Work in Progress, Low skull Reaper Low Attention Healer/Divine Disciple

[ValariusK]

Have a couple morninglord lives left to do, so made something like this

Right now I'm level 15 having just finished cobbling together some gear for 15th.
The idea of this build is to bring sufficient low-focus healing (I really do not want to have to drop back into reactive mode watching heal bars for any but the most difficult fights, its an annoying way to play) to the table to allow moderately geared melees to survive and thrive in low skull reaper (1 through 4 skull). It is intended to be able to do some dc casting, lots of light spamming and execute its healing function with a bare tithe of its mana pool and attention focus. It is also intended to be able to solo to some degree. Destiny will probably be Exalted angel, although DC and US are also viable options. Will probably twist consecration in any case to add to the low focus healing barrage.



Morninglord cleric
Cleric 20
True Neutral Morninglord


Stats
28pt 32pt 34pt 36pt Tome Level Up
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --------
Strength 8 8 8 8 +6 4: WIS
Dexterity 8 8 8 8 +6 8: WIS
Constitution 12 13 14 14 +6 12: WIS
Intelligence 10 12 12 14 +6 16: WIS
Wisdom 18 18 18 18 +6 20: WIS
Charisma 14 14 14 14 +6 24: WIS
28: WIS

Skills
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
------------------------------------------------------------
Heal 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 23
Spellcr 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 23
Diplo 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 23
Concent 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 21
UMD 2 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 11
------------------------------------------------------------
16 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 6


Feats

1 : Empower Healing Spell
1 Deity : Follower of: Amaunator
3 : Completionist
6 : Maximize Spell
6 Deity : Amaunator's Brilliance
9 : Empower Spell
12 : Quicken Spell
15 : Spell Focus: Evocation
18 : Heighten Spell
21 Epic :
24 Epic : Master of: Light
26 Destiny:
27 Epic :
28 Destiny:
29 Destiny:
30 Epic :
30 Legend :


Enhancements (80 AP)

Divine Disciple (41 AP)
• Emissary: Light, Sacred Defense, Sun Bolt, Sunbeam, Sunburst, Transcend: Light
1. Spellpower: Universal III, Spell Critical: Light, Spell Points III
2. Spell Penetration III, Spellpower: Universal III, Spell Critical: Light
3. Searing Light III, Spellpower: Universal III, Spell Critical: Light, Wisdom
4. Evocation DC, Spell Critical: Light, Wisdom

Radiant Servant (35 AP)
• Healing Domain, Pacifism, Positive Energy Burst, Improved Empower Healing, Positive Energy Shield
1. Extra Turning I, Wand Mastery III, Divine Cleansing III, Altruism I
2. Improved Turning I
3. Intense Healing III, Wisdom
4. Endless Turning I, Incredible Healing I, Wisdom
5. Positive Energy Aura, Cure Focus

Warpriest (4 AP)
• Smite Foe
1. Divine Might I, Righteous Weapons

[ValariusK]

Did Siegebreaker Skull 3 and Memoirs Skull 1. Healing with heal aura took care of the other players without much trouble. DC37 destruction was enough to instakill a fair number of non-deathblock targets. Light spam appears to do adequate damage (not leading kill counts but staying fairly competitive). Positive energy burst is very powerful for fixing damage of the 'what the hell was that' variety. My own healing throughput is big enough to brute force through the reaper penalties when I self-heal, which I don't need to do often. PRR and MRR are fairly good, (made some cannith crafted half-plate, also have a level 13 sheltering item (boots) that is cannith crafted and the mysterious level 14 cloak for insightful MRR. All told PRR is near 100 and MRR in the 70ish range. Enhancements are 34 Radiant and 22 DD.
Radiant enhancements: Haven't had cause to use divine cleansing yet, but it appears to be a general status issue fix, including petrification. Also doesn't eat my mana but rather my prolific regenerating turns. Cure focus tier 5 is awesome. Makes my cure light wounds hit for 200ish/400ish crit.
DD enhancements. Using the sunbolt/sunbeam as my main punch from the DD cores. Went for spell power uber alles and light crit. Positive energy crit seems less useful to me as healing is about consistent expectations. I might work in a little positive crit in the future though, as you can sorta average out when you're talking about heal aura.

