New Cleric

[TiviaRose]

Im new and rolled a cleric war and rogue. Im really enjoying my Cleric and as im about to hit 40 i guess i need to get down to business about stats and gear. Im a bit confused my Cleric is tank /heal and i would have assumed tanks need strength. But have been told not so, that i use caster stats as a cleric tank. So intel/wisdom spell power? Endurance seems a no brainer but what about hit crit etc? I guess im asking the stat order for a cleric tank. Also i cant find a shield or one hander that works without strength on it. I keep getting 2 handed weapons /cry

[hi5guy]

As a cleric, the main stat is wisdom.
As a tank, in general, you should focus on endurance, max health, and guard.

[Skiye]

The main stat for each class improves tanking. So for clerics wisdom gives block and such. Int for mages, dex for rogues. etc

As the poster above stated endurance, max health, and guard are the things you really want to layer up. You'll get plenty of wisdom from gear.

Spell Power and Crit are dps stats.

As far as items are concerned there are 1 handers and shields for clerics out there. They can be found in the Auction House, Instant Adventure boxes, craftable, dungeons, and world drops.

[Aedynn]

Keep in mind, this is the only game where they have an eternal that buffs its healing for instance and where the devs call them "healers" but in practical use they are basically the worse healing class in the game both in PvE and PvP.

They are still okay for tanking but still a better choice would be mage all around. And yes they can tank and heal somewhat but other classes can dps and heal, support and heal much better, and also can even tank and heal in some cases as well. I really don't see how different it can be now that everyone has a pet that can tank and healing souls. There in no mechanic that is more "fun" while leveling. I mean bard is probably the easiest since you can run and channel cadence. What is that 3 clicks in 5 gcd vs. 5 for clerics?Less stressful can be more fun for some people. Can consider that as well.

[Feldspar]

Keep in mind, this is the only game where they have an eternal that buffs its healing for instance and where the devs call them "healers" but in practical use they are basically the worse healing class in the game both in PvE and PvP.

They are still okay for tanking but still a better choice would be mage all around. And yes they can tank and heal somewhat but other classes can dps and heal, support and heal much better, and also can even tank and heal in some cases as well. I really don't see how different it can be now that everyone has a pet that can tank and healing souls. There in no mechanic that is more "fun" while leveling. I mean bard is probably the easiest since you can run and channel cadence. What is that 3 clicks in 5 gcd vs. 5 for clerics?Less stressful can be more fun for some people. Can consider that as well.

I don't quite agree Cleric is the worst healing soul. Warden performs pretty well on all the tasks I have thrown at it so far, and outperformed most of the people I played with. Also, with warden, you can move around 95% of the time.

I don't see how bards would keep up with a warden who keeps his hots up, but I may not have been back for long enough to really evaluate that. I have both a rogue and a cleric at decent levels and my cleric outperforms my rogue by a long shot. Also Shamans and Druids seem to be doing pretty well on the DPS scale, even if they aren't the bestest.

And well, if anyone is scared of a few more button presses, I don't think this is the right game for them x)

I think it's mostly subjective. The best would be to try them all and play the alternative you enjoy the most. It's a game, it's about fun after all.

Also like, everyone and their mother plays mages and rogues afaik, so if you hope for a raid spot, might wanna play less used callings.

[TDor]

warden is easy and great, tanking is easy as hell, dps is good even with minimum effort, stop complaining

[Flashmemory]

Also like, everyone and their mother plays mages and rogues afaik, so if you hope for a raid spot, might wanna play less used callings.

On live cleric is easiest class to replace or get in a raid if you want. This has to do with a number of issues I won't go into. There is psychology behind this compounded with being "held back" due to a number of reasons. Anyhow if you want to play the most seeked after class then you play primalist because of the dps and eternal weapon buff or you play rogue because of the mashup of identities that "other classes" are not allowed to have.They can do everything better or best or well enough instead of just mostly everything being "good enough." On prime you have individual loot so party make up should not matter too much.

On live leather and Best in slot fragments for primalist and rogue are among the easiest to get in the game just based on chance so on highest level you are wrong. Dex classes simply gear up much faster last I checked. You can also transfer many of the hard to farm gear between primalist and rogue.

[Refuge]

Well we're begging for Clerics for our Guild (EU) just to even up the numbers & to not waste gear.

But we also like a decent tank for the extra res (for example 3rd boss BoS), or an inquisitor for their solid range ST dps and debuff on all bosses.

Fingers crossed that warden heals will start finding their place again in future raids. I mean they are solid performers on 2nd boss in BoS due to their ability to heal back to full so quickly (and they were also nice for irotp), but it's not really needed and they deal no dmg, hence mages and warriors just trump them in this regard, and rogues trump them in ST.

[Aedynn]

Well we're begging for Clerics for our Guild (EU) just to even up the numbers & to not waste gear.

