Are melee FVS a thing of the past?

[Veles]

Everyone now builds self sufficient toons because divines didn't want to heal.

Everyone ? There are hordes of toons that die in 5 seconds in first room in hard Tor.
Bladeforged paladins without hjealer friend and only with PDK gloves seem to be the last flavour.

The rest of your post is spot on, describing divines in good groups.

[Teh_Troll]

Role probably isn't the right word. But, melee fvs and really divines in general don't want to heal so they're spot is better filled by a self-sufficient toon that does more dps. Divines have basically whined themselves into a corner. Everyone now builds self sufficient toons because divines didn't want to heal. The problem is, in endgame, they don't bring enough to the table anymore, even if they're healbots. While it seems some people have problems filling lfms and will probably take a divine, others of us don't have this problem and can be selective. Save for maybe two raids in the game, divines are the bottom of the pack. We can all take care of ourselves, out dps divines and out cc them.

When running EEs we always joke "healer too slow!" as the no-healer runs on the self-healing melees go smoother than when we have a healer in the group.

[Noctus]

But, melee fvs and really divines in general don't want to heal /snip/

You see, there is the root of the probem.

I dont know what server you are on, or if and when yes in what kind of guild you are, but this doesnt depict the game i have been playing, in guildruns, in channelruns or in open pugs. Not at all.


Lets build an analogy:

I say "Mates, i have heared of a new invention! Its called Eating with a Fork and Knife, and it keeps your hands clean and thus is much more sanitary than eating with your hands. Also less fingerbiting when you are really hungry."

But you, dear poster, just met some retards who tried to cut with the fork while holding the steak down with the knife, and then repeatedly stabbed themself in the face while trying to get food into their mouth. One even lost an eye.

Thus you say: "No old chap! Not only does it make a big mess as you cant hold food as good as with your fingers, its even a danger to your health due to all the facestabbing with these newfangeled eating utensils! Such nonsense needs to be actively banned for the good of all our health!"


---> You cant judge a build on the basis that every user uses it in the most ******** way possible.

[Tyrande]

Role probably isn't the right word. But, melee fvs and really divines in general don't want to heal [..]

Tis true. When I am on my pure monk or pure artificer I can scroll heal, or drink the bottomless rum.
However, I do not think they are as good as the healing done by a good healer. Actually, a good healer does not need to heal as much and is just either instant killing, blade barrier'ing, crowd controlling or DOTing.

When I am on my multiclass Favored Soul, I told the group to be BYOH unless its an emergency. I will let people die and then resurrection if they all die in an instant. I also specifically told the group that the character I was playing was an evoker first, melee second and healing last and has only recently acquired the heal spell and does not even carry mass cures or mass heal; plus the positive enhancements were weak.

[zwiebelring]

WF melee FvS was a little easy button on wings. Immunity nerf, Earthgrab nerf, Terror nerf made WF melee FvS a total flaor build, in my opinion. But since I like the WF race the melee Artificer is just covinient. I sacrifice party healing for better dps (MB) and better self healing (Reconstruct) and last but not least better self buffs.

If I had to build another melee FvS I'd go Dwarf, Human, Helf or HOrc in a lvl. 18 FvS/ 2 Ftr or Mnk split. WF never again. Maybe Bladeforged when they finally can be TRed or can be TRed into.

[scoobmx]

I will say that for certain the WF FVS used to be somewhat of a flavor of the month build. It now requires a considerable amount of skill to play due to both the amount of active abilities added by epic destinies and the speed at which people can take damage and die. However, certain variants of the build are still indeed perfectly viable. Most people instead choose to move onto the next flavor of the month, though.

[Ironclans_evil_twin]

Being massively exaggeration prone can be tiring.

Fixed that for you.

[Dj_Fisty]

I always find it amusing when I see a totally gimp build and the player thinks that it is the best in the world.

Named F**** In Sarlona. hahahahahahha

[Cogdoc]

I just wanted to chime in to address one point raised in this thread, saying that light damage even on a fully decked out FvS is pitiful.

