What is the best senticar spec?

[Allmightyone]

Only concern I'd have with that build is conviction genration -- LMR makes it much easier to be efficient with your GCDs, especially in a progression setting (at least in ID). That said, efficient conviction generation isn't a huge issue in any content prior to ID, so the MbtL build is certainly useful for passive splash heals.

It's all about your preference and play style. Generating enought conviction is never a problem when you know the fight. You can plan ahead and use a few Healing Communion if you have to (rarely need to though). Not everyone will like the idea of anticipating raid dmgs and if it's thats the case then a spec with LMR will give you better results. I personally rarely have any issue with conviction even w/o LMR and that's why this spec is well suited for me and that's why I'm sharing it. If that spec is the one that gave me the best result maybe it will be the same for someone else.

[Allmightyone]

PvP Senticar is also extremely powerful. With DoLs, serendipity HIs, Purge, a silence, a stun, a snare, and a couple of mana regens, it is basically the swiss-army knife of cleric builds: 28sent/27just/11inq.

Love that spec

[runrun]

Do you think 32/20/14 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00...xk.yhMo0foz.-6 is a viable spec?

You have all needed sentinel moves, Aoe damge with soul drain and even justice, great conviction generating and good dps and hps.

But you lose light makes right but the great conviction generation should make up for that.

[squafro]

Do you think 32/20/14 http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00...xk.yhMo0foz.-6 is a viable spec?

In terms of 5-mans, it really doesn't matter as long as you get through the run without wipes - you should just run whatever you enjoy playing, and a couple of points variation in a senticar spec should always be viable. Soul drain reparations+RM performs much better relatively in 5-mans, and if you like this spec you should also look at other high-point inq inquisicar builds.

For raiding, I don't think so. Senticars with low-point soul drain available just seems like its trying to do too much all at the same time. I'd say 14-point soul drain is not worth casting at all, unless you're looking at it entirely from a dps perspective. My napkin maths says accounting for conviction generation with LMR at soft crit cap, you'll be doing more hps with 21 points in justicar than by adding soul drain into your rotation and losing LMR, even when there are 4+ targets available. However, this maths is for 10-man or 20-man, and doesn't take into account the better smart-healing allocation of soul-drain reparation vs a DoL as well as not accounting for cast-bar knockback on soul drain casts.

[runrun]

In terms of 5-mans, it really doesn't matter as long as you get through the run without wipes - you should just run whatever you enjoy playing, and a couple of points variation in a senticar spec should always be viable. Soul drain reparations+RM performs much better relatively in 5-mans, and if you like this spec you should also look at other high-point inq inquisicar builds.

For raiding, I don't think so. Senticars with low-point soul drain available just seems like its trying to do too much all at the same time. I'd say 14-point soul drain is not worth casting at all, unless you're looking at it entirely from a dps perspective. My napkin maths says accounting for conviction generation with LMR at soft crit cap, you'll be doing more hps with 21 points in justicar than by adding soul drain into your rotation and losing LMR, even when there are 4+ targets available. However, this maths is for 10-man or 20-man, and doesn't take into account the better smart-healing allocation of soul-drain reparation vs a DoL as well as not accounting for cast-bar knockback on soul drain casts.

Do you think a build of 32/26/8 inq would be good.
as you gain reprieve and only lose the range mana refill and 12% crit bonus.

[squafro]

Do you think a build of 32/26/8 inq would be good.
as you gain reprieve and only lose the range mana refill and 12% crit bonus.

32sent/26 just/8 inq? I'm not too sure where you'd want to spend those extra points in the justicar tree. Anything beyond 22 points is just more mitigation, reprieve is pretty useless with a 5-minute cooldown if that's what you are going for. IMO you are sacrificing too much passive bonus by dropping inq's crit bonus for anything in the justicar tree.

[Kulta]

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00...gxkqz.AuMoo.-6


I love this spec, and find I can dps and heal just fine. No mana issues no healing issues infact I have loved this spec since I tried it many moons ago

[Camdoras]

I run 32 sent/21 justicar/13 warden

[MaddBomber83]

I've been running the 32/22/12 build for a long time, guide is in my signature. It is the 'best' of the group support builds. As a note to those who are saying Warden hits harder, the break even point is when you Crit at about 55%. The difference on either in a parse will be hard to tell so play what you like.