But we also like a decent tank for the extra res (for example 3rd boss BoS), or an inquisitor for their solid range ST dps and debuff on all bosses.

Fingers crossed that warden heals will start finding their place again in future raids. I mean they are solid performers on 2nd boss in BoS due to their ability to heal back to full so quickly (and they were also nice for irotp), but it's not really needed and they deal no dmg, hence mages and warriors just trump them in this regard, and rogues trump them in ST.

Orafiler is better than inquisitor but the spec isn't really known too well. There is absolutely no reason to use inquisitor because orafiler brings tenebrious distortion buff and since inquisitor lacks cleave and horrendous target switch it ends up better by proxy. With the buffs, aoe debuffs, and tenebrious distortion orafiler can do about 800K dps + add another 800K to the raid. Sometimes more depending on AoE fights. In this case cleric is only made to make other classes look good either by buffing the other classes or developer making their souls impractical enough to make other classes perform better.

Unfortunately enough I know of some raid leaders that don't think it is better than inquisitor even after being proven wrong multiple times and don't allow it for fights like BoS1/BoS3.

As for BoS2 that is just an RNG fight mostly. If you want to clear it faster you can just rely on the chlorochon and 2 warrior healers that can dps. Or you can just bring a tact/bard who actually does dps when healing is not needed instead of just overhealing the first phase. You can also bring wardicle but its the worse choice of the bunch if you ask me. Even a necrochloro can do about 600K dps while also raid healing BoS2. Cleric is just built to be redundant on purpose other than tanking.

Druid is competitive if you can stay on target but its no primalist. Shaman is sort of decent but they added too much preloading buffs/debuffs and it ruined the soul in my opinion. They tried to fix it but actually didn't really because you have to manage EoL..I guess it is better for target switch with IoB instead of SH/IF etc.

The problem like what was said and repeated for over a year now is that the souls of other classes have too much of a mix identity that makes them so much more useful and they have actually better playability in both identity or even in triple identities like they can range aoe, melee aoe, range ST and melee ST with relatively no loss in dps and still be competitive or heal/dps etc.

[Refuge]

Orafiler is better than inquisitor but the spec isn't really known too well. There is absolutely no reason to use inquisitor because orafiler brings tenebrious distortion buff and since inquisitor lacks cleave and horrendous target switch it ends up better by proxy. With the buffs, aoe debuffs, and tenebrious distortion orafiler can do about 800K dps + add another 800K to the raid. Sometimes more depending on AoE fights. In this case cleric is only made to make other classes look good either by buffing the other classes or developer making their souls impractical enough to make other classes perform better.

Unfortunately enough I know of some raid leaders that don't think it is better than inquisitor even after being proven wrong multiple times and don't allow it for fights like BoS1/BoS3.

As for BoS2 that is just an RNG fight mostly. If you want to clear it faster you can just rely on the chlorochon and 2 warrior healers that can dps. Or you can just bring a tact/bard who actually does dps when healing is not needed instead of just overhealing the first phase. You can also bring wardicle but its the worse choice of the bunch if you ask me. Even a necrochloro can do about 600K dps while also raid healing BoS2. Cleric is just built to be redundant on purpose other than tanking.

Druid is competitive if you can stay on target but its no primalist. Shaman is sort of decent but they added too much preloading buffs/debuffs and it ruined the soul in my opinion. They tried to fix it but actually didn't really because you have to manage EoL..I guess it is better for target switch with IoB instead of SH/IF etc.

The problem like what was said and repeated for over a year now is that the souls of other classes have too much of a mix identity that makes them so much more useful and they have actually better playability in both identity or even in triple identities like they can range aoe, melee aoe, range ST and melee ST with relatively no loss in dps and still be competitive or heal/dps etc.

Ye I agree with your last paragraph. It's basically what I said too. Clerics are so specialized, and there's no fights or setups that benefit from that atm.

I've not heard of this oracle/defiler spec, and happy to always see new suggestions. Can you explain? 800k extra for the raid? I need convincing. I personally do about 1.3-1.5 k ST dmg in BoS, which for our guild is the highest par Primalist (we use range tactic on 2nd, so rogues don't benefit as much).

Is it similar to wardacle? As in the oracle part gives extra buffs that archon doesn't give? I can't imagine these extra few buffs + defiler dots coming close to a net of 800k dps though for the raid. Maybe I need to play around with this, but a spec would help a lot.

[Refuge]

So I've had a bit of an experiment, using the same principle of warden oracle, I went with 41/35/0. With a bit of number crunching and experimentation I was able to pull 700k comfortably (fully self buffed), so with a lot more work I'm sure I'll get 800k. Within a raid setting that should reach 900k.

