The Duracell Cleric: A Build for Most Seasons (videos)

[Islesi]

Well the issue I have with it is we loose the self healing from damage buff. I'm at work can't think of the name but the "40% chance of attacks to heal small amount of damage" apparently is no longer in our tree/available.

Hasn't that simply become a passive buff now or have I missed something? I haven't been on live since the patch so I haven't seen for myself what's there. I know you have to swap out of any Icar role and then swap back to trigger the new passive buff version.

[Islesi]

Well the issue I have with it is we loose the self healing from damage buff. I'm at work can't think of the name but the "40% chance of attacks to heal small amount of damage" apparently is no longer in our tree/available.

Right now I'm in game: we do still have that buff, it's just passive now. That's one positive bit of news.

So far looking at the numbers, in most of the posited duracell builds your parry/dodge will now be half or less of what it was depending on your focus re: Wis/Int vs SP. The gains in armour/damage mitigaiton % will be tiny. 2-5% each at most. If you run defensive buffs (Courage of the Jaguar, Armour of Treachery, Mein of Honour) then that'll pick up a bit of the slack but of course your DD will suffer noticably. Just remember to make heavy use of Glacial Shield and Vex heals, plus careful use of Rage of the North to maximise damage and healing (e.g. saved for a soul drain if you've got a shield up to protect you while you cast it).

I'm going to have a bash around with the build on a moderately well geared 50 in various situations and see how it holds up but first impressions indicate that the standard Duracell builds are no longer that great for near-50s and fresh 50s in pre-Expert gear. (I don't have a cleric in that range to test with.)

[Ivengar]

I play 44/22 shamicar and yah we are now very squishy. On my guilds HK run I do the upper floor for the Maytron fight. Normally I take on the 2 52s with out much issue but last night they smushed me good.

I have not tried it on farming but my guess Druidicar is going to be the new lazy spec.

[Riinin]

Yes the biggest problem is the change to Devout Deflection it basically gives you no dodge or parry now which is sad

[Ivengar]

Yes the biggest problem is the change to Devout Deflection it basically gives you no dodge or parry now which is sad

I guess Shamicar is a dead spec now as there is no reason to go 22 deep into Justi now. Sad really, it was a great farm spec and fun 5man spec and in a pinch could be used for extra DOLs in raid.

I knew I was not going to like 1.8..... I hate it when I am right.

[lance]

As a casual player who did a LOT of solo play (on long enough to do dailies) I am down right PO'd at what they did to my Shamicar!!!!! My dodge & parry both dropped from 30% to 10%. Squishy as hell! I counted on that dodge/parry along with my auto heals/mana regen to keep me trucking along. When I got on last night and took a look at things after the update I just logged off because I was so disgusted with what they did.

Tonight is most likely another night without doing dailies because now I have to spend hours re-analyzing the soul tree and respect my toon.

If anyone comes up with a new duracell cleric that will work for a casual/solo player PLEASE post it! I will do the same.

Trion - I have given you guys a lot of praises in the past when others were bashing you. Now I'm not happy... with this update...

[Islesi]

So far, my experiences have been... discouraging shall we say. Un-lazifying the build (not collapsing everythign into 2-3macros) and and paying proper attention with everything set to defensive helps but not enough, and certainly not enough to cover for all of the lost DPS. It's not really worth the role slot once you hit 50 any more, and it's not looking good for the Shamicar either.

I think it might be time to call Duracell done and work on something new.

It's a huge shame, I think. I levelled as an old-style Cabalist and grudgingly gave Duracell a try when I hit the Elite bosses in the Cyclops area of Droughtlands at 40-something because I just couldn't deal with the incoming DD any more. Didn't take long to discover the fun times that Duracell presented and it became my favourite safe spec to take into difficult or hard-hitting encounters.

[Dasmal]

Thanks for the info. I honestly skimmed the patch notes because I've pretty much been playing my warrior mainly lately to farm money and the like so I didn't notice the patch notes.

I guess for me the reason I loved the duracell is I could still farm moderatly well solo on it, and I am NOT a raider. And the difficulty is almost every guide/type is build for people in heavy raid armor and raid environment.

There needs to be a good build for us yutz's who just solo in the gear we can buy with plaques and craft.

