affect) is a simple reversal between default and Divinity. Anything else makes the learning curve a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Unless you want to punish me and every other player in the entire game who loves a knock-back (in an capacity/Encounter) by removing it entirely?
I agree with the above. Which is why I said my Feedback on an alternate Sunburst a few posts ago was less than ideal but might get less squawking from DC old-timers who are ticked off about the new gameplay mechanic. Honestly I think that's the real crux of where the hate is coming from - the new spam-mode mechanic. Which I personally love but that doesn't mean I can't feel sympathy for those upset about the change. Sunburst knockback is just the most-visible reminder of how people will need to re-learn how to play Clerics. Research shows people are more sensitized to losses than to gain.
The feedback from the last two people are some that like the knockback sunburst effect. A lot of the people that I've seen and talk to have tested and don't like the knockback affect from sunburst.
The one person says it only gives damages (and a light show) if you take back knockback away from normal which is clearly wrong.
Sunburst is a healing encounter as well as a damage encounter. If you look at the new feats in faithful tree, the very 1st one says that it increase all the non-HOT heals for 10%, the only non-HOT that we have at the moment is sunburst. But with things they are at moment you can't really slot that feat, because if you try and use the sunburst encounter in team play for the healing affect it is going to knock away the adds, which in turn will aggravate the party.
If sunburst was only a damage encounter, then I don't see the problem with the knockback, but because it offers good burst healing potential the knockback cause problems with it. That is why we are suggesting to put knock back as the empowered version of the sunburst. It is not possible to put in divine mode not with how the new mechanic works.
Hey all, I wanted to step in and touch on a few things. First, we are adding healing to 2 more powers to make some more power choices (and unique builds) feel more viable and open. Additionally we are buffing both healing capstone feats to make them work a little more consistently and feel like they make a bigger impact.
Divine Sun Burst: This power now also applies a HoT effect to allies.
Divine Searing Light: Damage caused by this power also heals any allies within 15' for 100% of the primary damage dealt.
Divine Searing Light: The AoE component of this spell no longer has a target cap.
Faithful: Agent of the Divine: Now triggers at 45% Hit Points (up from 30%).
Virtuous: Shield of the Divine: This HoT now lasts for 10 seconds (down from 20) but ticks for twice the intensity.
Secondly I wanted to touch on the Sunburst change and why the Knockback has moved into the base part of the power rather than a divine only effect. With the drastic changes to where most primary cleric healing was coming from, and opening up more healing builds that didn't need to rely on Sunburst for the divinity gain it could offer (along with it's powerful AP gain), we felt it was appropriate to give it an effect in Divine that still meshed well with the faster pace of divine mode and worked nicely while leveling and playing solo. For this we like the knockback effect as it can provide some much needed breathing room and self healing in important times when playing solo. Given that healing builds now have many more places to get away from this power, we wanted that solo and control aspect of this power to still feel good. Given that we are going to keep Sunburst as is (with the newly added healing of course) because it does have such an impact on the leveling experience for early Cleric play.
Thank you for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Honestly, I do not care about healing. Who does after lvl 60?
What I would like to see, is a serious heroic feats rework, and improvement of at-wills now (more dmg, casting times) now that we are forced to use them more. I still think it would be better if we could generate divinity with encounters, but if that's impossible, at least make our at-wills worth something!
This is the last of the feedback I wanted to hear, this was my game breaker on my decision to stay with the game or go. I have been playing this game since August last year last hear and loved my cleric the way it was. In that time i started a guild with over 500 members, I got 65 companions and over 15 mounts, that is how much I loved this game. Then the new changes came out and I wasn't happy. I immediate stop playing on the live server. Then I started doing some extensive testing on the preview to decide what to do, keep playing this game, or just move on to something else. From everything that has gone (AS healing gone) fine, ill adapt, FF healing taken, fine I,ll adapt, sunburst was the final and most important one that would make my decision. I hate the knockback affect on the spell, its my fav encounter it use.
And with the final feedback today saying that knockback will remain on normal mode, just was the icing top. I'm done with your game. It is like people saying don't like it, don't play, so I won't play anymore, and I am not going to move to another toon, because it takes to long get that amount of companions and mounts again. So it is not worth it.
Thanks for a great game to date and good luck for the future.
First of all,thanks to ambisinisterr for cleaning the thread and for agreeing to be our advocate.I appreciate your devoting your time to us.He is moderating the forums,he participates in the stream,moderating there too and now he even agreed to fill in the empty spot,despite none of these being his job.It's his spare time he is sacrificing for the game.
As for sunburst,the stun idea was originally mine,but just as I mentioned in that post,the knockback feature can still be really handy.That's why in my suggestion,I said normal sunburst should be a stun,while empowered should upgrade the stun into a knockback,knocking farther per stack consumed.This way,you can use normal SB to stun adds,which is helpful in PvE and still have the option to knockback when needed,by using empowered version.This prevents needless add scattering.I also think that a knockback on normal SB is OP for pvp.It is an aoe knockback with extremely short cooldown.It sure is handy to have a cc that you can rely on often in pvp,since you are always the main target and it can give you some breathing air,but in Domination,it's all about capturing points.If you keep knocking people off every 8.5 seconds,you get points in a really cheap way.Sure,it might be only a couple of points each time,but the short cooldown makes this power almost spammable.Most knockbacks in game are single target and most aoe cc are stuns or dazes.An aoe stun from SB would still increase the survivability of DC,without any of the problems listed above.And you still have the knockback in empowered version if you need it...
Anyway,since we have a new advocate,I'll post bugs and feedback based on my testing till now.Here's a few bugs on the third update to DC:
Bug: Divine Healing Word
This is still not always providing tempHp.While I'm still not sure what's causing it,I have noticed that the outcome remains the same on consequent casts -if nothing moves-.In other words,if I dont move my character,nor the camera/cursor around and the enemies stand still,using Divine Healing Word will either work in all casts,or grant no tempHp in all casts.It seems the issue is related to collision,though Im not 100% sure.It does tend to occur more often on uneven terrain though,which further backs my guess.It also seems to often bug when the animation goes through objects you can interact with.
Bug: Empowered Healing Word
It doesn't seem to properly benefit from generated Empowered stacks.Each stack consumed is supposed to boost healing by 35%,but even with 3 stacks,Im noticing an average increase of 30-40%.Each stack is only adding about 10% healing.
Bug: Shield of the Divine
This feat does not properly proc on allies,it only heals the DC.
Bug: Agent of the divine
This feat also doesn't affect allies.The "gift of faith" icon does appear on their buff bar,but it does not trigger when they get below 30% hp.
Bug: Astral shield
Thanks for making the provided bonus additive instead of multiplicative,it's much better like this,but...instead of adding a flat 10% DR,it now adds 30%...
Possible bugs:
-Purity's tooltip mentions that there's a chance to increase healing from a HoT's tick by 200%.Instead,it adds an extra tick,which heals for 3 times more than the original value of the tick it was based on.
-Brand of the Sun's divinty over time does not properly stack when used on multiple enemies,unlike what it does on live.