In case any of you have never tried the epic destiny ability divine wrath from the exalted angel build, I urge you to check it out. Having your lantern out to continuously and automatically keep up the stacks of ardor needed to be able to use this ability, you only have to wait for the cooldown.

This one ability can damage mobs, and heal the surrounding party members at the same time. It practically acts like a remote castable radiant servant positive energy burst. You can just ditch mass heal, and use this in raids where melee are busy beating on one single boss, surrounding him.

I know elite shroud is not what most of you consider to be a challenge, but you can in fact solo heal that quest with using this single ability, as both of the healing heavy fights have this pattern, one boss standing in the middle, with every melee (who require the bulk of your healing anyway) standing around him bashing away.

Just drop this nuke on the boss, and while it does nice damage, it also acts like you have thrown a mass heal on the group at the same time.

And let me tell you, even though it is not top dps compared to draconic energy bursts or the sum of all shiradi tidbits, it does crit for some sweet numbers occasionally. Additionally you can easily upkeep a fully stacked divine punishment (the light based DOT) next to these nukes.

So if you have the required twitch skills (it does require good timing of abilities), you can ditch out very nice dps, and keep a raid healed at the same time. Thats nothing to scowl at imho.

Cogdoc

[kwyjibo_lol]

Named F**** In Sarlona. hahahahahahha

Yeah he and xxn****** go on and on and on but consistently do the most daft things.

[chrisdinus7]

I just wanted to chime in to address one point raised in this thread, saying that light damage even on a fully decked out FvS is pitiful.

In case any of you have never tried the epic destiny ability divine wrath from the exalted angel build, I urge you to check it out. Having your lantern out to continuously and automatically keep up the stacks of ardor needed to be able to use this ability, you only have to wait for the cooldown.

This one ability can damage mobs, and heal the surrounding party members at the same time. It practically acts like a remote castable radiant servant positive energy burst. You can just ditch mass heal, and use this in raids where melee are busy beating on one single boss, surrounding him.

I know elite shroud is not what most of you consider to be a challenge, but you can in fact solo heal that quest with using this single ability, as both of the healing heavy fights have this pattern, one boss standing in the middle, with every melee (who require the bulk of your healing anyway) standing around him bashing away.

Just drop this nuke on the boss, and while it does nice damage, it also acts like you have thrown a mass heal on the group at the same time.

And let me tell you, even though it is not top dps compared to draconic energy bursts or the sum of all shiradi tidbits, it does crit for some sweet numbers occasionally. Additionally you can easily upkeep a fully stacked divine punishment (the light based DOT) next to these nukes.

So if you have the required twitch skills (it does require good timing of abilities), you can ditch out very nice dps, and keep a raid healed at the same time. Thats nothing to scowl at imho.

Cogdoc

Divine Wraith has the problem of competing for charges with Rebuke Foe, which is a stronger power in boss situations. Divine Wraith deals around 1k on a non-crit (your mileage may vary). Crits up that around 40%. On a 15s cd, that amounts to perhaps ~100dps (being a little generous and assuming you do a bit better then 1k non-crit average).

Fully staking rebuke foe nets +25% physical and light damage from all sources on the target. That is virtually assured to be better dps. Heck, your dp probably does a good 200+ dps, Rebuke nets an extra 50dps from that alone (nearly halfway to what Divine Wraith gives you). Any other light damage dealer or physical damage dealer will assure that rebuke is more damage. Once stacked, Rebuke only requires 5 charges every 30s to keep up, so you can still fire off the occasional divine wraith (bearing in mind that it is far better to keep rebuke up). And, naturally, if you have multiple Exalted Angels, then keeping Rebuke up doesn't have the same impact via the opportunity cost. But alone, I generally just end up keeping rebuke up and using good old mass heal / mass cure for AoE heals. And the 25% physical vulnerability means I am still the highest dps in the group without even attacking, :P

[ForumAccess]

]And let me tell you, even though it is not top dps compared to draconic energy bursts or the sum of all shiradi tidbits, it does crit for some sweet numbers occasionally. Additionally you can easily upkeep a fully stacked divine punishment (the light based DOT) next to these nukes.

