Halfling Cleric Viability?

[Swordinator]

For my first cleric I thought I'd try somewthing fun! Advice or comments really appreciated - I don't have any experience with this class or race so let me know if my assumptions are way off here. My goal is to be a healer/buffer with a little crowd control.

Halfling 32-pt Pure Cleric

Base Stats:

STR: 10
DEX: 10
CON: 14
INT: 10
WIS: 18
CHA: 12

Skills:
Concentration
Healing

Feats:
1: Least Dragonmark of Healing
3: Empower Healing
6: Extend Spell
9: Lesser Dragonmark of Healing
12: Spell Penetration
15: Greater Dragonmark of Healing
18 someday: Greater Spell Penetration

Here are my assumptions. Fire away :)

Stats: All level ups go into WIS. Robust CON improves survivability. Get STR and DEX items to carry gear and benefit from Mithral Full Plate.

Skills: Cleric skills seem to suck so I just went with what was obvious to me.

Feats: I assume that with the Dragonmarks, I will get enough 'free' healing that I won't miss Mental Toughness. Also, once I hit level 10 or so, I can see not needing Extend Spell for buffs and could swap that out. Should I advance the Spell Penetration line sooner, or go for something else?

Thanks in advance!

PS - Obviously I am not a real power player and don't have access nor frankly the time to get resources to acquire uber gear and mega raid loot. So hopefully with regular quest items, the occasional lucky pull and the Auction House I can get some decent gear, but I don't want my build to rely on it.

[Impaqt]

I'm wondering why you feel the need for Spell Penns as a feat. the Build is obviously focused twoards being a healbot. What are you getting out of the Spell Penns?

I'd rather see Maximize in there over Spell Penn... You'll have soem awesome Cure Lights and Serious off your marks with that and a Maximized Blade Barrier is awesome ifyou ever need to do some DPS.

[Angelus_dead]

Stats: All level ups go into WIS. Robust CON improves survivability. Get STR and DEX items to carry gear and benefit from Mithral Full Plate.
Unless you expect to obtain a +2 tome easily, you should put another 2 points into dex so that you can use mithral fp without spending a body slot on it. But, note that if you never do anything to pull aggro, you have much less need for AC.


Feats: I assume that with the Dragonmarks, I will get enough 'free' healing that I won't miss Mental Toughness.
You won't miss Mental Toughness regardless. I, for one, find it very annoying to have dragonmarks giving me 3 separate icons used for my other heals, which are separate from the normal buttons I'd use. I don't find it really worthwhile for a cleric who could cast Heal 40+ times from spellpoints to spend 3 feats to get a couple more uses of it- only rarely will running out of that healing be a problem, and for those situations where it is, you can use scrolls or whatever.

For a class that didn't already know the Heal spell, the dragonmark would add more value.


Also, once I hit level 10 or so, I can see not needing Extend Spell for buffs and could swap that out. Should I advance the Spell Penetration line sooner, or go for something else?
You might like to drop some pene feats for Maximize, Heighten, or Quicken.

[Angelus_dead]

Skills:
Concentration
Healing
Never, ever get the Healing skill. After Concentration, your skills should be athletic things- Balance or Jump. Or, simply drop your intelligence down to 8 so you only get 1 skill point.

[The_Phenx]

Maximize FTW!!!

You get to empower and maximize your dragonmarks for FREEEEEEEEEEEEE :)

Take it use it.. turn it off once your marks are used up. Turn it on again for BB.

And instead of extend Id take quicken... or at least swap them at later levels.

Take Spell pen enhancements and use items instead of burning feats.

No CHA unless you wanna worry about dv's

I did

STR: 13
DEX: 10
CON: 14
INT: 10
WIS: 18
CHA: 9

With mine.. and sucked upa +1 str and cha tome ... make him able to carry more and swing a weapon if he needed... Looking back however...meh.. :) 6 of 1 half dozen of ther other.