On the upside, guess I'll start putting my head together with my gf (she's a diehard cleric player) to come up with some new builds. Hopefully maybe a new duracell can come out, but I have a feeling they may have intentionally nerfed it as it was a rather 'easy mode' leveling spec, at the least.

[lance]

So I decided that I needed a control spec for the new v1.8 and used my original shamicar spec to do the 4 PvP dailies, Instant Adventure Daily, and 1 of the event dailies (collect 15 of something from rifts).

3 PvP dailies (actually PvE quests w/ PvP rewards) - saw no real change other than my health would jump around a lot more.

Actual PvP daily - I was easy pickings. I use to be able to charge thru or jump into the BG doing AOE and surviving for a bit. Not any more... When I would run thru several enemies I would maybe get 1 hit off on the carrier before I was respawning. AOE'ing was not generating enough heals to compensate for the 20% stat loss on BOTH dodge and parry.

Instant Adventures - similar results as the 3 PvP (PvE dailies. I had to watch the health a lot more. Especially on the guarding of the wardstones.

Event daily - Mixed results here. All the rifts were Majors w/ Elites. I was able to handle about 2-3 elites and was generating enough heals that I would usually only drop to around 50% health and watch it jump quite a bit. Once I started getting around 4 elites and some other non-elites in the mix it would start to be too much. I had to hit a healing tonic and that wasn't quite enough so I activated Anti-Planar Augmentation and thought I would make it. Then another elite entered the mix along with a couple of stray mobs and that didn't save me either. Down I went. I use to be able to handle 4-5 rift elites with no heal pots/tonics and about 1/2 the time kicking in APA to stand toe-to-toe. My 30% dodge & 30% parry played a HUGE role in my duracell build. Now with only about 10% in each my adventures are much more "intense"...

This weekend I will start messing with new builds and see what I can come up with. I think I saw some posts about a possible new druid build with the v1.8 change. I don't like having to work with pets though.

I might need to trash my life savings of platinum so I can respec my PA into a more defensive build. A 100pp to respec PA is INSANE! It only cost you 50gp to respec the Soul Tree! I could accept 25pp to respec PA, not 100pp.

I've rambled enough. I can't wait to see what ppl come up with as a duracell replacement.

[lance]

Here is my new version of the Duracell that has done very well in PvE and okay in PvP. With the macro rotations I have setup I have only seen my health drop down to 92% with 6 lvl 52s (non-elites) fighting toe-to-toe. With the change of avoidance (dodge/parry) to mitigation (supremacy, shield of faith, etc.) I have come up with a 35/31/0 Shaman/Justicar/Sentinel http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00...M.Eez0tMsho.-0 DPS is so-so, but the constant heals/mana regen for non-stop griding is what the Duracell is all about, not DPS.

I have 4 macros that I use: 1 for Single Target hits, 1 for AOE, 1 for DOT, and 1 for heals. You will notice that my instant melee attacks (no CD) are all Justicar skills even though the Shaman versions do more damage. That's because I want to keep my convictions always filled up for when I have to heal.

1-Hit
suppressmacrofailures
cast glory of the chosen
cast glacial shield
cast rage of the north
cast jolt
cast fated blow
cast lightning hammer
cast massive blow
cast censure
cast ageless ice
cast strike of judgment
cast sovereignty
cast bolt of radiance

NOTE: Sovereignty & Bolt of Radiance will only fire if I'm out of melee range. Sovereignty with built in stun now, helps you close the gap on them. Bolt of Radiance is to give you an extra hit while you are closing that gap and they're stunned.

AOE
suppressmacrofailures
cast glory of the chosen
cast glacial shield
cast rage of the north
cast jolt
cast fated blow
cast strike of the maelstrom
cast censure
cast sovereignty
cast purpose
cast even justice

DOT
suppressmacrofailures
cast glory of the chosen
cast glacial shield
cast rage of the north
cast jolt
cast fated blow
cast lightning hammer
cast censure
cast ageless ice
cast strike of judgment
cast sovereignty
cast bolt of radiance

This is more of a single-target DOT as the only real DOT is Lightning Hammer. I have kept all the other skills in this rotation though as I want to ensure if a skill's CD cycles to being available that it will fire off. I did look at putting Strike of the Maelstrom in there (since it also has a DOT in my build), but I didn't want to agro other mobs nearby. If I was AOE'ing then SotM would automatically be DOT'ing and I wouldn't need to spam this macro at all.

