I'm just curious what spells you all feel are the must haves for your raiding lineups. After coming back from a break between UF and VoA I found that we had been given some different types of utility and heals, and lately I've been wondering if I'm setting my spells up optimally and could use a little help. The lineup I was using after I came back in June looked like this (updated with the new spells): 1) Word of Rehabilitation (or the non-cure version as dictated by the raid) 2) Reverent Elixir 3) Fervent Renewal 4) Fifteenth Emblem 5) Reverent Light 6) Virtuous Intervention 7) Promised Reformation 8) Divine Interposition 9) Galvos' Retort 10) Shining Armor 11) buffs/auras 12) variable As far as heals go, I've noticed that I don't cast the single target elixir or the promised heal very often, and that I use my Intervention heal a lot for its speed (unless there's mezzing or rooting going on). Do you guys use elixir or promised at all, or do you double up on the Intervention or Renewal heals in your lineup instead? I feel like I should be working the new Remedy in there somewhere too.. maybe in a combined hotkey with Fifteenth Emblem? When it comes to my last four spell slots, I never know what to do - maybe I shouldn't have four utility spots, and just make it three with another heal in the fourth? Should I be keeping Shining Armor on the tanks, even though it didn't get upgraded? Is the extra heal and reverse DS from the Retort spells worth it on a raid? I've heard a lot of talk about the Glorious nuke line for getting the two shots of twinheal, but when I'm in a situation where I want more heals, I feel really weird switching targets to the mob to nuke when I could be casting a heal. Is it really worth taking the time to do so? Do you have any other staples (Issuance of Faith, etc.) that you always save a gem for? I've gained about 2000+ AA since I got back, and it's taken me a long time to get all my hotkeys set up to be useful, and get rid of my group gear (still 2 slots + charm to go).. but I'm still not sure about the spells, so any advice is appreciated!
For me, it really depends event to event what I keep up. "Standard" lineup is probably: 1-Current expansion f_ renewal 2-Light 3-Promised re_ 4-Issuance of Faith 5-Current Divine intervention 6-Yaulp 7-Single target elixer 8-Group heal 9-Group elixer 10-15th emblem 11-___ Intervention 12-open slot Slot 12 is now 80% of the time the new "remedy" and only swapped out for "splash" for AE healing, "retort" or "viral reverse DS" when I need to to remove a DS. Slot 4 is 99% of the time Issuance of Faith but I'll drop that for shining armor or a 2nd renewal if there's no AE needed but better chance of needing to rebuff/heal hard and often. Slot 8 - I always keep the non cure version up and only swap in the cure version when needed. Slot 9 - If I actually need to buff someone, I'll drop group elixer and load in the buffs. I never ever keep a buff memmed in general. ~ To answer your questions, a lot of clerics heal differently. For me, I always use single target elixer on external tanks and group elixer on my group and I always use the promised line. Can time it well for engaging to proc right after engagement and can also time it to go off right after an AE (if the AE has a standard timing or warning to give you like Shard's Landing raid does). Retort I use when I know the event needs extra healing (e.g. when we learned/did Rubak's, I loaded retort and hand of holy infusion/group heal proc as extra usage along with issuance of faith). I am bad in that I rarely use glorious line (have rarely thought about using it) but Mykaylla and others have good advice on when to use it, etc.