Feedback: Divinity-Empowerment
As I have posted numerous times,I am really enjoying the potentials this new mechanic opens up.Someone suggested adding pips on the side for each Empowered stack created.It could even mirror divine pips and divinity meter,in which case we would gain an Empowered pip every time we'd cast a divine encounter,the meter would start filled up and would deplete over time,to indicate time remaining.If you were to cast another divine encounter,you'd get an additional pip and the meter would reset,once again depleting over time.This would be a nice way to keep track of both empowered stacks and time remaining.
While I like the flexibilty of Empowered,I still feel that it causes us to be too slow.This is action combat,not tab targeting.You don't stand still,mashing your keyboard.You move around constantly.Having to build divinity through slow animation at-wills prevents that though.I like the new,unique connection of clerics to at-wills, making them more than just fillers between encounters,but I feel they could be supplemented by a secondary -minor- method of building divinity.If encounters provided divinity like on Live,people would rely mostly on them,making at wills the minor divine point generator once again.A possible solution would be granting a bit of passive divinity generation from heroic feats such as initiate of faith,which are extremely weak and require an update.For example,such a feat could generate 20% of a pip out of combat every second,with the bonus halved in combat.It takes roughly 10 seconds to go from 0 stacks to 3 stacks by spamming at wills.This feat would,in the same amount of time,only grant 1 stack.As a result,at wills remain the main method of building divine points,but are not the -only- way,allowing clerics to move around without losing their ability to use their class mechanic all-together.This would help combat feel a lot less slow paced.This also helps in situations where there is no target available for divinity building. If you are in a dungeon and reach the boss without any stacks,or if you are in pvp and have no targets etc,you cannot build divinity.This passive divinty would aid us in such situations.
Feedback: Mobility and CC counters
The removal of healing step greatly reduces both of the above.Clerics need high mobility to heal a party that is not all clustered up,which is often the case in pvp,as people on other nodes require healing.Since we are in combat,we cant mount,which means we need to go on foot.Dodges improve our mobility,plus they prevent us from being stunned on the way,interrupting us from reaching our ally.Similarly,while fighting on a point,we are always first priority target for the enemy.A well coordinated team can keep us stunlocked,because we have no cc break.While stunlocked,we cant use buffs or heal and without those,we are squishy.Our team can help us,but the only way to stop someone's attack is with cc and since most other classes have better counters to that,our enemies can deal with our team's cc better,so we tend to just melt regardless.As a result,all we can do is utilize our dodges effectively,to prevent the stunlock from happening in the first place.That's why I think we need our dodge reduced to 30%.
-Here is something that I was thinking about the other day.Not sure if intended or not,but it seems that dodge-based classes on live follow the pattern: Dodges=(number of encounters) - 1
DC and Tr have 3 encounters and 2 dodges.
CW has 4 encounters and 3 dodges.
Hr has 6 encounters and 5 dodges
What this allows everyone to do,is kite and cast all encounters at least once.So "cast encounter - dodge - use time enemies need to close the gap,to cast next encounter - dodge" etc.
The new update to Tr allows them 3 dodges and that's understandable.High mobility is in their nature.
However,Dc encounters are now anywhere between 4 and 6 per rotation,which gives us 5 abilities per rotation on average.This should,in theory, correspond to 4 dodges.However,it also makes sense that the heavy armor limits our mobility.Clerics are not exactly known for dashing around the battlefield at the speed of light,but are also not supposed to be rooted in place throughout the fight,whether due to cc,or because of the need to cast at-wills for divinity.Therefore,I really hope we can get a 30% dodge cost,otherwise the sheer increase in required casts per rotation (up to 6 encounters + must-cast at-wills) ,combined with no CC break and the removal of Healing step,will either result in us being dead before we can cast anything,or unable to utilize our class mechanic due to insufficient time for casts etc.
Feedback: Faithful
Im glad to see the upcoming increase in the HP trigger point on Agent of the Divine,as 30% was often too low to trigger at all in the first place.On a similar note,I feel Test of Faith's triggering could be tweaked a bit.Faithful is supposed to be the burst heal tree and while test of faith's heal is strong,the problem is that you have no control who it will affect.This means that if 2 people are slightly wounded and 1 is almost dead,the feat might heal any of those 3,possibly getting wasted.Combining this with the fact that it can only proc once every 3 seconds while you can build 1 stack per second and the fact that you need to be getting hit to generate any stacks in the first place,I feel that a change along the lines of: " When taking damage you gain a stack of Faith. Every 3 seconds up to 3 stacks of Faith will seek out nearby damaged allies and heal them for 60/120/180/240/300% of your weapon damage. You can only gain a stack of Faith once every second.Each ally can only be affected by one stack." would be pretty nice.It would make it an aoe burst heal,bringing faithful closer to the intended direction.Might rquire a slight decrease in healing potency in that case though.
Anyway,to sum up my feedback,I like the changes,but they require too much casting, making gameplay feel active but slow and rooted.Also, there' s insufficient CC prevention,which is a problem, as not only can that get you easily killed without cc breaks to rely on,but it also disables your class mechanic, since you cant cast to build divinity,which in turn gets you killed even if you somehow survived the stunlock,as you cant use empowered heals to recover sufficient hp afterwards.Therefore,30% dodge cost and minor passive divinity generation can help a lot.
...Good grief,why do all my posts turn out gigantic? xD Oh well...
Thanks for making the provided bonus additive instead of multiplicative,it's much better like this,but...instead of adding a flat 10% DR,it now adds 30%...
Ranks 2 and 3 add an additional 10% each. Could that explain the difference you're seeing?
1) We need a complete Heroic Feats rework. Many of them are among the worst feats in this game.
- Replace/Rework Domain Synergy, Templar Domain, Healing Action, Initiate of Faith
- Put Healing Step as 1 of the feats
- Buff Bountiful Fortune
- Reduce the ICD of Cleanse
2) Divinity Gain is too slow. Astral seal gives ~40% divinity, so I need to cast 8 seals, then use 3 divine spells to get full empowered stacks. That's HIGHLY UNPRODUCTIVE, especially the cast animation of most spells are so ridiculously slow.
- Buff Divine Fortune
- Buff Bountiful Fortune
- Reduce at-will & encounter cast time
- Divinity gain through encounter use
- Increase duration of Empowered stacks
- Reduce amount of divinity required to cast
3) Even TR has 3 dodges now. Since we've lost Healing Step, we need something to compensate for that.
- Reduce stamina required to dodge
- Put Healing Step as 1 of the Heroic feats
4) Damage immunity is the signature of Exaltation. WE NEED IT BACK.
- Feat Prestigious Exaltation: Divine exaltation now grants damage and control immunity for 0.6/1.2/1.8/2.4/3 seconds (give it 15 secs CD).
- Bring back blue bubble visual effect.
2) Divinity Gain is too slow. Astral seal gives ~40% divinity, so I need to cast 8 seals, then use 3 divine spells to get full empowered stacks. That's HIGHLY UNPRODUCTIVE, especially the cast animation of most spells are so ridiculously slow.
Hm yes I agree. There's a righteous feat on live granting extra divinity on crit. This would be nice if it were the default behaviour. It would bring some interesting choices and make different builds shine in different areas.
Having done some new testing/thinking lately I've come to the conclusion that the new DC gameplay will be jagged: DCs will have quite long moments of uselessness, spamming at-wills to build a reserve of divinity - it may take up to 6-7s to get a full divinity bar, which means, in a good group, that at least one or two groups of npcs will have been killed. So it leaves us with normal encounters if we want to do something; with a 1-2s animation lock on many spells it leaves us maybe 2s to build some divinity if we use two encounters.
