Quicken Feat

[Vissarion]

Quicken can be instrumental in saving a bad situation or in certain encounter types (many epics), but it tends to be over-used. This is particularly noteworthy on newer players that tend to leave it on and use it as a "crutch". You see it also on veteran players that get addicted to it and never grow out of its use. Here is my view on quicken:

Quicken is a powerful feat that can greatly reduce your reaction time and save characters from catastrophic damage. Because of this, many actually use it constantly, as has been mentioned. The down-side of this is healers actually become reliant upon it and never grow out of its use. You don't need it on almost all of the time once you are experienced (and provided you have concentration). People get used to it though and decide they can no longer keep people up without it. Quicken doesn't help you with interruption on heal scrolls, so if you have no concentration you can be interrupted by just about anything, when scrolling (a big mana saving technique). Quicken itself wastes tons of mana (15-20% of your mana pool will go to quickening on a proficient caster, more if not). On an end stage cleric with 2100-2300 mana this is 315-460 mana just to quicken things. Basically a mana pot. Not to mention the fact that it actuallly can kill mana saving healing techniques you can use, because only big heals are actually feasible with quicken. And what about actually being a cleric and not a healbot? You going to quicken all your offensive spells too?

There are techniques to prevent interuption of spells that you will never learn if you don't try to wean yourself off the quicken crutch. You can't even try them if you don't get concentration. One of the biggest mana saving things a caster of any type needs to learn is the proper use of metamagics. You can always spot the cleric relying upon quicken - he's the one with no mana...

This can be true, especially in 6-man group situations. Of course, if you're a melee divine, quicken is non-negotiable, but if you're a caster, there are indeed situations when it can be turned off.

However, this seems to become less the case in many epics, where the reaction time is absolutely essential, and it also opens up the use of the most mana-efficient heal spell, Mass Heal.

So yeah, a time and a place, and all that. You just need to recognize what a situation means. And I agree that concentration is a must, as heal scrolling reliably is the only thing that makes some of the more attrition-style epics affordable in terms of consumables (thinking mainly of ECoF, EDA, or EADQ1).

[countfitz]

I didn't even know the importance of quicken for my first 3 divine casters, and did just fine without it, just maxed concentration.

Then I learned about it's awesomeness... used my free feat to take it on all of those divines since then... and rely on it as a cruch.

But I never run out of sp, usually remember to turn it off while buffing... and do turn it off often enough in quests that it doesn't matter.

It also frees up skill points, I'm sorry, but you can miss a scroll or two due to a failed concentration check and maybe get someone mad at you, but you can't do anything if you're flat on your butt cause of a failed balance check, and that is where, in my opinion, most wipes (caused by healers, yes, healers 'can' cause wipes, trust me, I've done it) occur.

(Take it back, nope, healers are NEVER the cause of wipes.)

[Habreno]

I HAVE quicken, but leave it off 90% of the time. My Concentration score is to the point where if something is going to interrupt me, it's gonna do it if my score is 1 or 100 (aka burst damage that you need to quicken to cast through) and I'm pretty much immune to much else interrupting. I'm sitting at 50 purely unbuffed, and I can hit 65 fully buffed. Without a HP GS (only have T1, not T2-T3) for 5 points, without exceptional CON. I'll be able to hit over 70 max buffed when my items are done. And that's before the d20 roll you make in addition, meaning you have to deal at least 50 damage to me, and then I'll still succeed on a 1.

High Concentration score can negate at least 50% of the usage of Quicken. Smart healing takes away another 30-40% of it. The remaining time it doesn't matter what your Concentration score is, you're going to get interrupted and you NEED quicken on.

[TheKaige]

Quicken is a truly unnecessary feat leveling up and for most 6 man content.

It's an absolute world of difference for raids; my first experience with this was healing Shroud before I had quicken and then after.

Plus, using quicken, if your healer is spec'd right, you can melee certain raid mobs, while healing, and buffing the group with your short term buffs/hitting the raid mob with Prayer. Oh, and aura, while not huge, is some healing; it can make a difference in those bad raid groups where there's no DPS and your SP is slipping faster than the monster's HP.

[Vissarion]

Plus, using quicken, if your healer is spec'd right, you can melee certain raid mobs, while healing, and buffing the group with your short term buffs/hitting the raid mob with Prayer. Oh, and aura, while not huge, is some healing; it can make a difference in those bad raid groups where there's no DPS and your SP is slipping faster than the monster's HP.