I have 4 spell sets normally. 2 for raids and 2 for grouping. I have a solo one too but thats simply dumb nowadays as our solo-ability is minimal at best. Single Target Raid 1. - 100 Renewal 2 - 95 Renewal 3 - 90 Renewal 4 - Light 5 - Intervention 6 - Group Heal 7 - Single Elixir 8 - DI 9 - 15th 10 -Remedy 11-Shining 12-rebuff, dependant on event either cert or symb AE Raid 1. - 100 Renewal 2 - 95 Renewal 3 - 90 Renewal 4 - Light 5 - Intervention 6 - Group Heal 7 - AE heal 8 - DI 9 - 15th 10 -Remedy 11- Glorious Rebuke (for twincast AE heals) 12-Start with IoF (so the recast isn't greyed out) and dependant on fight either keep this here or replace with a Rebuff after initial cast Group Regular 1. - 95 Renewal 2 - 97 Light 3 - Intervention 4 - Group Heal 5 - Single Elixir 6 - DI 7 - 15th 8 - Remedy 9 - Virt Contra 10 - Glorious Admon 11- Magic Nuke 12-Glorious rebuke Group Undead 1. - 95 Renewal 2 - 97 Light 3 - Intervention 4 - Group Heal 5 - Single Elixir 6 - DI 7 - 15th 8 - Remedy 9 - Virt Contra 10- Glorious Rebuke 11-Abrog Undead 12-Abolish Undead
Thanks for the feedback! I guess even with the different playstyles, one thing that's obvious is that I could stand to throw a few more heals into my lineup. When I first came back I was using Elixir and Promise a lot more on raids, but there was usually someone else casting it, so I got to the point where unless we are split up on heals (like Rubak) I wouldn't use it. That's more of a problem with Promise since you don't want to restart the timer, so I guess I can just lose that for most situations and keep the Elixir. I like to keep a buff up at all times so that I can instantly cast it on someone after a midfight rez instead of having to interrupt healing even more by switching out a spell. I like the idea of twinhealing Splash on AE raids, that seems like it could be really useful. And I was playing around with Glorious in a group the other night and realized that, as Doktar said, twinheal does double the nukes on Intervention heals as well as the heal, which I didn't think it would, so that's a definite bonus. I think I'd prefer two Intervention spells and two Renewal spells as opposed to one and three.. it just casts so much faster, has almost the same amount of healing, and is much less mana. Man.. putting effort into deciding what heals to cast.. what is this? Oh.. I've also had problems lately with Shining Armor being overwritten by spells from other classes, and it's getting annoying and making me re-think wanting to even bother casting it. I noticed there's some Paladin ability that knocks it off of tanks, and I'm not sure what else. Bleh!
Honestly, I've stopped using Shining armor on raids. It is a great spell, but every time I put it on a tank that is going to be tanking... its gone as soon as they start tanking because they use their own abilities. Now, of course it varies depending on the raid and what my job is, but my default raid set up is... 1) Virtuous Intervention 2) Fraught Renewal 3) Divine Interposition 4) Reverent Elixir 5) Word of Reformation 6) Issuance of Grace / Elixir of the Acquittal 7) Reverent Light 8) Virtuous Contravention / Cleansed Blood 9) Olsif's Retort 10) Yaulp XIII 11) Certitude / Symbol / Shining Armor 12) Reforming Splash I'm actually debating putting the new Graceful Remedy in the line somewhere. Generally speaking Fraught Renewal is quick enough and heals for a LOT more. (also cures)
Fraught Renewal Virtuous Intervention (only because reversing these 2 sometimes gets immediate agro when not on Silent) Elysian Intervention Fervent Renewal Celestial Intervention Frenzied Renewal Reverent Light Word of Reformation (swap to non cure when necessary) Reverent Elixir and last 3 vary between a buff, DI, AE heal, group HoT, retort, etc I multibind all 7 single target heals to 1 key, in the order listed. If a single target needs a heal, I target them, and hit that key. The best heal that is available and not on refresh timer is headed to them, quickly. No decisions, choices, or miniscule pauses by me on what to cast. Obviously, you can't use the Renewals if there is some debuff in that particular raid that you must not cure. If mana is going to be an issue for the event, I use Glyph of Lost Secrets.
Out of curiosity, how are you multibinding 7 single target heals to 1 key? Best I've been able to do was 5 to one social binding, or are you using a different method here (IE binding a mouse key or keyboard key on your PC itself to do such).