So if you have the required twitch skills (it does require good timing of abilities), you can ditch out very nice dps, and keep a raid healed at the same time. Thats nothing to scowl at imho.

Assuming you have spell power maxed out and everything, the average damage on Holy Wrath is 950, and the cooldown is 15 seconds. This is less damage than a melee Favored Soul with a maxed out ED is going to be doing on critical hits, which will have an expected rate much higher than 1:15sec.

The average damage from the Lantern Archon is 160 every 2 seconds, unless they have adjusted the 50% spell power penalty recently. This is less damage than a melee FvS will be doing on each swing, and far less frequent. Even add in Divine Punishment and your damage is still quite far behind.

Before eGH I really loved my caster Favored Soul, but it was never really for the light damage capabilities. Those were simply one tool in the bag. But now that save DCs are effectively outside of the range that I can reliably achieve the build is no longer very viable. Which is not to say that I can not still get completions. Just that I am not contributing to them on that character nearly as much as I would be on another of my characters. I am waiting to see what the new content is like before I Reincarnate her and join the others grabbing Falchions or Axes.

With so much of the power coming from Epic Destinies, it really makes melee Favored Souls even more viable than they ever have been before.

[Mellkor]

All I can say is that before ED's came out, based on my own experience, a well built and well played melee FvS could survive better than any toon while doing 60 to 70% of the damage a good melee toon puts out to a single mob in elite quests AND all the while fully capable of healing the group through any quest/raid. Now it is more like 20 to 25% because to get the same survivability I had before in epic quests I have to be in destinies that focus on defense. My melee FvS is simply not as fun or as effective as he once was, relatively speaking. And I have tried all sorts of ways to get him back on par. It is kinda sad for me as my melee FvS was my favorite for a long while.

[Ancient]

Assuming you have spell power maxed out and everything, the average damage on Holy Wrath is 950, and the cooldown is 15 seconds. This is less damage than a melee Favored Soul with a maxed out ED is going to be doing on critical hits, which will have an expected rate much higher than 1:15sec.

The average damage from the Lantern Archon is 160 every 2 seconds, unless they have adjusted the 50% spell power penalty recently. This is less damage than a melee FvS will be doing on each swing, and far less frequent. Even add in Divine Punishment and your damage is still quite far behind.

Direct damage FVS is no longer tier 1 min/max, even for a first life build. That is a pretty strong statement to be made by someone with a link to a guide on direct damage FVS in their sig!

That said, it is still far from the "worst possible" build. The key thing to remember is that divine wrath/archon/divine punishment can all be kept up and still leave a lot of time left for pushing other buttons.

Lets look at light charges first. If I am correct, Divine wrath clears the charges and then adds 1 because it is a light spell. That means you need 9 charges in the next 15 seconds. Archon alone gets you 7-8 charges during that time and divine punishment will get you the rest. End result, divine wrath is almost a cast every 15 seconds without worrying about the charges as long as archon is up.

Rebuke requires less charges. Between avenging light and searing light, a FVS can get about 1 charge a second pretty easily. They could do more if nimbus of LIGHT counted as a LIGHT spell. This means that a FVS has enough light spells to power both rebuke and divine wrath.

For NovaSoul, I tended to fill the in between time with boulder toss, wild shot and avenging light. Before Epic giant hold, this was often "good enough" because the spike damage would kill "stuff" and the recharge timer was spent running to the next mob. It worked well... very well. In Epic giant hold, things have enough hp that the spike doesn't always kill stuff... and then the recast timers hurt.

For anything lower than EE, it still steamrolls over content. Even for EE, it has a lot of staying power and is very well rounded. But it isn't toe to toe with something like a Jugg build, monkcher or well build shiradi or tons of other tier 1 builds.

I've got my next build, but I'm waiting on the enhancement pass to actually go live.

[Veles]

Direct damage FVS is no longer tier 1 min/max, even for a first life build. That is a pretty strong statement to be made by someone with a link to a guide on direct damage FVS in their sig!

It never was, stop kidding yourself, unless you mean super slow completion of the easiest MoTU quests.