And I love dragon marks... no wasting money on heal scrolls... as a Maximized potencied empowered cure light wounds is silly. 60-70 pt range with no crit... and the cure serious is = to a heal scroll.. the full heal... well no barb will be hurting.

I just use my marks first then start on my mana... however ALWAYS save 1 full heal mark in case your feebleminded.

[EKKM]

I actually like the heal skill. I am a casual player, and use my cleric even more casually, so dont have a lot of plat. By having a decent heal, party members regen more HP at shrines, which means use less sp used topping off, which means it takes longer before I have to pull wands and scrolls. I guess if I had loads of plat I would feel differently. I max concentration, and split points between balance and heal.

Also my intimitank has ranks in heal which really helps at shrines (he is a human with 14 INT so has lots of skill points) and also occasionally recovers someone from incap when no one with a cure wand or spell is around.

[Philam]

I have a level 16 halfling cleric with all the dragon marks. I would not change a thing! He is a total wimp, but killing things is not his job. The greater dragon mark has critted for easily 900 hp of healing (also excellant on our WF friends)! I highly recommend the build. Farm the blue dragon armor. One suggestion is, the madstone shield is nice, but very cumbersome. Go after the shield in the Hound run. Enjoy the build!

[Lymnus]

Are you really concerned with offensive casting? I mean, if you're concerned with only buffing and healing, possibly a blade barrier every now-and-then, we could drop your wisdom by 2. This would give you 6 more points to work with, which would be able to increase CON and CHR. CHR for DVs (or DHs, if that's your style. I've became a fan of healing-over-time); CON for HP. This should round your stats our to 10 STR/DEX/INT, 16 WIS/CON/CHR.

Dropping your STR or INT also comes to mind if you don't want to drop WIS to 16 (Which at end game, is +1 DC and some extra SP, which is completely understandable if you want to keep), but I wouldn't suggest dropping STR. You're a halfling, so you automatically can only carry 3/4 of your normal weight. Keep STR around 10, maybe 8 if you're going to tome it. INT could be dropped by 2, which would make you lose the Heal skill. But, honestly, Heal doesn't do much in this game. If a player is incap, throw them a CLW instead of waiting on Heal attempts. If you're worried about Heal helping at shrines, the amount Heal helps at end game isn't as recognizable as it is in the Harbor.

Consider your feats being something like Least/Lesser/Greater Dragonmarks, Empower Healing, Maximize, and Quicken. At end-game, Quicken is a vastly important feat for clerics. It lets us get our symbols off quicker, blade barriers off faster, and lets us squeeze in Heals and Mass Cures without being interrupted. Halfling Dragonmarkeds don't tend to take MT/IMT, because the Dragonmarks actually make up for the SP lost if you use Empower Healing/Maximize to improve the Dragonmarks.

If you don't want Quicken, Extend is another viable option. Personally, I find 32 minute long buffs a bit of an overkill. I keep it on my Offensive-Specced cleric to make my symbols, blade barriers, and prayers last longer. Some people swear by extended buffs, but I find my party tends to reach a shrine before my 16 minute buffs are done.

I don't suggest taking Spell Penetration. As a Healbot, you'll heal more than CC. Instead of taking a feat for that extra +2 to SP, consider taking the second line of the Spell Penetration enhancement line. This was, you get the effect of the feat while keeping a feat open for Quicken/Extend.

Best of luck.

[Mhykke]

Unless you expect to obtain a +2 tome easily, you should put another 2 points into dex so that you can use mithral fp without spending a body slot on it. But, note that if you never do anything to pull aggro, you have much less need for AC.


You won't miss Mental Toughness regardless. I, for one, find it very annoying to have dragonmarks giving me 3 separate icons used for my other heals, which are separate from the normal buttons I'd use. I don't find it really worthwhile for a cleric who could cast Heal 40+ times from spellpoints to spend 3 feats to get a couple more uses of it- only rarely will running out of that healing be a problem, and for those situations where it is, you can use scrolls or whatever.