You are missing out on a huge amount of mana if you aren't using Yaulp at all times you aren't on a mount. That never left my line up, group or raid - it was basically my most consistent spell. Even on raids where mana is not normally an issue - rogue add and a couple dead healers later and its nice to be the only one full mana. As far as losing time healing mid fight to switch spells - don't. You can unmem a spell during the cooldown period. Then cast your next heal. While that spell is casting, quickly find your buff in your empty spell gem menu. When your heal finishes casting, click the buff in the menu to mem it during cooldown. You basically lose zero time you could have been healing. I'm anti-promised during raids, personally. While very efficient, it really just needs to be one person doing it on the MT at best. And that person is usually a druid or something last I saw. Alternatively, I'm a big fan of group HoT. With a quick group hot and shield click or something, you can focus much less on healing your group and more time healing tanks. Being a targetable group heal, too, I find it especially useful in learning new content. I haven't raided this expansion, but I've also never been able to figure out the obsession last couple years with the renewal and light heals. They are great, sure - but they seem to be #1 go-to for a lot of clerics, as soon as they are up. Remedy was always staple for me after the first hit stabilization. Mix in lights pretty regularly depending on mana and spikes, with renewals and other heals coming in as a last resort. Really, the mana cost on renewal is so high compared to the gain over light... I don't know about other healers, but I always watched the other healers - may that be heal calls or spell casts - and watched mainly for gaps for the bigger heals. Cast your lower ones and as your spells are about to refresh, gauge how long it's been since the other heals were cast and decide how big of a heal you want to combat that gap. It seems silly to just cast in a certain order all the time - that could mean your biggest heal is locked out when you need it.
I have the opposite experience as you Takk in terms of spells, so I probably fall into the 'obsession' you mentioned. Until RoF, from TSS/SoF onward remedy was one of our most inefficient spells and slowed down our spell casting because of the longer recast on it. Which is one reason it was dropped permanently (until RoF) from most main raiding clerics who monitored any of that type of thing. Takk, which renewal are you referring to? I call 'renewal' our F_____ renewal spell and call our promised ren___ line PR. So not sure which you're referring to. If you're talkinga bout f___ renewal, I agree that until until HoT, renewal was not my top go to spell. However when Aristo added the 3k+ boost to the base of renewal's heal (and you can cast 2 versions of that spell), that extra boost put it over the top and light was used more when renewal was down. Same recast and 33% higher heal was why it got chosen by many. If someone had mana issues, then yeah the ratio on it was less but that was pretty much only 1-2 recent expansions total where mana concerns were rough. A thing about group elixer - if you have your Underfoot Coldain 2.0 shawl (group or raid version), you'll want to cast this spell as the shawl occasionally turns the group cast into a AE/raid cast for some reason. Sort of a strange side perk.
See, the part that I have a hard time grasping that no one else understands, is that - yeah, remedy is inefficient. Ignoring focus/etc, current Rk II spells: Remedy: Mana: 1030 Heal: 7992 Ratio: 7.76 Light: Mana: 1366 Heal: 11625 Ratio: 8.51 Fraught Renewal (to be specific on which renewal): Mana: 2540 Heal: 16182 Ratio: 6.37 With all the above in mind, it should also be noted that modern EQ raiding has turned into a game of greatly over healing. There are so many potential spikes that people just spam heal all the time, for the most part. Full hp, almost dead, doesn't matter - heal, heal, heal! Now, bearing in mind the current remedy is a little different from the old ones. I'm more used to the 1.75 sec heal with 3.5 recast. That said, the obvious conclusions from above are that Light is most efficient and Renewal has the most healing. Which is best, though? See, I view it as more situational than those strict numbers. In one full round of Light (2.3 sec with focus), you heal 11625 in 3.7 seconds (global cooldown is still 1.5 seconds, right?) - meaning 3141 heal/second. In one full round of Remedy (.5 with a real recast), you heal 7992 in 5.25 seconds - meaning 1522 heal/second. That looks really bad, right? You heal half the amount over time, and its less mana efficient! What about the mana, though? Remedy is 196 mana/sec in it's cycle, while light is 369. That's a pretty big difference! Now, how much do you over heal these days? Do at least half of your heal amounts get wasted by full hp? I'd say that was my experience with light, for the most part - a goodly portion land with the tank at full health. With that in mind, it becomes nearly even on healing, for nearly half the mana - if half the light is wasted. Wait, wait, that can't make sense, can it? Well, yeah - it's very rough logic, and it's not perfect - it's just there to illustrate my point. Not everything is based on heal/mana ratios on cast, and not everything is based around pure healing numbers. With Remedy, you can still heal a very good amount (potentially even better than light, when considering overhealing and the speed to cover gaps in heals - aiming the heal for when the tank actually needs it), while potentially even gaining mana. Not to mention the other advantages, such as cheaper GoM fires, having more time to move around between casts, etc. Perhaps now you understand better my play style? I've stated in my previous post that I don't just chain cast remedy - it's simply my go-to while nothing else is needed. I watch other people's cast for gaps and tank for spikes, and evaluate my next cast on the fly. Usually, that's remedy unless I see a gap, in which case it's light. I still generally treat Renewal as a GoM spell unless casts look really bad. The difference, though? I overheal a lot less, and have a lot more control in my casts. I'm also near full mana almost all the time - with everyone in my group alive. I personally prefer to have that mana available for those situations where something hits the fan. Then I can blow all my mana quickly on various abilities and spells to make up for other healers having low mana, or being dead.