This in particular will be important after U9, as there will be an incentive to have Melee FVSes specced into AoV heal in the fight for debuff/shield of condemnation purposes.

-2 AC and a boost to all aligned damage (Holy, Pure Good, etc) is rather nice.

[EatSmart]

Well there's two aspects to the answer.

1 - When not using it would result in regular spell failure.
Concentration works as D20+skill vs 10+spell level+damage taken. So your skill minus 18 is the maximum damage you can take while still autopassing the concentration check on lvl 9 spells.
To illustrate this, a lvl 20 caster with 23 skill ranks, 22 con (+6) good luck (+2) greater heroism (+4), a +15 item, and a +6 con skills greensteel item would have a total skill modifier of +56. Their autopass would therefore be around 38 damage or less. Any higher than that, that character is starting to need the dice to save them. Around 57 damage, the check is an autofail. [My numbers my be out slightly, check the rules yourself if you're unsure]
When you're levelling, particularly first life, your reflex save is likely to be on the low side. Content where spells like fireball, ball lightning etc are being spammed near you are going to be good places to have quicken on.
Big hitting foes like ogres and trolls are also worth having quicken for.
Teleporting foes like bearded devils and orthons make my "quicken or go home" list too.

2 - When the casting time reduction matters.
The big one here is heal mass. It is an extremely efficient spell when you are running with people who have high hp amounts, and we all love getting resources out of our raids rather than spending them. Shroud is probably the turning point where using heal mass based healing strategies (assuming pugged party members) begins to work well. (Although, the obvious caveat here is that you can pretty much faceroll the keyboard and still heal shroud fine. Its not mandatory to use heal mass by any means, just useful.)

My personal opinion is that its good for the soul to take quicken as late as possible, such as the level 18 general feat slot. You could get utility out of it before lvl 18, obviously, but quicken is very intoxicating and you can quickly find yourself using it permenantly as a crutch. It's worth learning what you can do without it before getting it.

My cleric's first life she didnt have quicken at all. Apart from epic chrono (which wasnt a twinkle in the dev's eyes at the time) epic demon queen and epic vault of night 6 she successfully tackled all content in the game, pulling her weight. (including occasionally solo healing with pugs). There is a lot of the game you can do without quicken if you play well. Rebuilt with quicken she was noticably easier to play around reavers refuge, amrath and beyond. Moreover I was using her other class abilities more, and more effectively because I had more time to do "other fun stuff", and staying in the thick of the action was less risky.

If you have more SP than you know what to do with in the quest, turn it on and stop worrying.

[LordPiglet]

part 4/5 of shroud (mass heals on me)

don't remember if I had it on for part 3 of tod

when soloing sins and a new invasion

sometimes in weapon shipment since I have the mana and don't feel like waiting on slow ass blade barriers.

VoN
DQ

so, mainly raid purple boss fights, or solo, but otherwise, meh.

I run a archmagi +15 concentration pirate hat , last check I remember was +57 but thinking of my gear my concentration is at least:
23 ranks
9 constitution
15 item
5 constitution skill from con opp
1 good luck
= 53 standing
+4 gh
57 self buff

Main caster in the guild uses blur/displacements and mass holds so I rarely even toss a mass cure out.

[phalaeo]

As to Blade Barrier- it is now insanely fast to cast. You'll need Quicken only for Mass Heals and so you don't fail Conc. checks.

I have it on all my Clerics, and it's pretty much on at all times, except buffing.

I do wish people would not take off while I'm still buffing, though.... often means the first heal I throw out in a quest is un-quickened as I was casting the last of the buffs on the run.

[samdsherman]

i pick it up at level 3 and never turn it off.

[SirValentine]

As a Cleric or FVS when do you recommend using the quicken feat? I tend to have it turned on all the time until my mana gets less than 50%.

Thx

Just to add some confusion:

I have it, and use it almost all the time (except during buffing). However, I don't RECOMMEND this approach; I recognize myself that I use it too much, and have been trying to get better about not using it when I don't need it. That said, for challenging end-game content, you really don't want to be without the option.

I'm on my 2nd life as a cleric. My 1st time around, I had a very poor build, almost no useful feats at all, and did NOT have Quicken. Yet I sucessfully healed many Hound, Shroud, VoD runs, and some of the easier epic quests, without it.