Other players: Played with known players yesterday only, no issues there. They generally knew to kite towards me when they needed healing ticks. Their healing amp was pretty low but I predict that'll get better closer to epics (I'm running a shield of tireless aid +20 HA and a cannith item +30 along with my 50 from past life and ship and some more from my mysterious cloak).
Haven't done the abishai heavy quests yet, those might be a problem (no evasion). Hit points are very good though.

[ValariusK]

Notes on Blade Barrier:
Blade barrier does a decent amount of damage at this level, but its greatest use in reaper isn't so much the damage it does but rather the virtual crowd control effect that it has. A lot of more dangerous targets will hesitate, pull out inferior missile weapons, etc when confronted by it. If they refuse to run through it (and take two BB hits), they've been crowd controlled.

[SirValentine]

Feats

1 : Empower Healing Spell
1 Deity : Follower of: Amaunator
3 : Completionist
6 : Maximize Spell
6 Deity : Amaunator's Brilliance
9 : Empower Spell
12 : Quicken Spell
15 : Spell Focus: Evocation
18 : Heighten Spell

If you have Completionist, then you have access to Arcane Initiate, for another +1 to all spell DCs. Might be worth taking.

If you're intending Spell Focus Evocation as a prerequisite for Epic Destiny abilities, then, personally I'd drop, Empower or Empower Heal to fit in Arcane Initiate. If you don't need SF:Evo as a prereq, then swap it out; +1 to everything is better than +1 to just one school.

[ValariusK]

If you have Completionist, then you have access to Arcane Initiate, for another +1 to all spell DCs. Might be worth taking.

If you're intending Spell Focus Evocation as a prerequisite for Epic Destiny abilities, then, personally I'd drop, Empower or Empower Heal to fit in Arcane Initiate. If you don't need SF:Evo as a prereq, then swap it out; +1 to everything is better than +1 to just one school.

Empower heal hits your heal aura and is the only one that does. I may well substitute the Arcane initiate for the SF evo though, particularly if I can't afford the twists anyway. Also I'm using a +3 spell focus mastery trinket right now at L15, which is very nice, and a leftover goggle with insightful necromancy focus from my pale master life.

[ValariusK]

More reaper notes.
Did the archon's trials 13s on reaper 3 in a group. Abishai were much less of a problem than anticipated, partly because I tended to avoid making myself a fireball focus. Never died in the group. Some issues though with the spinning blades---melee group members running into them and me obviously not following them. Melees will need a little better charge discipline in general for reaper than they have in elite. Ranged will need to pull the targets into a tight kill zone free of environmental issues like shavarath blades so melee can do its job.

Probably will plan a major gear revamp at 18th to hold till 23rd. Upgrading from the +6 wisdom inherent in my conop bracers to +9/+4 will be a significant push on my dcs, as will buffing out my gear to include insightful evo and enchant as well as the necro that's on it now. Getting the level 16 yellow augments will help too. Spell focus mastery really is a godsend at this level.

Found that at reaper-3 I need to spend in the neighborhood of 1/3 to 1/4 of my focus on healing, mostly for dropping a heal spell on kiting strays. Hopefully better gearsets on party members will keep this value in the tolerable range (specifically better heal amp, which makes my heal aura ticks stronger for them). For particularly major fights, like Sinvala in reaper3 at level, I'm ok with upping my heal focus to 50% or so.

[ValariusK]

More notes, ran creeping death, search and rescue and the first 3 of the missing chain on reaper 1 with a mostly full group. Search and rescue was no sweat really, don't think anyone even died. Also ran a duo with a warlock for most of the gianthold 13 walkups.

When leveling, I probably ought to spare the point for mighty turning (so things I turn are destroyed instead of immobilized). Found I could turn stuff in reaper in the first part of search and rescue and in a number of other quests. The one point to change turns to destroys probably would be a good investment.
Found that a peer warlock (ie one with similar past lives, gear, experience etc), will get around 2/3 of the kills in a duo typically, which reinforces the perception that the build has acceptable but not extremely high dps (counting instakills). DC40 on destruction also appears typically sufficient for reaper 1 level 15 quests and really shines in search & rescue where the HP numbers are so high.

