Suggested Cleric Changes

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Zachton Soulstriker, Sep 18, 2022.

  1. Szilent Augur

    my cleric's summoned hammer lasts 10 minutes, I think maybe you got it riposted to death early by summoning on the front of the enemy. against 2.4k AC combat dummy's back, my rk2 hammerpet dealt 2.43M, 2.46M, and 2.51M total damage in 3 tests, exactly 600s each before they stop attacking & depop (which is realbad damage, to be clear. but they don't expire after a couple ticks :p )

    from the numbers you may have been attacking a dummy with unmodified AC? that's not great for benchmarking

    you don't mention (ab)using twinheal nukes with Intervention heals

    in my quick tests, plain meleeing with summoned 1h beat plain meleeing with a "real" 2h - but the summoned 1h notably lacks Sympathetic damage procs. I think with casting involved, summoned probably ain't the way to go
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  2. Lluianae Elder

    I only really find it worth bandoleering to the summoned 1hb against Undead targets and even then, real 2handers can, depending on the context, give you so much more value, even when in a burn state during current raid encounters.

    In the other thread, I did make a post on my musings concerning how Cleric DPS performs these days. My sentiments haven't changed since then, if anything they remain the same if not reinforced given the gulf in damage potential.

    One thing worth considering is that in raiding we're less likely to be paired with classes that provide adps (unless you're in a guild with Bards everywhere) compared to Shamans and Druids by nature of who is expected to be paired up in the relevant groups. That does matter a great deal - my Undead DPS in particular spikes up considerably if I have a Bard and Enc, but take them away and I might push between 100-150k with expected healing instead of 220-300k+ (and that was without a raid Magic focus for a good while, typically vs Swarm Commander. PV depends on how much AoE healing I'm having to do). Similarly, make sure it's closer to an apples to apples comparison and that AAs like Glyph and 7th for DPS aren't skewing things.

    I haven't really had the opportunity to push harder given our guild numbers lately, but if I made use of 7th and glyphs then with adps that should push over 400k in that same situation, which is not dreadful. But against living bosses, which is the current majority, it's painful. Without glyphs or 7th I pushed a bit over 73.3k vs an 830s Shei while in the MT group without any adps support but on fights with a higher healing requirement that value tanks so rapidly.
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  3. Velisaris_MS Augur

    It's OK...neither do the devs.
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  4. MacDubh TABLES!!!

    I didn't use interventions, I was looking at this test as more of a battle cleric setup and I thought targeting myself would mess up the groove, but I'll check that out sometime.

    You're right on the riposte, that just shows how little I know about the cleric pet haha.

    Not sure what unmodified AC means on the dummy, I didn't set up the dummy.
  5. Crystilla Augur

    This is specifically talking about spell ranks. And yes, when mercs get rank 2 at the start and clerics have to buy/get rank 2 as drop ... mercs are above players.

    No more/no less - we're talking about spell ranks specifically. (Not what mercs do or don't do with those spells versus players.)
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  6. Lluianae Elder

    Soloing is quite different to the context of even moloing or battling it out in any other group and raid scenario. Interventions are critical to doing any semblance of damage when paired with Contravention use. Every GCD spent on a non-damaging spell is damage uptime lost, and while we can't typically afford to DPS 100% of the time, making good use of the two spell lines that allow us to DPS and Heal together is important.

    While I'm not too savvy about testing dummies these days, pure AC vs an NPC or player's pure attack dictates the hit distribution and thus the frequency of how hard the hits will be. Think of it as a weighted D20 where more AC/less Attack pushes more to the lower end while high AC/more Attack pushes to the higher. I wouldn't be surprised if unmodified implies AC at one of the extremes and thus not representative of using the pet in current content - where it really is not the best.

    I've never been of the school that a permanent hammer pet to micro is the way, we have plenty to worry about as is as a healer. It's why I'd be more inclined for a better iteration of the cast and forget, have it be a beefy short-duration swarm pet (with the duration being affected by the swarm extension AA) that can take enough hits to not explode on immediate contact and do a solid chunk of damage for its duration. We have enough tepid sustain that's barely noticeable and very few burst tools, or more interesting damage specific tools. The idea earlier in the thread for a chance to spawn one on doing certain actions, that's certainly something more interesting than the status quo.