Oh, another factor: your network latency. Someone with a good network connection can get a heal off in reaction to a big damage spike WITHOUT Quicken faster than someone WITH Quicken who's playing over a slow link. The slow-link person would be even less effective without Quicken turned on.

[Templarion]

Its important to get Quicken feat even for mass heal only.

Healer without quickened mass heal is not a healer.

[Atree]

Quicken can be instrumental in saving a bad situation or in certain encounter types (many epics), but it tends to be over-used. This is particularly noteworthy on newer players that tend to leave it on and use it as a "crutch". You see it also on veteran players that get addicted to it and never grow out of its use. Here is my view on quicken:

Quicken is a powerful feat that can greatly reduce your reaction time and save characters from catastrophic damage. Because of this, many actually use it constantly, as has been mentioned. The down-side of this is healers actually become reliant upon it and never grow out of its use. You don't need it on almost all of the time once you are experienced (and provided you have concentration). People get used to it though and decide they can no longer keep people up without it. Quicken doesn't help you with interruption on heal scrolls, so if you have no concentration you can be interrupted by just about anything, when scrolling (a big mana saving technique). Quicken itself wastes tons of mana (15-20% of your mana pool will go to quickening on a proficient caster, more if not). On an end stage cleric with 2100-2300 mana this is 315-460 mana just to quicken things. Basically a mana pot. Not to mention the fact that it actuallly can kill mana saving healing techniques you can use, because only big heals are actually feasible with quicken. And what about actually being a cleric and not a healbot? You going to quicken all your offensive spells too?

There are techniques to prevent interuption of spells that you will never learn if you don't try to wean yourself off the quicken crutch. You can't even try them if you don't get concentration. One of the biggest mana saving things a caster of any type needs to learn is the proper use of metamagics. You can always spot the cleric relying upon quicken - he's the one with no mana...

I have quicken on all the time.

My capped cleric has a max pool of 1530sp, which drops to a mere 1200 after I switchout the sp items to hp ones.

In most quests, and even some raids, aura + bursts acount for the majority of my healing output. Having all metamagics on for those is highly beneficial. In situations where those aren't enough the incoming damage is such that failing a check can be lethal. Moreover, I actively try to get agro so my Torc and Con-op items proc as often as possible.

I view it as a balancing act: you can either try to minimize expenditure or raise income. Both are viable, and each has its own appeal.

[Matuse]

I would only really use Quicken for Blade Barrier, and then around level 15 I noticed that it didn't matter what my concentration score was, if I got hit for ANYTHING, then the spell fizzled.

So, now I never turn Quicken off except when buffing at the start. Even with max ranks and the +15 concentration dagger from the cove, I'm incapable of passing a concentration check.

[wax_on_wax_off]

Quicken can be instrumental in saving a bad situation or in certain encounter types (many epics), but it tends to be over-used. This is particularly noteworthy on newer players that tend to leave it on and use it as a "crutch". You see it also on veteran players that get addicted to it and never grow out of its use. Here is my view on quicken:

Quicken is a powerful feat that can greatly reduce your reaction time and save characters from catastrophic damage. Because of this, many actually use it constantly, as has been mentioned. The down-side of this is healers actually become reliant upon it and never grow out of its use. You don't need it on almost all of the time once you are experienced (and provided you have concentration). People get used to it though and decide they can no longer keep people up without it. Quicken doesn't help you with interruption on heal scrolls, so if you have no concentration you can be interrupted by just about anything, when scrolling (a big mana saving technique). Quicken itself wastes tons of mana (15-20% of your mana pool will go to quickening on a proficient caster, more if not). On an end stage cleric with 2100-2300 mana this is 315-460 mana just to quicken things. Basically a mana pot. Not to mention the fact that it actuallly can kill mana saving healing techniques you can use, because only big heals are actually feasible with quicken. And what about actually being a cleric and not a healbot? You going to quicken all your offensive spells too?

There are techniques to prevent interuption of spells that you will never learn if you don't try to wean yourself off the quicken crutch. You can't even try them if you don't get concentration. One of the biggest mana saving things a caster of any type needs to learn is the proper use of metamagics. You can always spot the cleric relying upon quicken - he's the one with no mana...

Well said. I don't keep quicken on all the time on any of my characters. Trick is to know the quest for the most part otherwise quicken is a good buffer.