Cleric Balance Update 15th April 2011

[Zinbik]

Greetings, Clerics of Telara. I'm Zinbik, the guy in charge of Clerics. I am here to discuss... THE FUTURE! Before I begin, I just wanted to thank everyone for their feedback so far. Whether in-game or here on the forums, we really appreciate any insight we can get as to how you're perceiving the game. Now, on to the changes!

We’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback on the ranged DPS souls. For this next patch we’ll be focusing on the Inquisitor, working to make their DPS more reliable and comparable to other DPS souls.

Inquisitor

• Life and Death Concord is just too random. When it procs a lot, you're having a blast! When it hardly procs at all, you want to strangle me. We really want to make this more reliable so their DPS isn't so variable.
• The Armor spells don't offer much of a choice. You've got "the damage and defense one", "the different damage and defense one", and "the mostly useless one". We're going to change that into "the defensive one", "the offensive one", and "the big stick".

The Healing souls have gotten a fair amount of feedback as well. Right now we'd like to focus on the Sentinel with a little Purifier love on the side, examining how we can make certain abilities more useful and interesting. Below are a few examples of these changes.

Sentinel

• Healing Breath, while fantastic for a 0-point ability, just isn't where we'd like it to be for those heavily specced into Sentinel. As long as its HPS is inferior to Healing Invocation, it just ends up being a liability when you try to use it on the tank in response to a minor damage spike or stun. We'd like to fix this, but only for those with a heavy investment into Sentinel.

Purifier

• Ward of the Ancestors is nice and all, but with its current setup ends up being something you only ever cast on the tank. We plan on lowering the cooldown, but adding a blocker to prevent you from casting it on the same person for the next 30 seconds. This allows you to use it on more targets without allowing one target to be shielded 100% of the time. Once we've had time to observe this change within the LIVE environment, we can evaluate the addition of scaling to absorption for a following patch.

Remember, just because I didn't mention an issue here that you're concerned with doesn't mean we don't share that concern. This is not an exhaustive list of changes that will be happening to Clerics this patch. We’ll be releasing more information when the ALPHA patch notes go live.

[Ellyll]

Thank you, just a remninder...


Cabalist: Please fix SP scaling on the last rank of Dark Water and Distorted Shadows. Also, sometimes Distorted Shadows randomly dies before ticking 3 times.

EDIT: Oh, and in general, you are aware of the @mouseover bug, correct? Is this (or has this) been taken care of?

[Ellyll]

• Healing Breath, while fantastic for a 0-point ability, just isn't where we'd like it to be for those heavily specced into Sentinel. As long as its HPS is inferior to Healing Invocation, it just ends up being a liability when you try to use it on the tank in response to a minor damage spike or stun. We'd like to fix this, but only for those with a heavy investment into Sentinel.

My vote for this would be to have 15+ skill "Enraptured Breath" also affect scaling for healing breath, not just the extra proc. That way, people who are moderately invested in the sentinel tree get the bonus, while 0 pt splashes do not.

[Khierra]

Well it's certainly not only the ranged dps that are in a need of a boost. Just a reminder of that.

Also the Justicars are having problems with their souls too from what I have heard (not to much experience with justicar tanking)... also easy to see since I have not yet seen any justicar tank a t2 dungeon :S

I am pretty sure that when it comes to DPS souls the players that plays them are willing to sacrifice healing capabilities to gain more dps since we have a role to fit when we choose to dps and that doesn't mean healing but DPS.

But this surely is a little step in the right direction...

/khierra

[Skaarrj]

What about the Templar PvP Soul? The right side is so useless. You HAVE to spec into at least Martyr to even stand a chance in pvp. If I could spec the right side and maintain SOME sort of decent durability while getting cool nifty healing procs and stuff, that would be awesome.

But Templar is too stacked to do that right now.

[Mogus]

K let us DPS like CHloros while healing and we will call it even.

[Skryth]

Is it too much to say that I love you for the stated changes your thinking of?

[Uiin]

Depending on the changes to Inquisitor, I may actually re-consider making my Cleric my main.

[Denna]

Zinbik,

Thank you for sharing this with us. We appreciate the communication.

[Skaarrj]

Deluge needs to be a stronger ability if I'm gonna be able to keep tanks up on my own. Which is why the ability is there. It's a tank healing ability.

You keep your HoT's up and use Deluge. But Deluge doesn't do enough.

[Davexeno]

Deluge needs to be a stronger ability if I'm gonna be able to keep tanks up on my own. Which is why the ability is there. It's a tank healing ability.

You keep your HoT's up and use Deluge. But Deluge doesn't do enough.

Agreed, I have gone through so many different Sent/Warden specs and I prefer the playstyle of the Warden, except for the simple fact, Deluge is not enough to keep a tank on its feet.

[aikisean]

I know I'm probably 1 of like 65 people who play Cabalists as a main soul but umm, wheres the love? Come on! I've been telling myself for weeks just keep it up with the Cab, they will fix it soon. Your discussion of future saddens me

[kamesennin]

why nothing for shaman or druid...

they need your attention...

[Uiin]

Remember, just because I didn't mention an issue here that you're concerned with doesn't mean we don't share that concern. This is not an exhaustive list of changes that will be happening to Clerics this patch. We’ll be releasing more information when the ALPHA patch notes go live.

Calm down fellow Clerics.

[PeiTachi]

I know I'm probably 1 of like 65 people who play Cabalists as a main soul but umm, wheres the love? Come on! I've been telling myself for weeks just keep it up with the Cab, they will fix it soon. Your discussion of future saddens me

Couldnt agree more.