So I agree with you in terms of own damage, the question then becomes can I benefit another 600k+ to the raid. I'm saying 600k as I would want at least 1500 net for it to be worth it. Inq ST non dc would be about 1400, and therefore I would want at least 100 more for it to be worthwhile and convincing.

600k minimum distributed between 4-5 dps depending on boss (not including you/2 tanks/2-3 healers). That's around 130k each. Are my buffs really going to add 130k per person? You even said 800k!

What do I give an archon doesn't give (in terms of damage):

AP & SP increase + 1% crit chance (stacks with Archon)
Str, Dex, Int & Wis Increase (stacks with Archon)
I'm not sure about Corroded Defense, does Archon have similar?
Reduces ability cost by 5%

It's the 5% reduction cost that seems the most significant, but 130k ST increase due to this? Doubt it, but I may run some experiments with a guildy.

I'm not including AoE increase, because most fights don't need the increase in AoE, and this may come at the cost of decreased ST (due to not using inquisitor). AoE's usefulness is often inflated when better ST would just speed up phases. Hence personally it's only important to compare ST to ST in this case.

[Flashmemory]

So I've had a bit of an experiment, using the same principle of warden oracle, I went with 41/35/0. With a bit of number crunching and experimentation I was able to pull 700k comfortably (fully self buffed), so with a lot more work I'm sure I'll get 800k. Within a raid setting that should reach 900k.

So I agree with you in terms of own damage, the question then becomes can I benefit another 600k+ to the raid. I'm saying 600k as I would want at least 1500 net for it to be worth it. Inq ST non dc would be about 1400, and therefore I would want at least 100 more for it to be worthwhile and convincing.

600k minimum distributed between 4-5 dps depending on boss (not including you/2 tanks/2-3 healers). That's around 130k each. Are my buffs really going to add 130k per person? You even said 800k!

What do I give an archon doesn't give (in terms of damage):

AP & SP increase + 1% crit chance (stacks with Archon)
Str, Dex, Int & Wis Increase (stacks with Archon)
I'm not sure about Corroded Defense, does Archon have similar?
Reduces ability cost by 5%

It's the 5% reduction cost that seems the most significant, but 130k ST increase due to this? Doubt it, but I may run some experiments with a guildy.

I'm not including AoE increase, because most fights don't need the increase in AoE, and this may come at the cost of decreased ST (due to not using inquisitor) which is still very important, often AoE is wasted. Hence it's important to only compare ST to ST.

This is only good because there is no need for pure healers or even in some cases pure tanks. Because of this the dps increase is pretty substantial across the raid. The build has been known on the prancing turtle site for months and months. You can literally break down the rotations of the top parses and it has been in top support dps for many of the top kill times excluding ones that don't bring a cleric other than to tank for raids.

All in all I can see the potential value over bringing an inquisitor but it definitely depends on raid make up. Chantion and Pyro feel great with the 5% reduction cost as well. Not sure if it is just me though but kill times seem to be faster with it in raid when we have a cleric other than a tank( I don't see many clerics sustaining 1.4million dps though with inquisitor.)

It has some preemptive damage mitigation. You can spread 7% more damage in AoE unlike Archon and inquisitor AoE is nonexistent so you technically can hit some pretty big DPS increases by being a proxy for AoE. You can't replace Archon in raids and not have a dps lost, this is brought as a secondary support dps which works in tandem with Archon. The only difference between this and last expansion is that the archon got to hybrid for dps and the bard or oracle had to run a full 61 spec.

Still better to bring a better class that can easily do 1.6million to 2 million ST dps over both inquisitor and this though. The only real difference is if you need an interrupt or cleanse to be honest. Both can still purge and tenebrious distortion is the same debuff from inquisitor so that basically cancels out.

[Refuge]

This is only good because there is no need for pure healers or even in some cases pure tanks. Because of this the dps increase is pretty substantial across the raid. The build has been known on the prancing turtle site for months and months. You can literally break down the rotations of the top parses and it has been in top support dps for many of the top kill times excluding ones that don't bring a cleric other than to tank for raids.

All in all I can see the potential value over bringing an inquisitor but it definitely depends on raid make up. Chantion and Pyro feel great with the 5% reduction cost as well. Not sure if it is just me though but kill times seem to be faster with it in raid when we have a cleric other than a tank( I don't see many clerics sustaining 1.4million dps though with inquisitor.)

It has some preemptive damage mitigation. You can spread 7% more damage in AoE unlike Archon and inquisitor AoE is nonexistent so you technically can hit some pretty big DPS increases by being a proxy for AoE. You can't replace Archon in raids and not have a dps lost, this is brought as a secondary support dps which works in tandem with Archon. The only difference between this and last expansion is that the archon got to hybrid for dps and the bard or oracle had to run a full 61 spec.