For a class that didn't already know the Heal spell, the dragonmark would add more value.


You might like to drop some pene feats for Maximize, Heighten, or Quicken.

I know what you're saying about having the separate icons, I run a halfing cleric myself. But after a while I got used to it, now, I love having a lot of different sources for a heal/cure.

I think I disagree about the dragonmarks adding more value to a class that didn't know the heal spell (generally.) I think casters (clerics included) benefit more, b/c they generally take maximize and empower, in addition to wielding a superior potency VI item, which work on the marks (the max and empower don't work on the heal mark, but sup. pot. does.) That makes the uses of, let's say a cure light from a mark, pretty potent, as it is maximized, empowered, gains benefit from sup. pot., and costs zero mana. On a class w/o potency, or max and empower, I don't know if I'd use up 3 feats for this line.

[Aranticus]

I have a level 16 halfling cleric with all the dragon marks. I would not change a thing! He is a total wimp, but killing things is not his job. The greater dragon mark has critted for easily 900 hp of healing (also excellant on our WF friends)! I highly recommend the build. Farm the blue dragon armor. One suggestion is, the madstone shield is nice, but very cumbersome. Go after the shield in the Hound run. Enjoy the build!

why go for blue armor if not casting offensive spells? imo its easier to get the reaver gloves which is superior healing lore

[Angelus_dead]

why go for blue armor if not casting offensive spells? imo its easier to get the reaver gloves which is superior healing lore
Maybe he has VOD gloves of max-ext.

[kamimitsu]

Someone already posted a very similar build. It can be found here: Maddong's halfling medic at http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=116108
1200 hp heals with no mana cost!

Might be good to compare yours with his.

Shiz

[Vagabond]

One thing that I've come to hate on my dragonmark healer is that unlike spells, dragonmarks all share the same cooldown. The greater mark has a 6s cooldown on ALL my heals, whereas i can pretty much chain all my lesser marks.

I loathe to cast Heal because of it. That said, if you have the spells from actual spells, you're looking at virtually instant cast dragonmark heals that you can intersperse with SP heals.

While being the sole healer in Co6 hard, our ranger gave me two cure serious wands (never been able to afford them before), which made me realize that if I'd had the money to afford better than CLW wands I could have pretty much been the sole healer for **** near every quest I'd been on. And then I wasted several charges on the final step of Co6 conserving dragonmarks because I didn't realize how trivial it was. :)

Though my build is very weird. I'm probably going to fine tune it and try it again as a 32 point build.

[Swordinator]

Thank you all so much for your advice and the references to other builds. Looks like I could make some adjustments to stats and skills, although none of those would radically change the build. I will stop putting points into Heal early and try to augment my Balance (won't have the points for Jump but with Mithral FP and a Jump clicky I should be able to manage).

I am definitely going to try to avoid aggro since my combat abilities and AC will be weak, although being able to drop the occasional Blade Barrier will help.

The input on feats has been super helpful. Here is where I am netting out:

Feats:
1: Least Dragonmark of Healing
3: Empower Healing
6: Extend Spell (swap around level 10 for Quicken)
9: Lesser Dragonmark of Healing
12: Maximize
15: Greater Dragonmark of Healing

Good point about the number of healing abilities I will have to manage. I tend to customize my keyboard so that I can rapidly select party members and use shortcuts to access the numerous abilities. Hopefully that will work.

Thanks again!

[silverraven]

Rather than mincing words I'm just gonna say it.

The heal skill is the most important thing for a healbot, and anything other than maximize for the metamagic feats are a waste of time.

Sorry to be so blunt, but there's nothing worse than using a shrine only to get half your HP back. Balance is good, but jump....why?

[Blazer]

Rather than mincing words I'm just gonna say it.