So I have the feeling that the DC is kinda stuck. The opportunity cost to cast empowered encounters is very, very steep. If you want to cast empowered spells you'll spend a lot of tine casting at-wills and most if not all of them are pretty useless on all fronts, except to build divinity. Astral seal is okay, but it doesn't have to be spammed, so all a DC will do during at least half of the fights is some healing with astral seal and that's it. Maybe some debuffing with high prophet if they keep using it but that's it.
Sadly most of the divine mode encounters are gimped versions of the normal encounters but it takes as long as the good empowered version to cast it. Even if they aren't realistically spammable in the current preview environment, except during solo play.
So which options do we have left if clerics wants to do something except casting an empowered encounter once in a while? Casting normal mode spells. Which means very few opportunities to build some divinity because of long casting times.
So I can see 2 possible patterns for preview clerics in dungeons:
- First group of npcs: build divinity. Close to no benefits for the group. Second group of npcs: build empowerment stacks. There might be some benefits depending on the spell but they're basically inferior versions of the normal mode. So again one round of semi-uselessness. Third group of npcs. Now you can cast your empowered spell. And you have only one bullet, so use it well.
- Keep casting normal encounters with, once every 5-6 fights, an empowered encounter if you find something with enough hit points to have time to cast divine mode spells. This cleric is clearly inferior to what we have on live.
Now let's compare it with what I'm doing on live:
- Divine mode astral shield can be spammed on cooldown if needed. I'm also very close to be able to cast a second divine spell of my choice on cooldown. Under ideal circumstances, I can do it. Which means that every 9s, i'm buffing my team's damage by 20 or 40% for 5s - I'm not counting other debuffs, it's just divine glow , I'm buffing their max hitpoints by roughly 35% on average if we count all the mitigation sources (feated foresight, astral shield, hallowed ground). Downtimes included. I'm also healing them with a continuous stream of heals.
So on live a DC can basically buff his team member's damage by 50-60% (on average, counting all buffs), increase their max hit points by 35%, and up to 800k worth of heals in 10 minutes (my own record on live). That's what i can do, some DCs may do better than me. All of this requires to use 3 encounters and maybe 3-4 times astral seal. When everything is on cooldown, use sacred flame. On preview you may do one of these three things, and that's it. You can forget about the rest. Which means that in group play, if we don't go dps well the cleric is absolutely worthless since it has lost its versatility. If you want to use a healing build, well, too bad, most of the debuff went from daunting light straight into the dps tree. So you're screwed. You want some heals but play righteous? Too bad, astral shield doesn't do it anymore so you need a dedicated healing encounter. And well, mitigation went into the useless virtuous tree.
In order to keep the current level of usefulness in a party, some major buffs are in order. I don't see why divine mode spells should be at the same time close to uselessness and take ages to cast. They should either get a major buff or cast a lot faster. I don't see the logic behind forcing DCs to use spells with so little benefits (at-wills) to be able to use semi useless spells (divine mode) to be able to cast a good version of a spell which is meh on normal mode, unless this can be done twice during one 10s npcs fight. Just like on live we can cast two divine spells in a 10s fight effortlessly.
The only encounter which has gotten a buff is bastion of health and break the spirit, which is still bad anyway. All of the powerful spells with team benefits - and there aren't many - were simply nerfed or got an undesired side effects. I'm of course talking about divine glow and astral shield. Sadly all of the other spells which got a buff will never make it up for the missing power on those two spells.
So what should be done? well empowered version of spells should be the most common version of our encounters we use, just like divine mode is what we use the majority of the time on live. I don't mind how it's done but it has to happen, otherwise this rework is a clear incentive to go full dps with chains spamming and ignore any other class mechanic. Which means that to mach what we have on live we should be able to cast 1.5 fully empowered encounter every 10s if we really insist on saying that some divine mode spells might have some benefits, sometimes, down from two divine encounters every 10s on live. Empowerment stacks should not expire either, just like divinity isn't being drained on live.
The class should not be balanced around the kinda broken dps tree, even if it's really good. If DCs stop providing strong support in 3 areas like on live (mitigation, regen/heal, team dmg increase) whatever tree they chose, the outcome is obvious: everyone will pick dps because it's all the cleric will do well. Every single feat tree not doing well in one flavour of support will be neglected for the jack of all trades dps because dps is always useful.
Sorry it's a bit long and messy, i don't have time to make it shorter.
I really don't understand that knockback is need in normal SB for is a must for leveling. My 12.5k DC with HP (DL, SB, DG load out) with modest power (3.9k) and def (1.8k) could do IWD campaign solo even, Briggan's Tomb without too much trouble (and not needing to always depend on knockback). Granted it won't fast or able to solo most of the minor HE, but that is what parties, friends, and guilds are for. The current live SB in normal gives a very short but noticeable interrupt that helps out a bit and that is usually just enough to survive off of.
In the preview it makes sense to have knockback, but that because there are so few players around. So you can easily get surrounded.
As for preview PVP, a single knockback with a full divinity rotation is (more than) enough to kill other players. Eventually PVP'ers will know how to kill DC without too much trouble.
I would have been happy if heroic feats are fixed or upgraded, which are more important, instead of the new paragon feats and mechanic.
A possible solution would be granting a bit of passive divinity generation from heroic feats such as initiate of faith,which are extremely weak and require an update.For example,such a feat could generate 20% of a pip out of combat every second,with the bonus halved in combat.It takes roughly 10 seconds to go from 0 stacks to 3 stacks by spamming at wills.This feat would,in the same amount of time,only grant 1 stack.As a result,at wills remain the main method of building divine points,but are not the -only- way,allowing clerics to move around without losing their ability to use their class mechanic all-together.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree here. I was about to suggest that we need combat dummies in the new Well of Dragons area because Clerics need a way to build Divinity back up without smacking hostiles. A passive feat would be INFINITELY better. Fighters have a resource that they must build up in combat as well, but Clerics are hobbled--if not outright crippled--by having their resource exhausted.
Also, I was playing in Well of Dragons with some friends, mostly high-powered mages. I COULD NOT use Divinity because they killed the mobs far too fast. When I would use a pip, I found myself unable to recharge because they were all dead. This doesn't happen in tough boss fights, and I certainly had my pick of targets during Tiamat, but in all other instances building divinity was an exercise in frustration. I literally had to tell my party to stop killing mobs so I could build divinity to learn tactics, and I couldn't REALLY learn anything until we entered Tiamat's area.
A possible alternative: Holy Water. When consumed out of combat, completely restores Divinity. When consumed in combat, regenerates Divinity for 6 seconds (enough to get 1 pip maybe).
I COULD NOT use Divinity because they killed the mobs far too fast.
Yes this is the real issue with group play. Unfortunately discovering that took time and we've been overly enthusiastic about the changes, sadly, and the devs thought they were on the right track.
Instead of a passive divinity regeneration (which is a no skill ability, that sucks), I suggest the following:
* Empowered spells give back half of their empowerment stacks in divinity. This or doubling the casting speed of at-wills.
