Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
[FEEDBACK] Cleric Feedback (After Playing 100+ Hours as a Cleric, it needs some work...)
I have been playtesting the cleric since August and even played it during Alpha One. I have been playing healers for over a decade in multiple MMOs, both PvE and PvP.
In short, there’s no easy way to sugarcoat it: the cleric is probably one of the most boring and clunky healers I’ve ever played. This archetype has zero skills; you're just a healing bot, target dummy, or loot piñata.
I want to focus this discussion on three areas that would help improve the cleric archetype: Skill, Combat, and Healing.
Adding Some Skill:
Let’s take a look at three skills that could add a sense of skill to the archetype and make it more fun to play.
Wings of Salvation: Like most other clerics have said, this should be a point-and-click ability that targets an area, providing temporary health within a 15m radius. This ability should not require a target.
Chains of Restrain: When taking the Binding Chains, I should be able to press Chains of Restrain again, which will collapse the ring and stun all targets caught inside.
Divine Flare: Similar to Chains of Restrain, I should be able to press the ability again to trigger it when I want to, rather than having to wait 7 seconds. The player should have the choice of activating the ability earlier (which would work well when taking Divine Retribution, giving the player more critical decision-making) or letting the ability trigger 7 seconds later.
Explanation for these changes above:
Focus is on small scale pvp 5v5 or 8v8. Let’s just say a fighter gets on me as a cleric with the above changes in place the scenario could possibly play out as the following.
When I cast Chains of Restrain, the fighter doesn’t know when I could reactivate the ability to stun them. This gives the fighter some choices: they could dodge roll out, get stunned for 3 seconds, or use their CC break to stay on me and use one of their own CC abilities, such as Trip. This then gives me the choice of either sitting through the Trip or using my Wings of Salvation to get to a better location. This forces the fighter to make another choice. They can switch to their ranged weapon to keep up pressure if their Blitz is down, or use their Blitz, in which case I have to decide whether to use my dodge roll to keep my distance from the fighter so they cannot use Crippling Blow.
I should not be reliant on others to express my skills. If you want players to have skill when playing, then you need to design abilities that allow for this (and if everyone has a dodge, then it’s nothing special).
Combat:
Every mob that doesn’t just have melee attacks is awful to play against (Looking at you Ashes Flame Streamweaver). Sometimes, I feel like I’m playing an auto-attack Paladin or Priest wand spam from classic WoW, and somehow, that feels better to play.
I am not asking for more burst damage but at least give us some new abilities that apply DoTs (Damage over Time). Here are some changes and new suggestions for abilities I would like to see be added to break up this painful auto attacking every mob to death.
Smite: Please remove the instant cast while in melee. The timing doesn’t quite work. If the server lags or if a mob slightly repositions itself, I suddenly start casting. To me, this doesn’t justify the time and effort it would take to code it properly.
Divine Infusion: First, this should not be something players are forced to talent into; it should be a passive ability that is learned. Also, as many other clerics have already stated, it feels clunky to use. Instead, let us gain Divine Infusion stacks (one stack every 20 Divine Power) and allow us to press Divine Infusion to make our next ability instant cast. Currently, you only use Divine Power for Judgment, Chains of Restrain, and sometimes Condemn. Additionally, having Divine Power at 100 to only give a 10% critical chance to heals serves no real purpose for holding onto it. It would be better if it increased critical chance by 10% for both damaging and healing spells, increased healing by 10%, and increased damage by 10% at 100 Divine Power. However, the slow buildup to 10% should remain.
New Cast ability
Soul Rot (No CD): A .5sec cast (or instant) that applies soul rot to the target for 30secs the target takes 10% damage every 2secs. For a total of (150%) damage
New Melee ability
Necrotic strike (8sec CD): Does 75% instant damage and applies Necrotic DoT which does 18% damage every sec for 8secs. For a total of (144%) damage, combo if target has Soul Rot root the target for 4secs. This should replace the spot that divine infusion is in.
Judgment: Should be a 2.5sec cast. The targeting needs to be redone, it should be whoever I currently have targeted not who I last targeted.
Bless Weapon: This ability does not scale with different weapon types. For example, a shortbow will always be preferred over a longbow due to the higher chance to proc Righteous Blessed Weapon. I also think this talent should not have additional talents and should simply be merged into one.
Condemn: This ability should work as an interrupt if I want to stop Ashes Flame Streamweaver from casting their water shield. Right now, if you try to do so while the target has burning, the game doesn’t register Condemn’s incapacitate effect, and the mob continues to cast. Here are two better options: either have condemn break based on a damage threshold or have Condemn remove all debuffs.
Healing:
(Sidenote: Why does the combat team keep making skills that are spammable abilities with multiple charges or that lasts for only 8secs with a 8sec CD. Do they not understand how painful it is to use these abilities after an hour of gameplay?)
Currently, as I see it, all of the healing spells in the game are situational, which is a crazy concept to me. Instead of focusing on just four main healing abilities, I have to track all of my healing abilities (1-12+) on my action bar. This causes the player to focus more on their action bar and raid/party frames than anything else on the screen.
Solution
Create a new healing skill that is gain at level 6 called something like:
Lesser Heal: This is a 1.2sec cast that heals for 210%
Deliverance: This ability needs to be adjusted with the addition of Lesser Heal and act like a greater heal.
Soothing Glow: This needs to last for 30 seconds, heal every 2 seconds, and provide a buff. (Sidenote: I don't think I've ever been asked in any other MMO to remove an ability from my class by a random group member because I'm using my class's Healing over Time ability, and then have that group member explain to me how awful the ability Soothing Glow is.)
This gives the cleric three core abilities to heal with, allowing them to focus more on what's going on in the game rather than having their eyes glued to their party/raid frames and action bar. All the other healing abilities can remain unchanged.