For anything lower than EE, it still steamrolls over content.

Everything does.

Even for EE, it has a lot of staying power and is very well rounded. But it isn't toe to toe with something like a Jugg build, monkcher or well build shiradi or tons of other tier 1 builds.

This might be a little understatement.

I hate to say the obvious because I am/was a huge fan of Divine casting but with high saves,monster hps, non melee divines are just getting carried through quests by stronger toons.
In **** group, yes hjealbotting is still necessary for completion and divine is essential.

[Ancient]

It never was, stop kidding yourself, unless you mean super slow completion of the easiest MoTU quests.

Reality Check: For a first life with junk gear to be able to solo complete EE at all places a build in the top portion of the pack. I also did it without potions or leaving the quest for shrines. My completion times rivaled the early completion times posted by shiradi's and Nicholas EIN FVS. Jugg's weren't posted on the board at the time, and Monkchers are a gear/past life intensive build.

I don't dispute the MoTU EE's are easier than GH, but GH wasn't even out during the time period I was talking about.

[Ironclans_evil_twin]

The average damage from the Lantern Archon is 160 every 2 seconds, unless they have adjusted the 50% spell power penalty recently. This is less damage than a melee FvS will be doing on each swing, and far less frequent.

Nothing is lower DPS than someone not knowing how to play a class. The above line speaks for itself. You're comparing a melee's main attack to something that adds by your numbers 80 DPS that is completely free in terms of not only button presses but also actions/attacks/cooldowns. If you walk about watching your Archon plink stuff then you're doing it wrong... If you're not then you're making an intentionally disingenuous comparison between supplemental nearly free DPS and the main attacks of a melee. I strongly suspect you don't actually walk around watching your shoulder zapper so that leaves the other option I suppose... I suppose it's also possible that you could admit it was just a botched comparison and not intentionally disingenuous.

In any case a melee soul that isn't using the Archon is a tool anyway; what Melee doesn't want an nearly free 80 extra DPS?

All I know is that while healing actively as my #1 priority and without any Shiradi yet (still working my way over) I still end up in the middle of the kill count in EE using mostly direct damage and often at the top of the count in EH (due to the increased effectiveness of Implosion and BB's of course.) A melee soul might very well do better, I have no doubts, but will almost certainly be a worse healer unless the player playing it is fabulously skilled, and also well geared. Simply because A) doing well at melee requires more attention to movement and facing the mobs optimally for cleaves and just generally not swinging at air B) knockdowns, trips, stuns, AOE CC's in the scrum, C) situational awareness is much lower inside the pile (at least for me and I suspect most other average players).. You often can't go find the dead guy to throw a raise, or get the Wiz who's on the outskirts but slightly out of range a quick heal without moving toward them...

If you don't try to move towards them and habitually don't heal casters or raise anyone that's outside the pile you're not much of a healer...

Now I am really curious to add Shiradi procs to all this, if I can get their before they nerf it or my enhancements...

Now onto some of the other comments in this thread, specifically the "I suppose if you need a hjealer for bad groups it's not too bad" stuff:

If you play a game where healing is irrelevant because you do hand picked guild only BYOH or static groups or solo only and you never need a healer, then great for you, but please consider that your circumstances are unusual before you offer opinions on how the actual game plays and what is effective in most of the game for most people. I'm sorry but having perfectly optimal parties full of people you know who are all totally self sufficient and never need outside healing is far from a relevant or even plausible expectation to bring to the 99% of the game that the rest of us play.

(Yeah I realize that the people making those comments are in all likelihood just trying to make themselves out to be "so elite they don't want a gimp healer in their group" but I'm humoring them for now, even though the continued claims have the silly boa****l feeling of someone who's just baiting everyone so they can beat their chest about how uber they are.)

[Xeno5k]

Recently, what I've noticed is that even though I'm great dps in certain EEs and certain Raids melee is just not an option for me. I have to stand back and be a healbot because having keep myself alive will waste even more sp. I guess that's one of the advantages of being a true melee, you don't have to switch to a less fun role.