* Divine mode spells casting times normalized. They all have the same casting time/animation lock duration and it's extremely short. Damage can be reduced on divine mode damage spells.
* Clerics can store up to 6 empowerment stacks, and they don't expire.
Or: You get the max empowered effect with one empowerment stack. This doesn't mean divinity spells don't have to be reworked to be useful or having their animations shortened.
Because let's face it people playing their clerics as some traditional MMO paladin class are just going to be unable to do it anymore. And that's not cool if all clerics have to go righteous/dps. You have to go through two layers of useless <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> instead of one you could just get by doing anything (on live) to get a spell doing as well as on live. And it takes wayyyy too long. Support isn't even useless it's just unplayable. It's impossible to do.
Currently the rework is amazing for dps and solo play but in group content it's a nerf. I didn't imagine cryptic could do that but the legend is true, when they say they nerf things it's a buff (my cw does even more damage with storm spell on preview) and when they say that a class is in a sore spot they make things even worse...
Ranks 2 and 3 add an additional 10% each. Could that explain the difference you're seeing?
On live,Rank 1 of astral shield grants 20% DR.
Ranks 2 and 3 add 10%,but that's multiplicative based off of the 20% value,adding 2% each,for a total of 24%.
On preview,this is 10%+10%+10%= 30%,when it should be 10% +1% +1%=12%.
I really doubt that 30% is intended...
Instead of a passive divinity regeneration (which is a no skill ability, that sucks)
I dont like no-skill abilities either,which is exactly why I said that the feat's contribution should be minor,compared to that of at wills.In my example,it would be adding one pip in the same amount of time you can actively generate 3 through casting.This would mean that you still get to use your divine and empowered abilities,even if you had to stop casting for a bit to dodge some attacks,or to re-position yourself,provided you had been doing at-will casting to that point,so that this minor passive divinity generation can help you go through another rotation.It would not be something you can rely exclusively on,to generate divinity,with just a cast of at will here and there,because you simply wouldnt be getting pips fast enough.
Initially,I was supporting the faster casting idea.Bastion of health's shorter casting time was a great first step.And it could help if some slower at wills,such as astral seal,were faster.However,there's many powers that are already very fast or even instant cast,such as sacred flame,or brand of the sun.You cant really speed them up much.On top of that,a large part of slow casting is because of having to target.For example,healing word now requires 2 taps instead of 1,in order to activate.No matter how much they speed up the animations,it will never be as fast as,say,FF,because of the extra delay from having to aim the spells manually.It's easy when your allies are standing next to you,you just face them and double tap.But if they are in range,plus moving around to dodge attacks,it gets kinda tricky....Additionally, faster casting still doesn't solve the issue of absolutely requiring a target to build any divinity,which can get quite annoying...
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clericalistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 595Arc User
I literally had to tell my party to stop killing mobs so I could build divinity to learn tactics, and I couldn't REALLY learn anything until we entered Tiamat's area.
A possible alternative: Holy Water. When consumed out of combat, completely restores Divinity. When consumed in combat, regenerates Divinity for 6 seconds (enough to get 1 pip maybe).
Lol, this is going to be funny with PUGs if we have to keep asking them to wait for us. Another alternative is having a companion that creates divinity. Certain companions are extra useful for certain classes (like the Wisp for cw), why not have one for the cleric (also a good source of zen for Cryptic if they did create this companion).
We don't really have a lot of choices when it comes to our encounters for solo play, nobody will use SL for solo play it does not do enough damage, we don't need the healing from it cause we get healing from DG. So its the new feature is useless for solo play. Then new HOT on divine sunburst sounds nice, but just due the fact that normal sunburst has knockback it will make me not slot this power at all, doesn't matter how much icing they put on divine mode, if the normal mode has knockback very few people will actually use it.
So we have chains, DG, DL left. The DL is horrible at the moment in all forms. The casting times in normal takes to long to cast, and the AOE of the casting is to small. So the only good 2 encounters left out of the 5 is DL and chains.
Oh and lets not discuss the healing testing we still need to do in the harder dungeons. There are simply enough people that are willing to help us test the most effect of our healing on the server, so we are reduce to ROT for testing, which is not a good way for testing the type of healing builds. Even if they think they have enough feedback it will not be enough for proper testing. The real feedback will come when things go live. When a lot of DC has played and testing the new builds. Get ready for a wave of complaints to come.
Healing can not be tested like damage on the test server. We need to actually go into dungeons to test the healing, but there is not enough people to help with this. So there is not really any testing being done from the healing aspect of the changes.
The other problem that we are facing is that we are not building divinity fast enough. Their need to be an increase in % to balance this out. At the moment it takes way to long, and on the live server if this does not change it will be the whole party that suffers from this due to the fact that we are dodging to survive. With dungeon like CN/ELOL you sometimes have to dodge 3 for times in a row, cast a spell dodge. In that case you will have very little time to cast a spell nevermind an at will. So I hope they raise the way we gain divinity by an % amount.
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clericalistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 595Arc User
Healing can not be tested like damage on the test server. We need to actually go into dungeons to test the healing, but there is not enough people to help with this. So there is not really any testing being done from the healing aspect of the changes.
One possibility is to stick your companion in lava on the mount Hotenow map, obviously this will not work with all the encounters, but you could use it to test things like healing word for example.
Feedback (PvE perspective):
Players will want to use the Divine encounters, since they have no cooldown and build empowerment. However, in order to do so they'll need to use At Wills to build divinity. This brings us to the strange situation where normal non-empowered Encounters are much less attractive than before. The fact that you might want to use an Empowered version of an Encounter, but have to wait for the coldown since you used the non-empowered version before.
The entire design philosophy behind Empowered seems sort of strange to me. The no cooldown casting makes it look like an emergency button, but you can build up divinity so fast it becomes part of your rotation. Some abilities (like Divine Glow) seem to adhere to this philosophy, but others (like Bastion of Health and Astral Shield) seem to be designed to be used as a clutch save, only you need time to build the Divinity, switch over to Divine Mode, cast the ability, then switch back to normal mode to cast the empowered version. I just want to ask, what is the design philosophy behind the new Divinity/Empowerment? How do the devs WANT it to be used?
I am not sure if this has been covered elsewhere yet, but one of the most frustrating part of playing my DC (which is my main) in the new mod is that you need to empower your encounters which slow down your spells like crazy since you have to effectively cast the same spell 2 to 4 times and the animation are all equally long assuming you have the divinity for it. I know the easy answer is to not empower then since empowering generate a more powerful version of the spell. However, instead of the normal advice to practice appreciating what you have and deal with it, I would like the devs to consider making the divine versions of the encounters instantaneous (without animation). They have no cool down anyway and are meant to be mini encounters - more powerful than at will but less powerful than encounters (currently in live) and build "AP" aka "empowerment" for the new and more "powerful" encounters.
Another suggestion - tho I doubt they would consider it since live is around the corner - is to reverse the need to use the tab key. We are used to holding tab when casting a more powerful spell, aka divine mode. The new mod is the reverse, since divine mode is a weaker version now that power up the counter. It is going to be a pain retraining muscle memories. So make encounter requiring holding the tab key while divine (aka mini encounters) encounters just hitting the hot key.