I think these changes would overall improve the cleric archetype gameplay.
In short, there’s no easy way to sugarcoat it: the cleric is probably one of the most boring and clunky healers I’ve ever played. This archetype has zero skills; you're just a healing bot, target dummy, or loot piñata.
I want to focus this discussion on three areas that would help improve the cleric archetype: Skill, Combat, and Healing.
Adding Some Skill:
Let’s take a look at three skills that could add a sense of skill to the archetype and make it more fun to play.
Wings of Salvation: Like most other clerics have said, this should be a point-and-click ability that targets an area, providing temporary health within a 15m radius. This ability should not require a target.
Chains of Restrain: When taking the Binding Chains, I should be able to press Chains of Restrain again, which will collapse the ring and stun all targets caught inside.
Divine Flare: Similar to Chains of Restrain, I should be able to press the ability again to trigger it when I want to, rather than having to wait 7 seconds. The player should have the choice of activating the ability earlier (which would work well when taking Divine Retribution, giving the player more critical decision-making) or letting the ability trigger 7 seconds later.
Explanation for these changes above:
Focus is on small scale pvp 5v5 or 8v8. Let’s just say a fighter gets on me as a cleric with the above changes in place the scenario could possibly play out as the following.
When I cast Chains of Restrain, the fighter doesn’t know when I could reactivate the ability to stun them. This gives the fighter some choices: they could dodge roll out, get stunned for 3 seconds, or use their CC break to stay on me and use one of their own CC abilities, such as Trip. This then gives me the choice of either sitting through the Trip or using my Wings of Salvation to get to a better location. This forces the fighter to make another choice. They can switch to their ranged weapon to keep up pressure if their Blitz is down, or use their Blitz, in which case I have to decide whether to use my dodge roll to keep my distance from the fighter so they cannot use Crippling Blow.
I should not be reliant on others to express my skills. If you want players to have skill when playing, then you need to design abilities that allow for this (and if everyone has a dodge, then it’s nothing special).
Combat:
Every mob that doesn’t just have melee attacks is awful to play against (Looking at you Ashes Flame Streamweaver). Sometimes, I feel like I’m playing an auto-attack Paladin or Priest wand spam from classic WoW, and somehow, that feels better to play.
I am not asking for more burst damage but at least give us some new abilities that apply DoTs (Damage over Time). Here are some changes and new suggestions for abilities I would like to see be added to break up this painful auto attacking every mob to death.
Smite: Please remove the instant cast while in melee. The timing doesn’t quite work. If the server lags or if a mob slightly repositions itself, I suddenly start casting. To me, this doesn’t justify the time and effort it would take to code it properly.
Divine Infusion: First, this should not be something players are forced to talent into; it should be a passive ability that is learned. Also, as many other clerics have already stated, it feels clunky to use. Instead, let us gain Divine Infusion stacks (one stack every 20 Divine Power) and allow us to press Divine Infusion to make our next ability instant cast. Currently, you only use Divine Power for Judgment, Chains of Restrain, and sometimes Condemn. Additionally, having Divine Power at 100 to only give a 10% critical chance to heals serves no real purpose for holding onto it. It would be better if it increased critical chance by 10% for both damaging and healing spells, increased healing by 10%, and increased damage by 10% at 100 Divine Power. However, the slow buildup to 10% should remain.
New Cast ability
Soul Rot (No CD): A .5sec cast (or instant) that applies soul rot to the target for 30secs the target takes 10% damage every 2secs. For a total of (150%) damage
New Melee ability
Necrotic strike (8sec CD): Does 75% instant damage and applies Necrotic DoT which does 18% damage every sec for 8secs. For a total of (144%) damage, combo if target has Soul Rot root the target for 4secs. This should replace the spot that divine infusion is in.
Judgment: Should be a 2.5sec cast. The targeting needs to be redone, it should be whoever I currently have targeted not who I last targeted.
Bless Weapon: This ability does not scale with different weapon types. For example, a shortbow will always be preferred over a longbow due to the higher chance to proc Righteous Blessed Weapon. I also think this talent should not have additional talents and should simply be merged into one.
Condemn: This ability should work as an interrupt if I want to stop Ashes Flame Streamweaver from casting their water shield. Right now, if you try to do so while the target has burning, the game doesn’t register Condemn’s incapacitate effect, and the mob continues to cast. Here are two better options: either have condemn break based on a damage threshold or have Condemn remove all debuffs.
Healing:
(Sidenote: Why does the combat team keep making skills that are spammable abilities with multiple charges or that lasts for only 8secs with a 8sec CD. Do they not understand how painful it is to use these abilities after an hour of gameplay?)
Currently, as I see it, all of the healing spells in the game are situational, which is a crazy concept to me. Instead of focusing on just four main healing abilities, I have to track all of my healing abilities (1-12+) on my action bar. This causes the player to focus more on their action bar and raid/party frames than anything else on the screen.
Solution
Create a new healing skill that is gain at level 6 called something like:
Lesser Heal: This is a 1.2sec cast that heals for 210%
Deliverance: This ability needs to be adjusted with the addition of Lesser Heal and act like a greater heal.
Soothing Glow: This needs to last for 30 seconds, heal every 2 seconds, and provide a buff. (Sidenote: I don't think I've ever been asked in any other MMO to remove an ability from my class by a random group member because I'm using my class's Healing over Time ability, and then have that group member explain to me how awful the ability Soothing Glow is.)
This gives the cleric three core abilities to heal with, allowing them to focus more on what's going on in the game rather than having their eyes glued to their party/raid frames and action bar. All the other healing abilities can remain unchanged.
I think these changes would overall improve the cleric archetype gameplay.
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