CC+healing build, NEED advice.

[rendet]

Heighten shines when using lower level spells as It makes their Dc's harder to resist. Divine casters are generally going to use it for DC pumping as opposed to increasing the damage output. Spell focus feats are good for a few spells and add +1 dc to those spells and +0 to all of your other spells whereas heighten adds much more the lower the level of the spell. For examble, heighten adds a +4 to the dc to resist greater command where as enchantment focus would only add +1. +7 to hold monster dc, +3 to blade barrier etc. Also, you would have to take another feat in necromancy focus to increase the dc of your destruction by 1 whereas heighten would increase it by 2. In summary, if you care about spell dc's enough to take evocation focus etc. then you should first take heighten and then see if you are struggling to land spells. IMO its harder to break spell resistance in vale/amrath than land the actual spell.

[Rusty_Can]

I could be wrong here but my understanding of hieghten is that allows a caster to cast spells at thier highest allowable level, so if a spell says it can do 1d6 damage up to 15d6 at level 15 then what is the point once you are past the cap? With Focus you are adding +1 and then +1 for greater focus, allowing you to cast higher than your current level ie at level 20 its 22.

I think I spotted your mistake: none of the feats we are discussing (Heighten, Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus) directly increases the damage output of spells; all of them work on their DC, i.e. on how difficult they are to resist. Many damage spells allow some kind of save to receive half damage instead of full; if foes save against crowd control spells, they are not affected; and so on.

What Rendet says here is right: if you care about DC of your spells (and you care so much you are getting Focus and Greater Focus feats), then you should get Heighten first of all.

Heighten shines when using lower level spells as It makes their Dc's harder to resist. Divine casters are generally going to use it for DC pumping as opposed to increasing the damage output. Spell focus feats are good for a few spells and add +1 dc to those spells and +0 to all of your other spells whereas heighten adds much more the lower the level of the spell. For examble, heighten adds a +4 to the dc to resist greater command where as enchantment focus would only add +1. +7 to hold monster dc, +3 to blade barrier etc. Also, you would have to take another feat in necromancy focus to increase the dc of your destruction by 1 whereas heighten would increase it by 2. In summary, if you care about spell dc's enough to take evocation focus etc. then you should first take heighten and then see if you are struggling to land spells.

If you check all the caster builds (wizards, sorcerers, clerics, bards) on the forums, you will see that all of them take Heighten; only few of them (usually wizards, which have feats to spare) manage to take Focus and Greater Focus in some schools.

[Talon_Oakenleaf]

I think I spotted your mistake: none of the feats we are discussing (Heighten, Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus) directly increases the damage output of spells; all of them work on their DC, i.e. on how difficult they are to resist. Many damage spells allow some kind of save to receive half damage instead of full; if foes save against crowd control spells, they are not affected; and so on.

So to understand this better, Hieghten at level 20 cleric would add to the DC? How is this possible? If you are at level 20 that is the highest a player can achieve, how does the definition of hieghten explain it?

[biggin]

So to understand this better, Hieghten at level 20 cleric would add to the DC? How is this possible? If you are at level 20 that is the highest a player can achieve, how does the definition of hieghten explain it?

To put it simply, it cast's a spell of any level as if it were the highest level you can cast. So a level 20 cleric would be casting Lvl 9 Soundburst's, Hold's, etc. It makes the lower level spells you cast useable.

[TheDjinnFor]

So to understand this better, Hieghten at level 20 cleric would add to the DC? How is this possible? If you are at level 20 that is the highest a player can achieve, how does the definition of hieghten explain it?

You're confusing spell level with caster level. The damage of spells, or the amount of health they heal, or whatever, is determined by what level the person who casts it is. So if it says it deals 1d6 damage every two caster levels, to a max of 5d6 (a typical level 4 cleric spell), you'll do 3d6 at cleric level 6 and 7, 4d6 at cleric level 8 and 9, and 5d6 at cleric level 10 and up, with or without heighten, since the spell scales based on the level of the class that is casting it (cleric, in this case). Caster level is also used to make spell penetration checks to overcome spell resistance, but that's another story altogether.

All this stands opposed to 'spell level', which determines the effectiveness of a spell in relation to another spell. As a spellcaster you can clearly see that your spells are divided into levels one through nine (usually), and that you don't necessarily gain access to a new spell level when you gain a new level in your caster class (actually for classes that cast spells from one through nine, the highest spell level that you can cast is (caster level + 1) / 2, so level 3 spells at caster level 5, level 4 spells at caster level 7, etc.). Higher level spells cost more mana to cast (formula is (spell level + 1)*5 sp for any caster), but have a higher DC and generally deal better damage or have better effects (like deal harmful status effects, cover a wide area, or whatever).

Heighten increases DC by increasing the spell level of your spells (but just the spell level; they don't get better effects like normal high level spells often do). Not only do they cost 5 sp more per increase in spell level (a 4th level spell heightened to 9th costs 25 more sp), but they also have a higher DC. The formula for DC is 10 + spell level + casting stat modifier (wisdom for clerics) + extra modifiers (like spell focus feats or items). So a 1st level spell on a first level cleric of wisdom 18 has a DC of 15 (11 + wis modifier), while a 9th level spell on a twentieth level cleric of wisdom 36 (18 + 5 levels + 3 enhancements + 6 item + 2 tome + 2 exceptional) has a DC of 33 (19 + wis modifier).

Hope that helps.

[Khestral]

You might want to take a look at empower and empower healing. Empower adds 50% to all spells where as empower healing only does 50% more on healing spells...

That being said I have empower and when it (and maximize) is on, my cures and heals hit for on average 400hp per fleshie. Empower healing doesn't really seem to add much benefit unless you are bringing an endgame barb back from 1 hit point. Now, with all the enhancement lines on empower healing, you can get the spell point usage down considerably, but that takes time to get to as well.

[TheDjinnFor]

You might want to take a look at empower and empower healing. Empower adds 50% to all spells where as empower healing only does 50% more on healing spells...

That being said I have empower and when it is on, my cures and heals hit for on average 400hp per fleshie. Empower healing doesn't really seem to add much benefit unless you are bringing an endgame barb back from 1 hit point. Now, with all the enhancement lines on empower healing, you can get the spell point usage down considerably, but that takes time to get to as well.

Might want to specify that empower doesn't affect the spell heal, but empower healing does, just in case.

[Khestral]

Might want to specify that empower doesn't affect the spell heal, but empower healing does, just in case.

LOL, I kept saying to say that to myself, and I still forgot... thanks.

[AvatarJeffy]

Two feats all of my clerics have in common are Quicken and Empower Healing. Those are the only ones I'd highly recommend. Everything else is pretty much up to you and how you want to tweak your character out.