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I think that they need to have these one shot kills otherwise the game will be too easy. With the endless power creep in this game and life steal, every character quickly becomes an immortal self healer like Wolverine from the X-Men - something needs to kill us. I wish they could introduce enemies that would have physical/magical immunity or for example be strong against frost damage but weak to radiant damage, that it would force parties to have to work together to counter enemies and not just see each next mob as the same hot knife through butter challenge.
With the one shot kill perhaps they could make the dailies like divine armour and hallowed ground give you immunity from the one shot kills, if you are hit your health is reduced to 1 point about death for example. The HR has the useful fox cunning, it is reasonable to ask that the cleric is provided with such powers that other classes will seek for protection for the harder enemies.
I'm not against big, brutal hits. I just want to be able to do something about it. So I think we agree
1.) Knockback once, with cooldown
2.) Knockback three times with NO cooldown
3.) Knockback once after Empowerment, with cooldown
That is boiling the tactical options down to its essence using the current mechanics. Part of the problem is that this mechanics change requires players to change how they think about when a power is used. For example, if you don't want Knockback, but you DO want to use Sunburst, then you HAVE to use it in Divine Mode and consume a pip. Well, what if you ran out of Divinity? Do you use it anyway? Or -- and I'm not sure if some players realize this is an option -- hold onto the power until it is more tactically advantageous to use it (i.e. either when you have the Divinity to switch to non-knockback or when knocking back would not greatly impede the rest of your party's performance).
On Live, I used to have Sunburst slotted because, in Divine Mode, it proc'd Linked Spirit and it was the only effective way to do so. However, I found myself rarely--if ever--using it because of Knockback. I wanted to buff my team, but I didn't want to throw mobs around. I finally just gave up on that tactic and slotted an offensive power to help with divinity gain. However, there were numerous instances where that Knockback DID help save my team when they got swamped in mobs, so having that option is still important.
I suspect a better compromise may be something along the following:
FEEDBACK/SUGGESTION: Sunburst
Normal: Slight push and a brief DAZE (Movement on, attacks off). Max 5 targets.
Divine: Further push and a short STUN (movement off, attacks off). Max 5 targets.
Empowered: Full Knockback (further back with more Empowered charges) and short STUN (movement off, attacks off). Max 5 targets +1 per charge of Empowered.
In this sense, Sunburst can still see regular Normal use, you can use it in Divine mode for a useful effect, and you can consume a point of Empowered for knockback. The set-up might take slightly longer if you need Knockback quick (Tab, Power, Tab, Power), but at least you still have the option. Important: The range of who is affected by Knockback should extend beyond the expected range of full pushes in Divine mode so that you can, if desired, knockback the same mobs you just stunned (when in the above "gotta hurry and get this out" scenario).
In essence, this consumes the same amount of Divinity to get the Knockback -- one pip minimum -- you just need a little more work to get the Knockback out, and it still has a cooldown so you can't constantly knockback (useful as that may be).
Something I think some players aren't realizing is that you have the option of only using one or two pips of Empowerment to improve a power. Yeah, most powers are optimal when fully Empowered, but realizing you have the option of holding back is kind of important for certain tactics.
I'm still trying to wire my brain around that myself, but realizing that playing a Cleric is a careful game of resource management is helpful. Most other classes do not have to do that. Fighters and Rogues just consume their resource when it's full; Rangers and Wizards don't have a resource to consume, just a build up until it's capped--be it Chill/Arcane or powers coming off cooldown; Warlocks I couldn't say, haven't played the class much. Guardians are the only other class with a resource that must be carefully managed (Guard Meter) to be effective (you can't defend if you run out of it). But Clerics have always had to pick and choose what power gets bolstered and make sure they don't blow their pips on powers that would be less effective in a given scenario. The new mechanic doesn't change that much, just the Divinity comes in faster through at-wills so we potentially have more of this resource to play with.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Feel free to correct any errors if I am lacking other perspectives.
For all the PvE players complaining about the change, just use other AoE heals such as Bastion (buffed substantially), Healing Words & Divine Glow. Sunburst now doesn't proc feats and doesn't give divinity, there is no reason to use it even if it doesn't have knockback.
Suggestion:
Divine Sunburst does very little damage and doesn't stack, it's close to useless; Give divine SB knockback with CD.
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I haven't had a problem adapting to the new mechanic. And I don't think most DCs will have a problem adapting either. I do hope the devs keep the current PTR Sunburst for live. Failing that the option I outlined in Feedback earlier might be an ok compromise. I see it as less than ideal for use with the new mechanic but it might reduce resistance by other DCs who don't want to change. I can see myself slotting the new Sunburst even more than I do now for group play if it goes to Live unchanged from PTR. I won't be knocking enemies back during group play in any situations other than the exact situations where I do it with non-divine Sunburst on Live now. The new mechanic opens up so many new options for how to play Clerics it'll spawn a whole new set of guides for different play styles.
I agree with the above. Which is why I said my Feedback on an alternate Sunburst a few posts ago was less than ideal but might get less squawking from DC old-timers who are ticked off about the new gameplay mechanic. Honestly I think that's the real crux of where the hate is coming from - the new spam-mode mechanic. Which I personally love but that doesn't mean I can't feel sympathy for those upset about the change. Sunburst knockback is just the most-visible reminder of how people will need to re-learn how to play Clerics. Research shows people are more sensitized to losses than to gain.
The one person says it only gives damages (and a light show) if you take back knockback away from normal which is clearly wrong.
Sunburst is a healing encounter as well as a damage encounter. If you look at the new feats in faithful tree, the very 1st one says that it increase all the non-HOT heals for 10%, the only non-HOT that we have at the moment is sunburst. But with things they are at moment you can't really slot that feat, because if you try and use the sunburst encounter in team play for the healing affect it is going to knock away the adds, which in turn will aggravate the party.
If sunburst was only a damage encounter, then I don't see the problem with the knockback, but because it offers good burst healing potential the knockback cause problems with it. That is why we are suggesting to put knock back as the empowered version of the sunburst. It is not possible to put in divine mode not with how the new mechanic works.
Secondly I wanted to touch on the Sunburst change and why the Knockback has moved into the base part of the power rather than a divine only effect. With the drastic changes to where most primary cleric healing was coming from, and opening up more healing builds that didn't need to rely on Sunburst for the divinity gain it could offer (along with it's powerful AP gain), we felt it was appropriate to give it an effect in Divine that still meshed well with the faster pace of divine mode and worked nicely while leveling and playing solo. For this we like the knockback effect as it can provide some much needed breathing room and self healing in important times when playing solo. Given that healing builds now have many more places to get away from this power, we wanted that solo and control aspect of this power to still feel good. Given that we are going to keep Sunburst as is (with the newly added healing of course) because it does have such an impact on the leveling experience for early Cleric play.
Thank you for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
why is this a buff?
What I would like to see, is a serious heroic feats rework, and improvement of at-wills now (more dmg, casting times) now that we are forced to use them more.
I still think it would be better if we could generate divinity with encounters, but if that's impossible, at least make our at-wills worth something!
yes please, using BoB is already a pain for the slowest animation ever, now you also need 6 days of casting to have 3 stack of divinity
Even in solo play, 90% of the time i want the adds in on place, not scattered.
Sunburst was a panic bottom. Now i have to use it only 10% of the time.
