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View Full Version : Feedback - Cleric Enhancement - Pass 2 - The Long Version



Flavilandile
06-29-2013, 05:15 AM
For the Short version see the Cleric Thread, this is the long version for the second preview of the Cleric NGE... erm, Enhancement Crash... Well you know.

Comments straights out of the game :

- Get rid of the abortion called Protection Tree, the only thing worth spending points
in it is the Tier 1 enhancement called Toughness. That's probably the only 4 points
that will be spent by most of the clerics on that tree.
You didn't listen to the feedback from the Alpha, and you want to force down our throat something we do not
want nor need.

- The Divine Disciple tree is really nice.
My only problem with it is the active clickies. But I'll get back to that latter on.

- The Radiant Servant Tree.
Once again you didn't listen to our feedback from Alpha and you didn't do any relevant changes here.
In RS tree we have to waste points on useless enhancements to pass the tree count to reach the ones we want.
I'll get back to the Point Spent In Tree stupidity below.

http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/11/71/69/26/rs_tre10.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=254&u=11716926)

Anyway, as seen in the above picture for my main Cleric ( Flavilandile ) I end up wasting 2 points on the Tier 1 trash
at the right to pad my count ( in red ), and yet At least 10 more points on stuff I don't really want but that can help
( in orange ). So in the end, for Flavilandile that's 12 points wasted on things I'm either totally not interested in or
not really interested in in that tree alone.
Yet some will point that on live I have Improved Empower Heal... true, but even then, there's still points wasted on enhancements I didn't have
and didn't really want that can have some use...

We are also still sadled with that Pacifism stupidity as a core enhancement, that's yet another point wasted, as I don't see
anybody ever using it, even when in full Healbot Mode, there's just too many variables that make it too dangerous to use in end game content.
( between Reaver's Boom, roaming undead Dragons, Lloth Drains, Respawns, trash mob spawns, .... )
And it has absolutely no point in lower level content, as there is no reason to use it.

I haven't taken any of the Active Clicky enhancement, except the relevant ones ( Aura, Burst, DV from the Disciple Tree ) ...
Once again, I've got 12 Bars, I don't need more stuff that needs my attention.

Really, I'm still wondering why you didn't reuse what is currently existing on live, as I've shown in my 30 minute RS Tree, it's already in a tree form,
and it would have required less time and provided less gried and anger to everybody. Anybody care from Turbine care to comment on that ?

http://i75.servimg.com/u/f75/11/71/69/26/dsc_0018.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=247&u=11716926)

Now lets see from a objective point of view what happens to Flavilandile.

As a start this is Flavilandile on Live :

http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/11/71/69/26/flav_c10.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=252&u=11716926)
http://i75.servimg.com/u/f75/11/71/69/26/flavia10.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=237&u=11716926)

You will note that she is definitely on the Healbot side, so the Enhancement Crash shouldn't have much impact on her.

So on Live as shown on the picture, unbuffed, in Unyelding Sentinel Destiny ( Capped ), with the First Stance ( forgot the name ) active she is as in the picture.


Hit Points: 732
Spell Points: 2752
Armor Class: 81 ( 10 + 2 DEX + 38 Armor + 13 Shield + 5 Natural + 7 Deflection + 6 Feat )
PRR: 44

STATISTICS

STR: 22 ( 12 + 3 Inherent + 7 Effects )
DEX: 20 ( 10 + 3 Inherent + 7 Effects )
CON: 23 ( 13 + 4 Inherent + 3 Effects + 3 Feats )
INT: 17 ( 8 + 1 Inherent + 8 Effects )
WIS: 37 ( 23 + 3 Inherent + 8 Effects + 3 Feats )
CHA: 32 ( 14 + 4 Inherent +11 Effects +3 Feats )

Spell Power

All: 15
Negative: 55
Positive: 175


in L-Space, after several respect to try to fit as well as possible for the Stats.
Same items, same destiny... I took the Live Screenshot, copied the character, ran for the cleric trainer.


Hit Points: 752
Spell Points: 2730
Armor Class: 83 ( 10 + 2 DEX + 38 Armor + 13 Shield + 5 Natural + 7 Deflection + 8 Feat )
PRR: 44

STATISTICS

STR: 22 ( 12 + 3 Inherent + 7 Effects )
DEX: 20 ( 10 + 3 Inherent + 7 Effects )
CON: 23 ( 13 + 4 Inherent + 3 Effects + 3 Feats )
INT: 17 ( 8 + 1 Inherent + 8 Effects )
WIS: 37 ( 23 + 3 Inherent + 8 Effects + 3 Feats )
CHA: 32 ( 14 + 4 Inherent +11 Effects +3 Feats )

Spell Power

All: 49
Force: 64
Light: 84
Negative: 61
Positive: 222
Sonic: 39


This is the final tree presentation :

http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/11/71/69/26/flavia10.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=253&u=11716926)

As can be seen, I just skipped the Elf tree -nothing of interest as a Cleric in it, except maybe the sword bit, if I had points to spend there-,
Only spent the 4 points that gets full Toughness in the Abortion Tree.

In the end, for a Heavily Healing oriented Cleric, the Enhancement Pass doesn't change much, you can earn some HPs, you will loose some SPs, and your spellpower will probably go up.
But the problem doesn't lies there... The problem lies in the fact that beside Healbot-Caster or Caster-Healbot there is no real options for Clerics... Especially there is no real option that
works around the fact that clerics are heavy armor wearers and weapon wielders. ( aka battle cleric or melee oriented cleric )


Now some general comments on the pass

- Active Clickies
You are dumping lots of active enhancements in the trees that needs to be clicked on.
Most of them have an extremely short duration, this is just plainly wrong.
We are not squids, we are not chimpanzees and we are definitely not lightning fast.
Most of us already have heaps of stuff to click on ( or trigger with the keyboard ) when we play,
we don't need more short term active clickies.