Still better to bring a better class that can easily do 1.6million to 2 million ST dps over both inquisitor and this though. The only real difference is if you need an interrupt or cleanse to be honest. Both can still purge and tenebrious distortion is the same debuff from inquisitor so that basically cancels out.

Well admittedly I've never heard of it, maybe because I'm EU? Not sure. Sure it's top on support dps, but prancing still doesn't make it clear if it benefits the whole raid enough to make it a valid replacement.

I guess there's an easy test for this. Get a high dps to do several 3 min parses on a dummy, then par up with the oracle/defiler, then do another several 3 min parses. Roughly we should be seeing at least 100k dps increase, or this is a load of **** :P

If it doesn't increase your highest dps player by at least 100k then it definitely doesn't affect your lower dps players by that much.

I have successfully done 1400k on Azranel, 2nd drops because of the shield on Isiel to about 1100k, but that's still decent.

[Aedynn]

So I've had a bit of an experiment, using the same principle of warden oracle, I went with 41/35/0. With a bit of number crunching and experimentation I was able to pull 700k comfortably (fully self buffed), so with a lot more work I'm sure I'll get 800k. Within a raid setting that should reach 900k.

Many of the players that use it and use it well are from EU. I don't have your gear score and can pull about 830K with it outside a raid on Alittu.

Look at the wave chart of the dps from the the sources at specific intervals and in current content not just the top dps that can be achieved on say a dummy. You can see some specs have a gradual climb, some specs are better intermittently, some specs have up front burst then fall off. Some souls can benefit from cleave and so forth. And then when you add in raid mechanics you can see some souls performing worse in practical use even if they over perform on stagnated objects. You can see some souls benefit more from even flaring power itself alone and in other cases you can see some souls take more advantage of the time its up!

In the scenario I presented it IS more represented of my norm because it can produce a high amount of raid dps because of my raid setup.. It does not have to be just AoE phases.

We can kill Azranel in just over 4mins. There is a large portion of burst being calculated because of raid cds and cooldowns stacks where several players sustain over 2million damage! It is possible to achieve this amount of dps and even sustain most of it for that short time spam. This becomes more apparent over time. Inquisitor is decent in some situations but don't rule out the power of orafiler especially when your definition of balance and dps revolves around theoretical maximum performance which is impractical. I would say getting 800K+ with this soul is not as impractical as sustaining 1.4million on Azranel with inquisitor. In this case YMMV. In my opinion it should be buffed as even archons can achieve in some impractical cases near 1 million dps as full 61 points. Unfortunately I don't think there will ever be this sort of quality balancing ever in Rift even though it is as basic and logical an approach you can do to test for balancing.

[Refuge]

Many of the players that use it and use it well are from EU. I don't have your gear score and can pull about 830K with it outside a raid on Alittu.

Look at the wave chart of the dps from the the sources at specific intervals and in current content not just the top dps that can be achieved on say a dummy. You can see some specs have a gradual climb, some specs are better intermittently, some specs have up front burst then fall off. Some souls can benefit from cleave and so forth. And then when you add in raid mechanics you can see some souls performing worse in practical use even if they over perform on stagnated objects. You can see some souls benefit more from even flaring power itself alone and in other cases you can see some souls take more advantage of the time its up!

In the scenario I presented it IS more represented of my norm because it can produce a high amount of raid dps because of my raid setup.. It does not have to be just AoE phases.

We can kill Azranel in just over 4mins. There is a large portion of burst being calculated because of raid cds and cooldowns stacks where several players sustain over 2million damage! It is possible to achieve this amount of dps and even sustain most of it for that short time spam. This becomes more apparent over time. Inquisitor is decent in some situations but don't rule out the power of orafiler especially when your definition of balance and dps revolves around theoretical maximum performance which is impractical. I would say getting 800K+ with this soul is not as impractical as sustaining 1.4million on Azranel with inquisitor. In this case YMMV. In my opinion it should be buffed as even archons can achieve in some impractical cases near 1 million dps as full 61 points. Unfortunately I don't think there will ever be this sort of quality balancing ever in Rift even though it is as basic and logical an approach you can do to test for balancing.

Do you think then that if I'm pulling the most ST dps with inquisitor in our raids (not a leading guild by any means), then maybe orafiler will not benefit in this regard?

I accept your arguments, I get it, I'm just struggling to determine if I should definitely use it within our composition. It seems if our dps is low in general then me supporting them won't be as good as me going pure dps on Inq. Unfortunately my dps is often relied on to pull us through some of those timed phases such as second phase second boss, as we're good on AoE but not so much on ST.

And regards to my dps with orafiler, I wasn't experimenting for long, I obviously need to fine tune it, but I think I got the general gist. A guide on this would be great just to check I'm using it right, for example when to actually use emblem of ice. From the feeling I got it's a very reaction based rotation.