    Meanwhile we do have so many healing tools that we're hard pressed for slots and use cases to take advantage of all of them. Content simply does not require them to their full extent, nor should it ever.
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  7. MacDubh TABLES!!!


    I understand that if you wanted to maximize DPS in the current state you need to roll Interventions and Contraventions, but my personal opinion to make a Cleric fun to play would be to lean in to the battle cleric style and in that case you wouldn't want to be switching off of the target to throw Interventions which is why my comment was to reduce Contravention recast times.

    I agree on not needing a real pet, swarm would be fine and/or increase the current pets DPS significantly.

    Kind of what I'm thinking is for really tough encounters you have the standard Remedies etc. which will out heal anyone, for group content and less healing intensive raid situations you could throw in respectable DPS and keep the tank alive using Contraventions and melee. (again, just picturing an imaginary Cleric that doesn't currently exist)
  8. Lluianae Elder

    Back in the day, and you could argue even now to a degree depending on who (or what, pets are OP) is tanking, it was fine to use a HoT + Promised and then melee and cast spells as a battle Cleric - all with a 50% penalty VoV on. You'd take advantage of timings with free heal clicks, both arbs and ensure there was enough of a buffer in time for Promise to hit for good effect.

    Now we have Shining which is providing more passive healing and mitigation. I don't find myself using Promises or Renewals anymore, and our mana efficiency makes it not matter anywhere near as much what's selected as long as you're keeping up sufficiently with your throughput.

    I do agree with the suggestion of shorter cast for Contraventions, and wish Celestial Rapidity extended to them. DPSing with faster cast Interventions always feels much better to me even with having to repeatedly switch targets.

    This was the post with my thoughts, specifically touching on cast times in relation to the game's pacing and our rate of swinging given our want to melee:
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  9. MacDubh TABLES!!!

    I did some testing yesterday in "Battle Cleric" mode using the summoned weapon and rolled in the Interventions.

    Based on comparing the Enchanters Hammer of Magic Sympathetic Proc from their 2hb with the Cleric's Penance Strike from the summoned hammer the Cleric's proc was almost exactly 50% of the Enchanters. I don't have a 2HB for the Cleric but going to make one to test apples to apples. It looks like as mentioned by others that the 2HB will be the way to go.

    On 82 kills in Kael the Cleric's DPS was 108k which isn't terrible, was a little more than 50% of the Enchanters.

    On 51 kills in Ka Vethan the Cleric's DPS was 85k.

    We also ran a Shei and the Cleric was at 98k DPS burning, that being said the Shei run was botched and went way longer than usual so that wasn't really a good indicator of full burn.

    I don't think there is a way to paste excel tables other than images and I'm on my phone, so the breakdown is below for the combined Kael, Ka Vethan and Shei.


    Damage Shield 379242
    Atoned Intervention Strike II 51379145
    Divine Contravention Strike II 31684970
    Infusion of Holy Light XII 2420071
    Sincere Contravention Strike II 16799694
    Sincere Intervention Strike II 26814609
    Turn Undead Strike XXXIII 51700740
    Unyielding Rebuke 9168766
    Sermon of Repentance Rk. II 13125810
    Turn Undead XXXIII 22805809
    Bashes 87127
    Crushes 20649482
    Hits 1323750
    Banestrike XXV 1271000
    Composite Reinforced Strike 2 3551236
    Hand of Holy Wrath VI 43197
    Hand of Holy Wrath VII 52234
    Jann's Light 213780
    Mana Rebirth Strike II 20246540
    Mana Re-Rebirth II 4000159
    Mana Re-Re-Rebirth II 542365
    Nightchill Strike II 11750835
    Night's Perpetual Darkness II 2463306
    Outrider's Synergy Strike IV 15573203
    Penance Strike II 16307250
    Pernicious Strike 3888630
    Vector of Sickness 94846
    Grand Total 328337796

    Total healing didn't suffer that much compared to being a pure healer, but also this group content is trivial at this point so I wouldn't be running this setup for anything challenging.