And when you are leveling and not have so much power selection,is a handicap not an advantage.
And with the final feedback today saying that knockback will remain on normal mode, just was the icing top. I'm done with your game. It is like people saying don't like it, don't play, so I won't play anymore, and I am not going to move to another toon, because it takes to long get that amount of companions and mounts again. So it is not worth it.
Thanks for a great game to date and good luck for the future.
add control resist or 5% stamina gain for soothing light
add blind to punishing light
make WIS give chance to Roll of a control attack, not time reduction
any news about daily changes?
IIRC, it triggers when health is depleted, no? Having a higher threshold means it will work more often.
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As for sunburst,the stun idea was originally mine,but just as I mentioned in that post,the knockback feature can still be really handy.That's why in my suggestion,I said normal sunburst should be a stun,while empowered should upgrade the stun into a knockback,knocking farther per stack consumed.This way,you can use normal SB to stun adds,which is helpful in PvE and still have the option to knockback when needed,by using empowered version.This prevents needless add scattering.I also think that a knockback on normal SB is OP for pvp.It is an aoe knockback with extremely short cooldown.It sure is handy to have a cc that you can rely on often in pvp,since you are always the main target and it can give you some breathing air,but in Domination,it's all about capturing points.If you keep knocking people off every 8.5 seconds,you get points in a really cheap way.Sure,it might be only a couple of points each time,but the short cooldown makes this power almost spammable.Most knockbacks in game are single target and most aoe cc are stuns or dazes.An aoe stun from SB would still increase the survivability of DC,without any of the problems listed above.And you still have the knockback in empowered version if you need it...
Anyway,since we have a new advocate,I'll post bugs and feedback based on my testing till now.Here's a few bugs on the third update to DC:
Bug: Divine Healing Word
This is still not always providing tempHp.While I'm still not sure what's causing it,I have noticed that the outcome remains the same on consequent casts -if nothing moves-.In other words,if I dont move my character,nor the camera/cursor around and the enemies stand still,using Divine Healing Word will either work in all casts,or grant no tempHp in all casts.It seems the issue is related to collision,though Im not 100% sure.It does tend to occur more often on uneven terrain though,which further backs my guess.It also seems to often bug when the animation goes through objects you can interact with.
Bug: Empowered Healing Word
It doesn't seem to properly benefit from generated Empowered stacks.Each stack consumed is supposed to boost healing by 35%,but even with 3 stacks,Im noticing an average increase of 30-40%.Each stack is only adding about 10% healing.
Bug: Shield of the Divine
This feat does not properly proc on allies,it only heals the DC.
Bug: Agent of the divine
This feat also doesn't affect allies.The "gift of faith" icon does appear on their buff bar,but it does not trigger when they get below 30% hp.
Bug: Astral shield
Thanks for making the provided bonus additive instead of multiplicative,it's much better like this,but...instead of adding a flat 10% DR,it now adds 30%...
Possible bugs:
-Purity's tooltip mentions that there's a chance to increase healing from a HoT's tick by 200%.Instead,it adds an extra tick,which heals for 3 times more than the original value of the tick it was based on.
-Brand of the Sun's divinty over time does not properly stack when used on multiple enemies,unlike what it does on live.
Feedback: Divinity-Empowerment
As I have posted numerous times,I am really enjoying the potentials this new mechanic opens up.Someone suggested adding pips on the side for each Empowered stack created.It could even mirror divine pips and divinity meter,in which case we would gain an Empowered pip every time we'd cast a divine encounter,the meter would start filled up and would deplete over time,to indicate time remaining.If you were to cast another divine encounter,you'd get an additional pip and the meter would reset,once again depleting over time.This would be a nice way to keep track of both empowered stacks and time remaining.
While I like the flexibilty of Empowered,I still feel that it causes us to be too slow.This is action combat,not tab targeting.You don't stand still,mashing your keyboard.You move around constantly.Having to build divinity through slow animation at-wills prevents that though.I like the new,unique connection of clerics to at-wills, making them more than just fillers between encounters,but I feel they could be supplemented by a secondary -minor- method of building divinity.If encounters provided divinity like on Live,people would rely mostly on them,making at wills the minor divine point generator once again.A possible solution would be granting a bit of passive divinity generation from heroic feats such as initiate of faith,which are extremely weak and require an update.For example,such a feat could generate 20% of a pip out of combat every second,with the bonus halved in combat.It takes roughly 10 seconds to go from 0 stacks to 3 stacks by spamming at wills.This feat would,in the same amount of time,only grant 1 stack.As a result,at wills remain the main method of building divine points,but are not the -only- way,allowing clerics to move around without losing their ability to use their class mechanic all-together.This would help combat feel a lot less slow paced.This also helps in situations where there is no target available for divinity building. If you are in a dungeon and reach the boss without any stacks,or if you are in pvp and have no targets etc,you cannot build divinity.This passive divinty would aid us in such situations.
Feedback: Mobility and CC counters
The removal of healing step greatly reduces both of the above.Clerics need high mobility to heal a party that is not all clustered up,which is often the case in pvp,as people on other nodes require healing.Since we are in combat,we cant mount,which means we need to go on foot.Dodges improve our mobility,plus they prevent us from being stunned on the way,interrupting us from reaching our ally.Similarly,while fighting on a point,we are always first priority target for the enemy.A well coordinated team can keep us stunlocked,because we have no cc break.While stunlocked,we cant use buffs or heal and without those,we are squishy.Our team can help us,but the only way to stop someone's attack is with cc and since most other classes have better counters to that,our enemies can deal with our team's cc better,so we tend to just melt regardless.As a result,all we can do is utilize our dodges effectively,to prevent the stunlock from happening in the first place.That's why I think we need our dodge reduced to 30%.
-Here is something that I was thinking about the other day.Not sure if intended or not,but it seems that dodge-based classes on live follow the pattern: Dodges=(number of encounters) - 1
DC and Tr have 3 encounters and 2 dodges.
CW has 4 encounters and 3 dodges.
Hr has 6 encounters and 5 dodges
What this allows everyone to do,is kite and cast all encounters at least once.So "cast encounter - dodge - use time enemies need to close the gap,to cast next encounter - dodge" etc.
The new update to Tr allows them 3 dodges and that's understandable.High mobility is in their nature.
However,Dc encounters are now anywhere between 4 and 6 per rotation,which gives us 5 abilities per rotation on average.This should,in theory, correspond to 4 dodges.However,it also makes sense that the heavy armor limits our mobility.Clerics are not exactly known for dashing around the battlefield at the speed of light,but are also not supposed to be rooted in place throughout the fight,whether due to cc,or because of the need to cast at-wills for divinity.Therefore,I really hope we can get a 30% dodge cost,otherwise the sheer increase in required casts per rotation (up to 6 encounters + must-cast at-wills) ,combined with no CC break and the removal of Healing step,will either result in us being dead before we can cast anything,or unable to utilize our class mechanic due to insufficient time for casts etc.
