General Cleric Feedback for Alpha Two - Phase Two

dvoraen

Hi! Taking the suggestion from the other thread about Cleric improvements to try and convince folks to consolidate Cleric feedback as it stands from today (February 6th) when servers come up.

As a suggestion (which by no means you have to follow), try to organize your posts into specific areas of feedback.

Abilities

• Deliverance
  • My primary feedback with Deliverance is in how Held abilities function in tandem with the Settings for them. I'm not certain if they're all correctly working yet, but there have been times I get strange behavior where Deliverance starts to cast and finishes while I'm still holding the key for it. I'm not sure if this is just the UI's event listener being in a bad state for the keypress event, or if me tinkering with the Held Ability behavior setting is responsible. I haven't /bug reported it yet because I have not done my due diligence yet.
  • I also think Deliverance would also benefit from a passive that gives scaling temporary HP (and/or mitigation) to the target based on the amount of time charging Deliverance. A full charge that provides, say, 15-20%? temporary hp or 10-20% mitigation would help alleviate the need to spam Deliverance and Flash Cure on a target, but reducing the need to spam heal the target is where I'm aiming here.
• Divine Flare - The passive abilities feel like they add an awful lot of responsibility to the timing of Divine Flare. It's a split heal at a target location, which can upgrade to do damage and Silence, as well as (very briefly) provide heavy magical mitigation. This creates a serious timing restriction if you're trying to get to the latter, as you have time the Flare to detonate in the right space (which assumes the intended recipients don't have to move), but you also want it to heal at the same time. In other words, there's too much decision tension here, and I don't personally know of a current situation where the magic mitigation will be more of a lifesaver than Defiant Light, for example.
• Mend - If this is intended to be the primary, filler, and/or most efficient heal, I think that it should gain a passive increase to the charges with level progression, rather than skill points. Maybe +1 charge per 10 levels, or alternating passive bonuses such as +1 charge at 10/30/50, and +efficacy at 20/40? Additionally, using Mend on a long distance target can be a liability due to the projectile format.
• Flash Cure - This is an excellent ability, even after being nerfed last week. Its versatility and "also this" capability while using other abilities is one of the reasons it's such a fantastic heal, and why it needs a heavy cost associated with it. I call it the "oh crap" button for a reason, especially if I'm totally not casting Judgment for damage at the time. >.> Flash Cure is a well-designed, powerful ability.
• Castigation - (Those who watched the Livestream know why.)
• Purify - I would like to see Purify adjusted on multiple fronts:
  1. What is considered a dispellable debuff and what's not? The UI gives no indication of this. So for UI/UX purposes, I think debuffs need to indicate when Purify is even viable for use on them.
  2. Either grant debuff protection as a part of Purify, due to the rapid reapplication factor of dangerous debuffs such as Infected from zombies, or redesign the frequency of those debuffs so that Purify doesn't need to be spammed at times, which can be a liability (not healing/forced to rely on Flash Cure) in its own way.
  3. A group Purify variant (with a cooldown, probably) would be welcome.
  4. Add a passive for healing the target and/or restoring mana/stamina from successfully removing a debuff?
• Bless Weapon
• -I think my main take on Bless Weapon is that it doesn't feel like I get much benefit from taking the Righteous Blessed Weapon passive when I give Bless Weapon to another player so they can get the mana regeneration component of the base ability. I can't tell if they get the proc bonus that applies Burning or not, but I can say I would like to have my cake and eat it too, here. If I were to redo Bless Weapon, it would be as follows:
  • Override the recipient's weapon damage to radiant. (Useful against undead in the future?)
  • Finishers and Deadly Finishers provide healing and mana restoration based on damage dealt.
  • Righteous Blessed Weapon further enhances the DPS output with the Burning and bonus radiant damage.
  • Permanent when cast on the Cleric. Temporary when cast on a party member. Can only cast on the Cleric and one other person at a time.
  • Alternative to the above, rework it into a very sexy dps buff (with similar functionality to current) that drains Divine Power from the casting Cleric while providing healing/mana regen to the party via the person who has the buff? Support spells are beautiful things.
  • Additional alternative: archetype dependent effect? Cleric gets +damage and healing, Ranger gets +critical chance or +range, etc.? Tank gets mitigation procs and bonus threat? (Purely speculating, here.)