If you really want to give us Active Clickies, gives us long term clickies that lasts at least 2 minutes.

To sum up that bit :
Short Term Clicky Enhancement = Very BAD,
Passive Enhancement = Good,
One Shot Clicky Enhancement = Somewhat Good,
Long Term Clicky Enhancement = Okayish.

Note : Things like Bard Songs, Cleric Turns, Paladin Lay on Hand based Clickies are special as they are linked to a class cliky with a counter.

- Points Spent in Tree
This is a real killer, as already stated by many people, this has to go, right now the stepping is done through pre-requisites and points spent
in TOTAL, this is good, it allows maximum flexibility. Point Spent in Tree kills flexibility as we have to spend half our points in a guiven
tree to manage to reach the end... for Multiclass characters ( or any single class characters with more than two viable tree [ so anybody except Cleric and FvS ])
it's a killer, as they will have up to 7 trees and each time they won't be allowed ( due to the ******** Point Spent in Tree restriction ) to get to
enhancements that they had right now.

- Enhancement Crash in General
I'm still wondering why you didn't just take the enhancements that are currently on live and fitted them in a tree form instead of forcing upon us all
something that will lead to anger, grief and a certain number of people leaving the game.
As I proved with my 30 minute Radiant Servant Tree, it's relatively easy, it would probably have made everybody happy ( even if you reset all our enhancements ).
And the time wasted in trying to make us come to term with the trash system you're giving us to preview would have been spent in developping new trees for the classes
that are lacking them.
Anybody from Turbine care to officially comment on why the idea to fit the existing system in a tree form was discarded, and a NGE update had to be poured down our throat ?

Ebergar
06-29-2013, 06:51 AM
1. Altruism is nice on tier 3 as it gives +10 positive spellpower
2. Reactive heal seems very nice as a life saver, but its prereqs are... like..... protection tree?
3. I dont see your point in treating wand and scroll mastery as trash. Did you ever use heal scrolls? Its free heal that grow on tress. On current live is a must-have for me, its rank 1 gives best boost out of all ranks and have 1 point cost.
4. protection tree have some positive sides but 3/4 of it is a ****. (spellike spammable low heal? IM ALL FOR IT.)
5. that core abillity (prot tree) that serves as 'hardening yourself' is nice also.
5. for me, no caster cap on cure spells isnt worth the effort to get it. It doesn't apply to spellike mentioned above. Higher level cures have HUGE max caster level.

CE2JRH123
06-30-2013, 03:00 AM
Here's some side by side number comparison of non-identical numbers from above for people who might miss something:

Hit Points: 732 ---> 752: +20 HP
Spell Points: 2752 ---> 2730: -22 MP
Armor Class: 81 ---> 83: +2 AC
PRR: 44 ---> 44
STATISTICS: Same across the board

Spell Power
All: 15 ---> 49: +34
Negative: 55 ---> 61: +14
Positive: 175 ---> 222: +47
and the following gained:
Force: 64
Light: 84
Sonic: 39

Thank you for the illustrations and the screen shots. Useful information. Whatever else is said, you are going to be able to build an effective Radiant Servant healbot after the pass. With the new light/dark tree, it seems like might be able to build a decent light caster (though someone needs to do what you did and try a point by point comparison of stats and enhancements spent). The only thing we're missing is battle clerics, which will depend more on multiclassing...

I'm wondering if there are any other major abilities you lost or gained that might not be mentioned above?

Flavilandile
06-30-2013, 05:18 AM
I'm wondering if there are any other major abilities you lost or gained that might not be mentioned above?

21 Turns unbuffed on Live.
24 Turns unbuffed in L-Space.

I lost Divine Intervention that was replaced by Energy Shield.

All in all for a Cleric Healbot it doesn't change much.
That's why I concentrate my gripe on the abortion tree... erm protection tree and the Points Spent in Tree stupidity that kills flexibility.


Now it would be interesting of other made the same and gave the results, as what seems to be ok for one build ( mine ) might be a killer for another one.

CE2JRH123
06-30-2013, 06:25 PM
If I had a light DPS specced cleric and access to Lamannia, I promise I'd have already done what you did for that build.

Protection seems like one of those things that just won't ever be used, sort of like Divine Cleansing/Divine Light/Vulkoor's Avatar...I guess I can forgive the design of a few totally useless abilities :P

When I look at the protection domain on here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Protection_Enhancements_%28Lamannia%29

It looks non-awful for a tanking cleric, depending on what the restrictions are; universal spell power, sanctuary as a tanking buff (20s/1 minute = 1/3rd your time), grab toughness + innate energy enhancement + efficient...quicken? (Maximize?) + prayer spam + armored + wisdom from tree + light guard + cautious maybe + perma blur + arcane encumberance + dodge elements.

It seems like you could ignore the shield other/pass my benefits to others type things and ignore some ability spam based things and do non-awful with a Cleric17/monk2/Fighter 1 Protection+Healing defensive melee type build?

I don't know what the arrows quite look like, though, from your image, I'm just guessing a little, but I think that might work? If enhancements can cover some of the defensive+healing better, that frees up gear/feats for the DPS half of things...