Feedback: Faithful
Im glad to see the upcoming increase in the HP trigger point on Agent of the Divine,as 30% was often too low to trigger at all in the first place.On a similar note,I feel Test of Faith's triggering could be tweaked a bit.Faithful is supposed to be the burst heal tree and while test of faith's heal is strong,the problem is that you have no control who it will affect.This means that if 2 people are slightly wounded and 1 is almost dead,the feat might heal any of those 3,possibly getting wasted.Combining this with the fact that it can only proc once every 3 seconds while you can build 1 stack per second and the fact that you need to be getting hit to generate any stacks in the first place,I feel that a change along the lines of: " When taking damage you gain a stack of Faith. Every 3 seconds up to 3 stacks of Faith will seek out nearby damaged allies and heal them for 60/120/180/240/300% of your weapon damage. You can only gain a stack of Faith once every second.Each ally can only be affected by one stack." would be pretty nice.It would make it an aoe burst heal,bringing faithful closer to the intended direction.Might rquire a slight decrease in healing potency in that case though.
Anyway,to sum up my feedback,I like the changes,but they require too much casting, making gameplay feel active but slow and rooted.Also, there' s insufficient CC prevention,which is a problem, as not only can that get you easily killed without cc breaks to rely on,but it also disables your class mechanic, since you cant cast to build divinity,which in turn gets you killed even if you somehow survived the stunlock,as you cant use empowered heals to recover sufficient hp afterwards.Therefore,30% dodge cost and minor passive divinity generation can help a lot.
...Good grief,why do all my posts turn out gigantic? xD Oh well...
Ranks 2 and 3 add an additional 10% each. Could that explain the difference you're seeing?
- Replace/Rework Domain Synergy, Templar Domain, Healing Action, Initiate of Faith
- Put Healing Step as 1 of the feats
- Buff Bountiful Fortune
- Reduce the ICD of Cleanse
2) Divinity Gain is too slow. Astral seal gives ~40% divinity, so I need to cast 8 seals, then use 3 divine spells to get full empowered stacks. That's HIGHLY UNPRODUCTIVE, especially the cast animation of most spells are so ridiculously slow.
- Buff Divine Fortune
- Buff Bountiful Fortune
- Reduce at-will & encounter cast time
- Divinity gain through encounter use
- Increase duration of Empowered stacks
- Reduce amount of divinity required to cast
3) Even TR has 3 dodges now. Since we've lost Healing Step, we need something to compensate for that.
- Reduce stamina required to dodge
- Put Healing Step as 1 of the Heroic feats
4) Damage immunity is the signature of Exaltation. WE NEED IT BACK.
- Feat Prestigious Exaltation: Divine exaltation now grants damage and control immunity for 0.6/1.2/1.8/2.4/3 seconds (give it 15 secs CD).
- Bring back blue bubble visual effect.
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Hm yes I agree. There's a righteous feat on live granting extra divinity on crit. This would be nice if it were the default behaviour. It would bring some interesting choices and make different builds shine in different areas.
Having done some new testing/thinking lately I've come to the conclusion that the new DC gameplay will be jagged: DCs will have quite long moments of uselessness, spamming at-wills to build a reserve of divinity - it may take up to 6-7s to get a full divinity bar, which means, in a good group, that at least one or two groups of npcs will have been killed. So it leaves us with normal encounters if we want to do something; with a 1-2s animation lock on many spells it leaves us maybe 2s to build some divinity if we use two encounters.
So I have the feeling that the DC is kinda stuck. The opportunity cost to cast empowered encounters is very, very steep. If you want to cast empowered spells you'll spend a lot of tine casting at-wills and most if not all of them are pretty useless on all fronts, except to build divinity. Astral seal is okay, but it doesn't have to be spammed, so all a DC will do during at least half of the fights is some healing with astral seal and that's it. Maybe some debuffing with high prophet if they keep using it but that's it.
Sadly most of the divine mode encounters are gimped versions of the normal encounters but it takes as long as the good empowered version to cast it. Even if they aren't realistically spammable in the current preview environment, except during solo play.
So which options do we have left if clerics wants to do something except casting an empowered encounter once in a while? Casting normal mode spells. Which means very few opportunities to build some divinity because of long casting times.
So I can see 2 possible patterns for preview clerics in dungeons:
- First group of npcs: build divinity. Close to no benefits for the group. Second group of npcs: build empowerment stacks. There might be some benefits depending on the spell but they're basically inferior versions of the normal mode. So again one round of semi-uselessness. Third group of npcs. Now you can cast your empowered spell. And you have only one bullet, so use it well.
- Keep casting normal encounters with, once every 5-6 fights, an empowered encounter if you find something with enough hit points to have time to cast divine mode spells. This cleric is clearly inferior to what we have on live.
Now let's compare it with what I'm doing on live:
- Divine mode astral shield can be spammed on cooldown if needed. I'm also very close to be able to cast a second divine spell of my choice on cooldown. Under ideal circumstances, I can do it. Which means that every 9s, i'm buffing my team's damage by 20 or 40% for 5s - I'm not counting other debuffs, it's just divine glow , I'm buffing their max hitpoints by roughly 35% on average if we count all the mitigation sources (feated foresight, astral shield, hallowed ground). Downtimes included. I'm also healing them with a continuous stream of heals.
So on live a DC can basically buff his team member's damage by 50-60% (on average, counting all buffs), increase their max hit points by 35%, and up to 800k worth of heals in 10 minutes (my own record on live). That's what i can do, some DCs may do better than me. All of this requires to use 3 encounters and maybe 3-4 times astral seal. When everything is on cooldown, use sacred flame. On preview you may do one of these three things, and that's it. You can forget about the rest. Which means that in group play, if we don't go dps well the cleric is absolutely worthless since it has lost its versatility. If you want to use a healing build, well, too bad, most of the debuff went from daunting light straight into the dps tree. So you're screwed. You want some heals but play righteous? Too bad, astral shield doesn't do it anymore so you need a dedicated healing encounter. And well, mitigation went into the useless virtuous tree.
In order to keep the current level of usefulness in a party, some major buffs are in order. I don't see why divine mode spells should be at the same time close to uselessness and take ages to cast. They should either get a major buff or cast a lot faster. I don't see the logic behind forcing DCs to use spells with so little benefits (at-wills) to be able to use semi useless spells (divine mode) to be able to cast a good version of a spell which is meh on normal mode, unless this can be done twice during one 10s npcs fight. Just like on live we can cast two divine spells in a 10s fight effortlessly.
The only encounter which has gotten a buff is bastion of health and break the spirit, which is still bad anyway. All of the powerful spells with team benefits - and there aren't many - were simply nerfed or got an undesired side effects. I'm of course talking about divine glow and astral shield. Sadly all of the other spells which got a buff will never make it up for the missing power on those two spells.
So what should be done? well empowered version of spells should be the most common version of our encounters we use, just like divine mode is what we use the majority of the time on live. I don't mind how it's done but it has to happen, otherwise this rework is a clear incentive to go full dps with chains spamming and ignore any other class mechanic. Which means that to mach what we have on live we should be able to cast 1.5 fully empowered encounter every 10s if we really insist on saying that some divine mode spells might have some benefits, sometimes, down from two divine encounters every 10s on live. Empowerment stacks should not expire either, just like divinity isn't being drained on live.
The class should not be balanced around the kinda broken dps tree, even if it's really good. If DCs stop providing strong support in 3 areas like on live (mitigation, regen/heal, team dmg increase) whatever tree they chose, the outcome is obvious: everyone will pick dps because it's all the cleric will do well. Every single feat tree not doing well in one flavour of support will be neglected for the jack of all trades dps because dps is always useful.