Firstly, responding to the OP. Usual disclaimer that this is about personal tastes, and also that I write too much! This is something I adapt every year, and experiment. Last expansion my base raid lineup was: 1. Shining Armour 2. Splash 3. Light 4. Yaulp 5. DI 6. Renewal 7. Group heal (with cure) 8. Intervention/Renewal 9. 14th 10. Renewal 11. Glorious nuke 12. Intervention The Intervention/Renewal on the one line was due to experimenting with efficiency and weave. This was just a starting point. I adjust it based on events, and certain slots are designated for specific "duties"- for example, slot 1 is a switch slot, for cycling buffs through during global refreshes. Sometimes 2 and 4 are, also. On Fumerak the Quintessence, I dropped my regular group heal for a group heal without cure component to control the debuff that blocks cure effects better. On Resplendent Temple I dropped Glorious for Issuance of Faith (and it's very rare for me to drop Glorious, ever). On specific phases of The Triune God I dropped splash- in the final phase, I dropped it and glorious for a lineup of three renewals and three interventions. Earlier on in the event, Splash was replaced with a cure. Sarith and Valley don't even count because those I had DPS lineups at stages. This expansion, I'm doing the unthinkable to most... I'm dropping light. /gasp. I wanted to test what I believed would work in my head to make sure (the typical fear is that with recast heals, you will be stuck with 'dead time' where you're not casting), but I've chosen to replace it with Remedy in my baseline spellset, after the recent changes. Light has a place for me for endurance, when you know damage is going to be "slow and steady." With that in mind, I'd prefer to use the last expansion light, because its' primary function (efficiency) works in conjunction with the VoA breastplate focus (superior mana preservation), rather than the base heal increase on the new BP... which was a choice I didn't particularly like, pre-RoF, for focus options. ~Laughs~ I don't really use them either (Promise and HoT). Promise is something you don't want everyone on a raid using anyway, on the same target, as it is counterproductive. It also takes up a buffslot, and I'm too accustomed to tanks having buffs out the yin-yang- I'd rather a tank have 1.5 minutes of cleric third spire than have an extra heal land in 18 seconds, so I don't use it. Usually the only time I have Promise up on a raid is if *I* am taking regular steady damage (suppose I have ramp, or have to stand in a dangerous area)- I'll tab, cast it on myself, tab back; "Fire and forget." With the recent changes to Heal over Time especially, the only time I can see memming a single target HoT in the raid game is if you need to use it on someone at range (single and group now heal for the same amount, instead of the single target healing for more per tick). For a number of years I have favoured group HoT over single target, simply because it's TGBable- a group's healer dies, you could rez them, tab and heal tank, tab back to the healer, cast group HoT, heal tank again, buff healer, and you've given their group a buffer while they get back into the game. Splash accomplishing the same thing faster and letting me heal that group AND the tank at the same time without missing a beat largely obsoleted that use for me, but there are still times I might load group HoT to stack that as well- and until and unless Celestial Regeneration and Focused Celestial Regeneration are revamped with the new AAs down the line (it was mentioned in the IRC, and Elidroth said he'd look at them since they now lag behind), it's the superior HoT to MGB as well. As for intervention, renewal, and remedy... see above. As for your slots... I envy your position, because I never have enough. ~Laughs~ As you can tell, I don't keep buffs memmed- I switch them on the fly between casts, and there are other things I would love to keep up that I just don't have the space for. Shining Armour? Absolutely yes. Tanks that are blocking it with their abilities need to buffblock the vie recourses on those abilities. Feel free to yell at them, and tell them Mykaylla sent you- I can handle the complaints. If you want numbers to throw at them... 1. Bracing Stance (the recourse on the warrior ability Shield Topple) will mitigate a TOTAL of 525 hit points. Shining Armour will mitigate 525 hit points per hit... if the mob is hitting for 5250. ~Laughs~ Obviously, modern raid mobs hit for a lot more than 5K . Even if the heal and the stun did not function AT ALL, it would still be superior. Solution? Block Bracing Stance. 