HEALS
suppressmacrofailures
cast glory of the chosen
cast @self healing breath
cast doctrine of bliss

Healing Breath is the whole reason behind taking Sentinel. It's a nice 1500+ instant heal that's NOT dependant on having a conviction.

I also keep Interdiction, Doctrine of Loyalty, and Break Free on my Hot Bar so I can spam those out when needed.

Also, when in a group I consistantly see 100+ heals scrolling off of party members because of Reparation AND the use of the Justicar instant skills instead of the Shaman ones (that I mentioned about earlier). I just ignore the whinner that occassionlly tells me that I'm worthless in my Duracell role and need to be in a healer role. I have a healer role and I use it when I feel I need to...

So this, as of right now, is my new Duracell build. Yes, I know, you could probably tweak this or that on it along with the macros but a lot of tweaking is also personal preference. I'm willing to test/try anything that might improve on this. Just let me know.

I once again have little fear of jumping into the middle of a mob and feel safe again to roam Telera SOLO.

[lance]

I have 4 macros that I use: 1 for Single Target hits, 1 for AOE, 1 for DOT, and 1 for heals. You will notice that my instant melee attacks (no CD) are all Justicar skills even though the Shaman versions do more damage. That's because I want to keep my convictions always filled up for when I have to heal.

DOT
suppressmacrofailures
cast glory of the chosen
cast glacial shield
cast rage of the north
cast jolt
cast fated blow
cast lightning hammer
cast censure
cast ageless ice
cast strike of judgment
cast sovereignty
cast bolt of radiance

This is more of a single-target DOT as the only real DOT is Lightning Hammer. I have kept all the other skills in this rotation though as I want to ensure if a skill's CD cycles to being available that it will fire off. I did look at putting Strike of the Maelstrom in there (since it also has a DOT in my build), but I didn't want to agro other mobs nearby. If I was AOE'ing then SotM would automatically be DOT'ing and I wouldn't need to spam this macro at all.

I have dropped the DOT macro. It really was no different than my Single Target Hit macro. The DOTs of Lightning Hammer and Maelstrom are already in to the Single and AOE macros so there was no need for the DOT macro at all. I need to get more coffee... lol What was I thinking at 1am last night when I made this...

[Veliya]

Whoops, double post.

[Veliya]

I think rumors of the death of this spec are greatly exaggerated. There may be a better spec, but I haven't really noticed a massive dropoff - are you guys running around in Mien of Honor? Because, well, you should always be running around in Mien of Honor unless you're single target DPSing - it gains you virtually nothing to run Mien of Aggression of you're AOE pulling.

I've still been able to easily solo chronicles, pulling rooms of 10+ mobs, and I just have to play a little more intelligently and not face slam to solo major rifts.

Also, just throw on a couple of pieces of decent tanking gear - I don't have a good tanking set by any means but I have like 2-3 fairly decent pieces of tanking gear that I can throw on if things are particularly difficult (especially ones with toughness) to get the job done.

[lance]

I have dropped the DOT macro. It really was no different than my Single Target Hit macro. The DOTs of Lightning Hammer and Maelstrom are already in to the Single and AOE macros so there was no need for the DOT macro at all. I need to get more coffee... lol What was I thinking at 1am last night when I made this...

Really Admin? A 5-minute change limit for a post??? Anyways...

FINALLY for buffs I keep up:
Heart of the Fire Mountain (I seemed to be always getting nuked by some kind of fire attack)
Courage of the Eagle
Vengeance of the Piercing Cold
Reparation
Mien of Honor (Depending on the party/situation I will also switch between Mien of Leadership or Mien of Aggression)
Flaring Glyph (2nd Fire Tier in PA)
Planar Protection (Guild Buff)

Time for that coffee...

[Uhtred]

I'm not seeing "death of the build" that so many are panicing about. Definately some in efficiency though. I'd long ago started shifting points out of Justi into Shamy for more dps. The gear you pick up over time gives you the mitigation/survivability to replace those points. If anything, I feel the build is improved with access to Mein of Aggression as now we're not entirely useless on boss fights.

I tried Druid varients post 1.8, but found nothing impressive. I'm sure there's single target dps to be had, but I was never happy with it's justi/shammy contributions.