When you're the only major mana consumer in the party, the lost souls/mana gems really keep you going. The fact that the number dropped doesn't scale with the number of casters is really a good thing, as it favors combined arms parties, which is good for the meta.

[ValariusK]

Level 18 now. Implosion at Level 17 gave a substantial hop in offensive power. Level 18 regearing increased that hop substantially (wisdom going up by 7 points, also arcane initiate). Implosion is pretty reliable at reaper 1, probably now up to reaper 3-5 or so. Ran running with the devils at 5 skull. That was rough and placed a lot of stress on the healing function.
Notable gear at level 18
Crafted goggles with yellow slot containing evocation topaz, +9 wis, +4 insightful wisdom +2 insightful evocation. This is the item that makes implosion seriously deadly.
crafted trinket level 13, spell pen 3, spell focus mastery 3 (this is huge), insightful spell pen 2

[Kragon]

Hopefully for your head gear you are using the Panasonic Circlet. That will raise all spell powers about 100 points or more. And as it is just potency you can still use other items to raise your spell power.

[ValariusK]

Hopefully for your head gear you are using the Panasonic Circlet. That will raise all spell powers about 100 points or more. And as it is just potency you can still use other items to raise your spell power.

Yeah I'm using that, to be upgraded to the legendary version at 28.
Right now at 26th I'm using that, the lantern ring, a wisdom 2 tier LGS stick, and a level 26 TF shortsword with 150 devotion/+6 evo dc for spellpower.
At L28 the legendary version of the circlet will jack up my spellpower more.

Oddly, I've found that taking radiant t5s is actually no sacrifice, even for dps. Why?
Because empyrean magic is always maxed (+20 usp, +10% crit) when you have aura up. Nothing in t5 divine disciple can compete with that.

[ValariusK]

Notes on dps and spells.

With the dd capstone and exalted angel, you're casting Sun bolt, searing light, and sun beam at 27. Max dice post 24th level (master of light), is as CL 26 for sun bolts, level 27 for sun beam (it has no cap), and 21 for searing light (I only use the SLA for searing light).
You're casting Necrotic ray and word of balance at level 26.

Sun beam does 4-6 per cl, so 135 base average.
Sun bolt does 5-8 per cl so 6.5*26 so 169 average.
By level 27 you should be in the neighborhood of 500 light spell power, so
Sun beam 810 noncrit
Sun bolt 1014 noncrit.
Your Sun bolt sla will be doing an extra 2.25 * 169 or 380 points.
Your searing light SLA will do (d4+4)*10 or around 62.5, around 525 points noncrit after spell power (includes empower/maximize). IMO non SLA searing light is rarely worth casting.

Word of balance is surprisingly useful. It does (d8+8)*20 base bane damage, although it does check spell penetration, when you use it against lawful evil or chaotic evil targets, which is the only type of targets you really ought to use it on. its spell cost of 10 is nice. Average damage is 250 before spell power (it shows in 2 lines). If you can swing 500 force spell power it'll punish targets for about 1500 (my force spell power isn't as good but it'll hop up a lot after level 28).
Necrotic ray is (d4+4) * 27, or 175.5 before spell power 1053 if you can swing 500 negative spell power. it also sports a negative level and a low cast cost of 10 sp.

I should probably cast power word stun more often, as it's cheap and no-save cc (although it does go against spell pen)

[ValariusK]

Level 28, another decent upward hop in firepower. The Legendary circlet gives a decent push in spellpower over the heroic version.
Slotted in the Legendary Executioner's platemail, with its +2 profane well rounded bonus, and the legendary breaker of bodies large shield (with its +8 riposte bonus to saves and sizeable implement bonus). Also the Legendary Earthen Mantle. All told, 27->28th level added 7 to wisdom and +1 more to evocation through the cloak. Actually found use for my old level 24 iron mitts, since I needed healing amp again (my level 23 crafted planeforged half-plate had +11 con, level 23 healing amp (think that's like 43 or so), and parrying. 60 heal amp is more than level 28 cannith gloves can provide. Would still like an epic belt of thoughful remembrance, but no luck from the RNG.

[SirValentine]

Level 28, another decent upward hop in firepower.