Sorry it's a bit long and messy, i don't have time to make it shorter.
In the preview it makes sense to have knockback, but that because there are so few players around. So you can easily get surrounded.
As for preview PVP, a single knockback with a full divinity rotation is (more than) enough to kill other players. Eventually PVP'ers will know how to kill DC without too much trouble.
I would have been happy if heroic feats are fixed or upgraded, which are more important, instead of the new paragon feats and mechanic.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree here. I was about to suggest that we need combat dummies in the new Well of Dragons area because Clerics need a way to build Divinity back up without smacking hostiles. A passive feat would be INFINITELY better. Fighters have a resource that they must build up in combat as well, but Clerics are hobbled--if not outright crippled--by having their resource exhausted.
Also, I was playing in Well of Dragons with some friends, mostly high-powered mages. I COULD NOT use Divinity because they killed the mobs far too fast. When I would use a pip, I found myself unable to recharge because they were all dead. This doesn't happen in tough boss fights, and I certainly had my pick of targets during Tiamat, but in all other instances building divinity was an exercise in frustration. I literally had to tell my party to stop killing mobs so I could build divinity to learn tactics, and I couldn't REALLY learn anything until we entered Tiamat's area.
A possible alternative: Holy Water. When consumed out of combat, completely restores Divinity. When consumed in combat, regenerates Divinity for 6 seconds (enough to get 1 pip maybe).
Yes this is the real issue with group play. Unfortunately discovering that took time and we've been overly enthusiastic about the changes, sadly, and the devs thought they were on the right track.
Instead of a passive divinity regeneration (which is a no skill ability, that sucks), I suggest the following:
* Empowered spells give back half of their empowerment stacks in divinity. This or doubling the casting speed of at-wills.
* Divine mode spells casting times normalized. They all have the same casting time/animation lock duration and it's extremely short. Damage can be reduced on divine mode damage spells.
* Clerics can store up to 6 empowerment stacks, and they don't expire.
Or: You get the max empowered effect with one empowerment stack. This doesn't mean divinity spells don't have to be reworked to be useful or having their animations shortened.
Because let's face it people playing their clerics as some traditional MMO paladin class are just going to be unable to do it anymore. And that's not cool if all clerics have to go righteous/dps. You have to go through two layers of useless <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> instead of one you could just get by doing anything (on live) to get a spell doing as well as on live. And it takes wayyyy too long. Support isn't even useless it's just unplayable. It's impossible to do.
Currently the rework is amazing for dps and solo play but in group content it's a nerf. I didn't imagine cryptic could do that but the legend is true, when they say they nerf things it's a buff (my cw does even more damage with storm spell on preview) and when they say that a class is in a sore spot they make things even worse...
On live,Rank 1 of astral shield grants 20% DR.
Ranks 2 and 3 add 10%,but that's multiplicative based off of the 20% value,adding 2% each,for a total of 24%.
On preview,this is 10%+10%+10%= 30%,when it should be 10% +1% +1%=12%.
I really doubt that 30% is intended...
Edit:
I dont like no-skill abilities either,which is exactly why I said that the feat's contribution should be minor,compared to that of at wills.In my example,it would be adding one pip in the same amount of time you can actively generate 3 through casting.This would mean that you still get to use your divine and empowered abilities,even if you had to stop casting for a bit to dodge some attacks,or to re-position yourself,provided you had been doing at-will casting to that point,so that this minor passive divinity generation can help you go through another rotation.It would not be something you can rely exclusively on,to generate divinity,with just a cast of at will here and there,because you simply wouldnt be getting pips fast enough.
Initially,I was supporting the faster casting idea.Bastion of health's shorter casting time was a great first step.And it could help if some slower at wills,such as astral seal,were faster.However,there's many powers that are already very fast or even instant cast,such as sacred flame,or brand of the sun.You cant really speed them up much.On top of that,a large part of slow casting is because of having to target.For example,healing word now requires 2 taps instead of 1,in order to activate.No matter how much they speed up the animations,it will never be as fast as,say,FF,because of the extra delay from having to aim the spells manually.It's easy when your allies are standing next to you,you just face them and double tap.But if they are in range,plus moving around to dodge attacks,it gets kinda tricky....Additionally, faster casting still doesn't solve the issue of absolutely requiring a target to build any divinity,which can get quite annoying...
Lol, this is going to be funny with PUGs if we have to keep asking them to wait for us. Another alternative is having a companion that creates divinity. Certain companions are extra useful for certain classes (like the Wisp for cw), why not have one for the cleric (also a good source of zen for Cryptic if they did create this companion).
So we have chains, DG, DL left. The DL is horrible at the moment in all forms. The casting times in normal takes to long to cast, and the AOE of the casting is to small. So the only good 2 encounters left out of the 5 is DL and chains.
Oh and lets not discuss the healing testing we still need to do in the harder dungeons. There are simply enough people that are willing to help us test the most effect of our healing on the server, so we are reduce to ROT for testing, which is not a good way for testing the type of healing builds. Even if they think they have enough feedback it will not be enough for proper testing. The real feedback will come when things go live. When a lot of DC has played and testing the new builds. Get ready for a wave of complaints to come.
Healing can not be tested like damage on the test server. We need to actually go into dungeons to test the healing, but there is not enough people to help with this. So there is not really any testing being done from the healing aspect of the changes.
The other problem that we are facing is that we are not building divinity fast enough. Their need to be an increase in % to balance this out. At the moment it takes way to long, and on the live server if this does not change it will be the whole party that suffers from this due to the fact that we are dodging to survive. With dungeon like CN/ELOL you sometimes have to dodge 3 for times in a row, cast a spell dodge. In that case you will have very little time to cast a spell nevermind an at will. So I hope they raise the way we gain divinity by an % amount.
One possibility is to stick your companion in lava on the mount Hotenow map, obviously this will not work with all the encounters, but you could use it to test things like healing word for example.
Players will want to use the Divine encounters, since they have no cooldown and build empowerment. However, in order to do so they'll need to use At Wills to build divinity. This brings us to the strange situation where normal non-empowered Encounters are much less attractive than before. The fact that you might want to use an Empowered version of an Encounter, but have to wait for the coldown since you used the non-empowered version before.
The entire design philosophy behind Empowered seems sort of strange to me. The no cooldown casting makes it look like an emergency button, but you can build up divinity so fast it becomes part of your rotation. Some abilities (like Divine Glow) seem to adhere to this philosophy, but others (like Bastion of Health and Astral Shield) seem to be designed to be used as a clutch save, only you need time to build the Divinity, switch over to Divine Mode, cast the ability, then switch back to normal mode to cast the empowered version. I just want to ask, what is the design philosophy behind the new Divinity/Empowerment? How do the devs WANT it to be used?
Another suggestion - tho I doubt they would consider it since live is around the corner - is to reverse the need to use the tab key. We are used to holding tab when casting a more powerful spell, aka divine mode. The new mod is the reverse, since divine mode is a weaker version now that power up the counter. It is going to be a pain retraining muscle memories. So make encounter requiring holding the tab key while divine (aka mini encounters) encounters just hitting the hot key.