The problem with the melee build in general is that it isn't a good party build. FVS melee dps isn't even 1/4th of a real melee build.

Its just that 1/4 thing bugs me, I can tell you from experience that that's not the case on a well built melee. The real number is more around 70% of the damage of a similarly geared "true melee." You get overwhelming critical and momentum swing and you'll have no problem bringing stuff down.

[Snapdragoon]

through multiple lives, and I would consider it the tank/ heals / DP kind of build.

the way I see it there are better builds for being a self sustained melee. I know what people are looking for when they have a cleric / FvS icon in the lfm, they want someone that can keep the red bars full. I am well aware that "a divine can do much more then just heal" I know, I really do know. but heres what it comes down to:

if every class would just do their job perfect we wont have a problem. I am the healer, that is what I do, I heal the barbarian's, fighters, monks, etc. if they die they are no longer contributing DPS, if they have to stop to scroll heal themselves, they are no longer contributing DPS, if they have to run away because the healer is trying to kite mobs instead of heal they are no longer contributing to DPS.

I don't expect melee's to go anywhere my character would not go, in a shroud I am next to harry with them, I center heals on myself so I can stay targeted on harry to use the exalted angel orbital strike when its up. this is leading by example, if they want heals they should be doing damage, and if they are doing damage I have NO PROBLEM chasing you down to keep you alive, I have wings, I can keep up.

there are builds for self sustained melee, I recommend cleric dilli monks, WF jug build, paladins, warchanter bards, etc. there are also self sufficient casters, WF sorcs, FvS dilli sorc, PM wizards, etc.

I am not saying divines are not good casters, and im not saying people should not strive to be fairly self sufficient. im saying know your role, and know the roles of the class, and don't get mad if people become perturbed because you do not play the role of your class.

if your a barb, I expect you to kill stuff dead very fast
if your a sorc I expect you to nuke trash to oblivion
if your a cleric I expect you to heal the group
if your a paladin I expect you to be useless and pike

that's just the way the classes work ^_^

EDIT: BTW dark grey over grey background sucks to try and type a post in, this is stupid X(

[WruntJunior]

Recently, what I've noticed is that even though I'm great dps in certain EEs and certain Raids melee is just not an option for me. I have to stand back and be a healbot because having keep myself alive will waste even more sp. I guess that's one of the advantages of being a true melee, you don't have to switch to a less fun role.



Its just that 1/4 thing bugs me, I can tell you from experience that that's not the case on a well built melee. The real number is more around 70% of the damage of a similarly geared "true melee." You get overwhelming critical and momentum swing and you'll have no problem bringing stuff down.

Agreed - in my experience playing a "real melee" and a melee FvS (which, interestingly enough, mine is not currently - but for reasons unrelated to damage, and having more to do with saves and being irritated with how people treat anyone with a FvS/cleric symbol by their name), a melee FvS is around 70-80% of an equivalently geared melee, and the distance between a melee FvS and "real melee" actually feels closer post-u14 - EDs are so powerful that they are quite good at bridging the gap. Unfortunately, many people that play melee FvS tend to do so in weaker destinies, or quite simply tend to be inept melee (this is a long-standing curse of FvS, lasting as far back as I have played - WF FvS on my server, in my experience, used to be assumed bad until proven otherwise due to the magnitude of bad melee FvS players). The biggest problem with melee FvS now is they wind up spread thin - you have to specialize in a more melee-focused playstyle or a more caster-focused playstyle (even as a melee FvS, to gain more damage from spells and be better at healing parties - the more melee-focused style of melee FvS tends to wind up with too little SP and otherwise limited resources to truly be effective as much more than a Paladin (though it can do pretty much identical damage through some casting and have similar survivability, just in a different style)) to get the most out of it.

Interestingly enough, the curve of melee FvS play is one reason why builds like the Juggernaut are so popular - they wind up with the survivability (and then some), the damage (slightly higher melee damage + manyshot ability winds up eclipsing FvS damage with EDs), and none of the drawbacks of the FvS symbol - this is a direct reason for why the melee FvS population has dwindled.