Level 28 is huge for me. Tons of good gear that's ML28, plus that's when you can pick up the Reaper-and-Deathblocked-champ it's-not-an-instakill-it's-a-polymorph.

Slotted in the Legendary Executioner's platemail, with its +2 profane well rounded bonus

No Litany for Profane? Shadowscale (stacking +1 to all DCs) or Celestial Sage (+3 Insightful to all schools) are both nice armors to consider, too.

[ValariusK]

Level 28 is huge for me. Tons of good gear that's ML28, plus that's when you can pick up the Reaper-and-Deathblocked-champ it's-not-an-instakill-it's-a-polymorph.



No Litany for Profane? Shadowscale (stacking +1 to all DCs) or Celestial Sage (+3 Insightful to all schools) are both nice armors to consider, too.

Don't have a litany, and I was able to put the executioner plate easily into my gearset. Celestial sage doesn't have the insightful in the platemail version, only light and cloth if I recall. Shadowscale would have been an option, but I'm a bit short on shadow dragon scales. Also, the executioner plate, the Slaver shield, and one other item might be the fastest way to get a set bonus.
Level 28-30 were pretty fast. This build worked very well there. Now I'm back in a pure wizard morninglord life for my 3rd morninglord PL.

[ValariusK]

Final notes on 15-30 life on this build.
I've TR'd now into wizard, but here's the retrospective.

In pretty much every case, this build was capable of getting 1/6 of the kills in a group while fulfilling a secondary healing function. In weaker PUGs, it was quite capable of dominating the kill counts. It gets parity with weaker warlock builds and is only substantially outkilled by warlocks in strong builds with good players.

I suspect that most agree with me although they rarely say it: I hate having to go into staring at the red bars reactive healing mode. I hate even more having to stay there for a prolonged period of time. What's the threshold for having to do that? EE on some more difficult quests with a weaker group (eg EE fleshmaker), Reaper 5 with a strong group on difficult quests. Somewhere around reaper-3 I suspect more normally. Something for people to consider when suggesting what difficulty to run when you have a cleric in the group. Going into said mode is fatiguing, stressful and unfun for me, and this is not unusual. Consider just how much you're taxing your healer's energies, especially if you're hoping for more than one quest. This is likely to become a serious metagame issues in the future---for instance I've yet to do a reaper run with a primary healer in the group who wasn't me, and I've done a fair number of them---a crippling shortage of primary healers for the reasons I've described.

[ValariusK]

Planned revisions for domains and in half-orc racial life.
Go with Aureon for Deity
You are a devoted follower of Aureon, and your faith has been rewarded. Activate this ability to channel the power of Aureon's wisdom for 24 seconds plus 6 seconds per Religious Lore feat you have.
In this state, you gain +4 Wisdom, +3 to Spell Penetration, +2 to your effective level for Turn Undead, +4 to maximum Hit Dice affected when using Turn Undead, and +4 to the total Hit Dice affected by Turn Undead.

State would last a decent amount of time (2 min 24 secs at level 20, 1 min 44 secs at level 15, which isn't half bad for a 10 minute cooldown). That's +2 DCs and +3 SP for tough fights. All and all I think it's a slightly better deal than Ollandra, the nearest competitor (full heal +d6 to all attributes). Religious weapon not really important since we're not going to dive into warpriest much.
Domain: Luck. +4 to all saves, on turn undead +10 saves party buff, displacement at level 5, +2 to all dcs (that means all evo including implosion, necro stuff and greater command too), no fail on 1 at 14 (coupled with the save bonuses, this is really good).
competitor for domain: Magic +4 to evo DCs, chain missiles SLA (how often, how much sp?), levelx10 bonus SP, 2x level USP, on turn undead, 2x USP

Magic effectively has better Evo DC at the expense of enchantment and necro, and conceivably has 80 USP (40 always on, 40 on turn undead) for somewhat better offense (also 200 spell points).
Luck may be better defensively for a cleric and their party than even protection defensively.

I'll probably go luck.

Levelling up, I'll probably go ahead and use the half-orc line with a quarterstaff for the first few levels until I can get the respectable divine disciple SLAs going. Might even get power attack and use Fred to swap it out for empower healing around 9th level to support that.