    I still think Contraventions need a big damage increase as well as a recast reduction. The reasoning for the recast reduction is Clerics should have the option to go full melee and not have to target the main assist to throw heals. We have all these abilities to help us melee (that need some help) and the only way we can keep the tank alive is swapping targets because the Contravention recast is too long.

    The summoned hammer(s) need big damage increases. As it is now they are barely worth the cast time (maybe not at all).

    There should be an even higher proc rate on all Cleric melee abilities. The summoned hammer should be worth using over a 2HB imo otherwise why bother having it. Also my point on the Contraventions hits here with the procs, if you are switching targets to heal you are missing on proc opportunities.

    Vow could be 400 or 500% proc rate instead of 200%, leave the healing reduction as is.

    Damage on Unyielding Rebuke could have a boost as well.

    I still think I'm far from maximizing damage potential on the Cleric as I need to get the gear and grab the casting/assaulting type 18/19s. Edit: also I am sure there is more DPS optimizations for spell lineup etc that i am not taking advantage of.

    For the amount of effort/risk associated with playing this way the rewards are lackluster.

    This is all purely group based commentary, I don't raid so can't comment.
  10. Szilent Augur

    The 2HB should be worth using over a summoned hammer imo otherwise why bother having it.

    See what I did there?
  11. MacDubh TABLES!!!

    Valid opinion. Needlessly condescending but valid.
  12. MacDubh TABLES!!!

    Actually sitting at a PC now and the data I posted above was a mess. See below for a breakdown of the 51 kills in Ka Vethan mentioned above with the Cleric using DPS configuration and no burns. I didn't realize before how low the damage output was on Pernicious Strike (Vow line). So as it is now you sacrifice 25% healing efficiency to add ~2% more DPS and a small self heal.

    I need to figure out a decent way to parse the pet damage where the pet has a new name every time so that damage isn't included here.

    [IMG]
  13. Velisaris_MS Augur

    Use a potion from the store and give it a name.
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  14. Lluianae Elder

    It's worth mentioning that in your breakdown that it's with undead bane damage, so that's going to skew things some further away from against regular living npcs.That said, when killing undead you really want to include at least Extirpate and could consider throwing in Obliterate and Repudiate just for destruction procs against the shades.

    You're also having the extra procs from adps buffs in your party comp. Take those away and the dps against the living is even more telling.
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  15. MacDubh TABLES!!!


    Good call on Extirpate, I missed that one when looking at good undead spells. I've done a decent amount of searching and there isn't very much concise info on Cleric DPS so I am piecing this together as I go, I appreciate any comments.

    The undead from Ka Vethan is only a single shade in the large square room with ~12 or so spawns but it would be better data to find a spot with only living mobs.

    As far as adps I think other than soloing you are always going to have some sort of assistance. I tried some solo on undead in EW light blues and it was painfully slow, once I get the kinks worked out of the setup and more gear optimization I will try again and get some data from that as well.

    I assume the ideal DPS setup for live mobs is Divine Contravention > Unyielding Rebuke > Atoned Intervention > Sincere Contravention > Unyielding Censure > Sincere Intervention. With that lineup including GCD you might be able to fit 1 more DPS spell in before Divine Contravention is ready to fire again. Is this right?

    Also probably worth mentioning I have none of the DPS Focus AA's outside of Contravention.
  16. Zachton Soulstriker Augur

    The reason I mentioned pet changes was to allow us to continue to do our main job and heal. Contravention changes would also help with this. Enhancing any melee dps would need to allow us specifically to have a heal component on our target's target. Any enhancement will help in the group game, but for a burn situation in a raid melee is less useful.
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  17. Xandos New Member

    I know, i may be late to the Discussion.
    But from my Experience, a Cleric is pretty decent at Damage and Healing, if you fight the right Mobs.
    I love to farm AAs in a Guild Group in UP, at the Spot where Doomshade Resides. I normally tie for the 3rd Place, and got no problem Healing what so ever bc of the Extremly High Healing, the Proc of Recourse of Life provieds, i mean one proc is around 200k + the Absorb Shield on Top. On top of that use your Summoned Hammer, its almost 50k Dps just for Auto Attacking if you got a Bard in your Group :)