2. Protective Allegiance. This is a really cool spell line, and it shone in Underfoot... but then some vie slots were changed, and we came into conflict. Now, it has a higher % mitigation (15% instead of 10%), and a decent limit on how much it will absorb, unlike bracing stance, which is just funny. The thing is, what made the Protective line so good when it came in is that the vie made it efficient. The total healing amount was between paladin Light (which is their equivalent to Remedy) and Touch (which is their equivalent to Light), but without using the vie, the cost was too high. It was the total package, with the 1 second cast time, that made it a very useful spell. This round of beta, many heals saw some pretty significant adjustments. Protective did NOT. It now heals as much as their Light (their Remedy heal), casts slower than it, and costs roughly 175% of the Light, and STILL conflicts with Shining, which they get multiple synergistic benefits from. A paladin using this with clerics around is straight up being silly, blocking the recourse or no. Retort. Eh, mark is one of those things- you need it if you need to strip damage shields. If you don't need to strip damage shields, it's taking up a debuff slot. Retort takes up a buff AND a debuff slot, so it's something I basically never use on raids. Your mileage may vary. Honestly, I use it more for pulling in the group game than anything else. Glorious. Okay, think about this. If you are in a situation where you think you are going to need to cast two heals, how many 1 second heals do you have? Answer: None. You have two that are faster- Remedy and 15th. 15th is conditional. If someone is low enough that you can use 15th, and then follow it up with a Remedy, and that will do, then that's good. Any other situation where you need two heals and you cannot use 15th followed by Remedy, using Glorious followed by another heal will be faster. That is just math. I can go into tactics, like the fact that you can use it to do more damage with intervention, or double those fast heals, or that you can use it every time you have the slightest lull so you have two charges ticking down, to cover you if there is a sudden spike (it's like being able to control when you crit, without costing a lot of extra mana like healing frenzy which is very short) so that you're no longer ever "praying for a crit," or that you can use it with splash (which is faster than regular group heal), but most of these reasons still leave people unsure and uneasy about the Glorious line of nukes, so I leave you with the bolded above. It's simple, it's math. My staples, you can see above. Welcome back!
Best guide for multibinding spells: http://www.eqmagetower.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=100&hilit=multibinding your way Using this, you could even multibind all 12 spells to 1 key if you really wanted to. Using socials to bind multiple spells together is generally bad, because it is difficult to interrupt the chain, once you start it.
It's pretty much been about flexibility of spell need. For 2 years clerics have said they didn't need heals that gave more, they needed faster speed. Which I think is one reason remedy was cut to the 0.5 sec cast time. It's obvious just from reading this thread that although there are strong opinions, you have folks from top guilds giving their info, just under top guilds and mid tier - all beating the content with the strategies on spell lineups that they and their guild uses. AKA there is no one right (and everyone else is wrong) answer. I'm a channel reader and prefer flexibility of spell choice, which very much ties in with the choices I use for spells, as I tend to have quite a bit of mana left at the end of fights and NOT let tanks die (a distinction someone inexperienced might assume by reading when a cleric prefers to preserve mana like Takk mentioned - it's not always wisest to spam spam away also something Takk said). It also ties into the strengths and raid role you have versus other healers in the raid. If you find that almost no one uses Promised ren___ line and you have a leaning toward it, it's not considered 'wrong' for you to keep it in your spell gem set.
Mykaylla I love reading your replies, they are very informative. I have the same spell line up as you do except Yaulp. Crystilla, you made some very good points. The great thing is we have more of a variety of spells to choose from so it's not as mundane as it was many years ago. The new and improved Graceful remedy is awesome and the Elixirs were in need of some major improvements, thank you Aristo!
Well, I'm just a lowly cleric of the 70th season, but my spell line up for raids is: DA DI Group heal CH <-- Still doing some rotations he heh Light Remedy Group HoT Cures Yaulp And, we are just now breaking into Txevu!
A CH rotation now days just seems odd to me. There are so many other things you can do with the time it takes to cast. Ch had its day, believe me. Ah yes the Elemental planes and Xegony.......