The heal skill is the most important thing for a healbot, and anything other than maximize for the metamagic feats are a waste of time.

Sorry to be so blunt, but there's nothing worse than using a shrine only to get half your HP back. Balance is good, but jump....why?

Really, the Heal skill is more important than Concentration for a healbot? Please. Maybe back when the game first came out Heal was important since not everyone and his brother could use a wand or scroll or had the money to keep themselves supplied with potions. These days, however, it's not the case. Any newly rolled cleric who invests heavily in the Heal skill is simply wasting skill points. Oh, and if you're going to be strictly a healbot, Emp Healing is far superior to Maximize, especially given the necklace that drops in the HoX raid.

[silverraven]

Really, the Heal skill is more important than Concentration for a healbot? Please. Maybe back when the game first came out Heal was important since not everyone and his brother could use a wand or scroll or had the money to keep themselves supplied with potions. These days, however, it's not the case. Any newly rolled cleric who invests heavily in the Heal skill is simply wasting skill points. Oh, and if you're going to be strictly a healbot, Emp Healing is far superior to Maximize, especially given the necklace that drops in the HoX raid.

I took the heal skill to help other players, and that is never a waste. My cleric doesn't have any problem casting while getting hit, because I never said concentration was unimportant. Where do I say that?

One other thing, Emp Heal helps heal...does it help Blade Barrier? No, so I'd rather have something thats flexible than get a few extra points of Heal. My cleric can heal, fight, and cast offensive spells. Which is why I built him...versatility, because you never know when there gonna change the rules, or change certain skills.

If they do improve the heal skill, I won't be the one re-rolling my cleric:cool:

[Blazer]

I took the heal skill to help other players, and that is never a waste. My cleric doesn't have any problem casting while getting hit, because I never said concentration was unimportant. Where do I say that?

Agreed, you didn't say that concentration was unimportant. You said that the most important thing for a healbot was heal. See?


The heal skill is the most important thing for a healbot...

It's misleading. Concentration >> Heal skill. Be more clear since the OP is looking for advice as this is his first cleric, please. If you're looking to take a skill that is helpful to other players, take balance. A cleric on his back can't help anyone. If someone doesn't get topped off at a shrine, you can either use a wand or they can use their potions. Conc > Balance > Jump/Diplo. Heal is way towards the end of the list of valuable cleric skills.


One other thing, Emp Heal helps heal...does it help Blade Barrier? No, so I'd rather have something thats flexible than get a few extra points of Heal. My cleric can heal, fight, and cast offensive spells. Which is why I built him...versatility, because you never know when there gonna change the rules, or change certain skills.

No, Emp Heal does not help BB, but since the OP said he was making a healbot and you commented in that vein here...


...and anything other than maximize for the metamagic feats are a waste of time.

...it needs to be clarified that Emp Healing >> Maximize for a healbot. Again, clarity please.


If they do improve the heal skill, I won't be the one re-rolling my cleric:cool:

Neither will I. 32 WIS + Reaver gloves + Head of Good Fortune puts my Heal skill at a more than acceptable level w/o a single rank in it. ;)

[Mhykke]

Heal is way towards the end of the list of valuable skills for any class.



Fixed that for ya. :D;)

[silverraven]

Agreed, you didn't say that concentration was unimportant. You said that the most important thing for a healbot was heal. See?

1. Heal is the most important, anything beyond that has been explained well in previous posts

It's misleading. Concentration >> Heal skill. Be more clear since the OP is looking for advice as this is his first cleric, please. If you're looking to take a skill that is helpful to other players, take balance. A cleric on his back can't help anyone. If someone doesn't get topped off at a shrine, you can either use a wand or they can use their potions. Conc > Balance > Jump/Diplo. Heal is way towards the end of the list of valuable cleric skills.



No, Emp Heal does not help BB, but since the OP said he was making a healbot and you commented in that vein here...

When I commented on Blade Barrier, I was referring to ME and MY preference, it had nothing to do with advice to the OP and it was in response to why maximize is better than Emp. Heal; In my opinion on my build.
If you actually read it it says,

"Originally Posted by silverraven View Post
One other thing, Emp Heal helps heal...does it help Blade Barrier? No

...it needs to be clarified that Emp Healing >> Maximize for a healbot. Again, clarity please.

Clarity??? I just said that heal is the most important. Just because I didn't say something doesn't mean that I said anything. Read what I type, not what I don't type

Neither will I. 32 WIS + Reaver gloves + Head of Good Fortune puts my Heal skill at a more than acceptable level w/o a single rank in it. ;)

He clearly said that in his build it isn't dependant on gear. That means "Reaver gloves" and "Head of good Fortune"


Don't read between the lines, and the direction of the post isn't you, so stop trying to showboat.

[Aranticus]

HEAL IS USELESS

period

[Sindaleus]

For my first cleric I thought I'd try somewthing fun! Advice or comments really appreciated - I don't have any experience with this class or race so let me know if my assumptions are way off here. My goal is to be a healer/buffer with a little crowd control.

Halfling 32-pt Pure Cleric

Base Stats:

STR: 10
DEX: 10
CON: 14
INT: 10
WIS: 18
CHA: 12

Skills:
Concentration
Healing

Feats:
1: Least Dragonmark of Healing
3: Empower Healing
6: Extend Spell
9: Lesser Dragonmark of Healing
12: Spell Penetration
15: Greater Dragonmark of Healing
18 someday: Greater Spell Penetration

Here are my assumptions. Fire away :)

Stats: All level ups go into WIS. Robust CON improves survivability. Get STR and DEX items to carry gear and benefit from Mithral Full Plate.

Skills: Cleric skills seem to suck so I just went with what was obvious to me.

Feats: I assume that with the Dragonmarks, I will get enough 'free' healing that I won't miss Mental Toughness. Also, once I hit level 10 or so, I can see not needing Extend Spell for buffs and could swap that out. Should I advance the Spell Penetration line sooner, or go for something else?

Thanks in advance!

PS - Obviously I am not a real power player and don't have access nor frankly the time to get resources to acquire uber gear and mega raid loot. So hopefully with regular quest items, the occasional lucky pull and the Auction House I can get some decent gear, but I don't want my build to rely on it.

I dropped my Cha to 10, since it's an urban legend for Clerics to turn undead in DDO without ultra specialization. Instead I opted for a little more Dexterity since Fp and Shield are my best friends to up my AC, as with spells.

I took Spell Penetration, and don't look back. I did not take the Dragonmarks, instead, took Spell Focuses to increase my DC on my spells. Any Cleric has the ability to dedicate their entire SPs for Healing. My personal choice was to have Spell Pen. for the simple fact, I like my spells to land on its mark and not resisted by DC saves or fuddled up with Spell Resistance. That's because I like the diversity, be a party healer or Solo play with fairly reliable spells.

As far as your Feats, they look fine. I would swap out Empowered Healing for Quicken eventually. In my humble opinion, EH is useful when you get the mass, heal spells but frankly, players don't always hold ground to kill mobs unless their movement blocking mobs. So mass, heal is a situation spell beneficial for EH. Others can debate otherwise, but that's my practical experience. With the trend of players to skip out of range or find themselves blocked from Healing, those SPs are lost. So adding a +SP Feat to spells falls under a degree of risk management: Using more SP than necessary, or losing them to failed healing but casted spells. Quicken, on the other hand, has several universal uses for Clerics to rocket off any spell uninterrupted--very sweet when Solo playing.

Same with your skills. I like Diplomacy personally and rotate the extra point between healing occassionally. It's up to you. I've had a smile each time my Diplomacy turns mobs onto a summoned pet. Should I need to beat feet out of there, or distract mobs while you collect stones.