OP, you are suggesting a few varients to the above cookie cutter. What are you trying to accomplish? You don't need the best healing Senticar build to heal content. As an example, when the healer dies to a mechanic in a T2 I can keep the tank alive with our normal DPS spec of 51 Inquisitor, 10 Sentinal, 5 Cabi.

The important things for a 'healer' to bring is solid ST healing, spot AoE healing, a Cleanse, preferabley an AoE cleanse. If you can work those things into a build you feel comfortable with then don't worry that its not the best. Shoot, I let the greater fairy heal 5 mans for me when I'm being lazy or want a change of pace.

Our Senticar builds are in a spectrum with the 32/22/12 on the left for most healing/utility and a 51 Inquisitor with some Justicar/Sentinal on the right with the most DPS. You can throw points in Warden if you want, more or less in Sentinal or Inquisitor. For the 5 man content it does not really matter, play to your flavor and enjoy.

As mentioned, make sure to have a ranged spam life attack so you can play at range or melee.

[Eosmeep]

From my experience, there is no best senticar build. What build you choose is more dependent on your play style and what content you're healing.

This is probably different from a lot of other classes, you say. DPS is based on min/maxing, and there's very little deviation from the cookie cutter builds because you would lose a certain ability or passive that is crucial. Healing is an entirely different story. It's about being proactive and reactive, and discovering what your own strengths and weaknesses are to find a build that complements them.

I used the standard 32/22/12 for a long time and it's fine for most content, especially when you're a fresh 50 and learning different healing specs. If you want to be better at main tank healing swap some points from inquisitor to go deeper into sentinel. If you want to have higher DPS, go deeper into inquisitor. Because I use senticar primarily as a versatile healing build, I like the deeper sentinel versions for progression. My choice right now is a 2CD senticar (44 points in sentinel for vigilance) for ID content.
Vigilance is a great CD! It will save someone beyond overkill, which not many other cooldowns can do.

If you're making your own specs the main point where you can really go wrong is (and I feel many people do this) to not spend your points wisely. Look closely at the abilities you are upgrading and the passives you will receive. Will you be spending a lot of time using those? If I max out my healing invocation HOT I'm probably going to be tank healing a lot. Experiment with your specs, there is no best one unless you're purely min-maxing for numbers. Just because you have the highest HPS doesn't mean you're the best healer.

Make sure you have a proper conviction generating macro, don't just list things based on their cool-down. Put strike of judgment at the top so if you're in melee range you don't waste your instants.

Light makes right is nice for many reasons, but my play style isn't suited well for deeper justicar senticars, and it gimps other aspects of the healing.

My grievances:

Treating senticar as a DPS hybrid spec IS BAD. You're really not using it to its full potential. While many of the DPS-based builds here are valid, it's greatly gimping your healing ability for progression content. A much better DPS-hybrid option is Inquisicar for single-target, or Cabicar for AoE healing.

I see this mistake a lot: treating senticar as a spam build (spam conviction generating macro, spam DoL when you see something take damage). Granted, I do this when healing master modes or other content when I get lazy, but it should not be how you play senticar! You should be proactive in anticipating damage. Get 4 convictions saved for when damage may occur. For some fights it may be very regular damage (ex. Rune King Molinar), others it's more sporadic (ex. General Silgen, Akylios). In almost all situations you shouldn't be reduced to spamming healing communion because 1) it wastes mana, and 2) it means you are probably not paying attention. There are exceptions to this (ex. Ituziel sub 30%), but in almost all cases you shouldn't have to use healing communion often.

Another issue for healers in general is not being reactive enough (but you should never be a completely reactive healer, see the above point). A good healer can switch up what they're doing in an instant, whether it means popping a CD on a tank or using healing breath / touch the light + HI when a certain warrior steals aggro by cornered beasting and you need to save him until the tank can taunt again.

[Medik]

Also going 22pts into justicar for conviction building is pointless.

You must not have made it to a fight, such as Ituziel, where you need many back-to-back aoe heals.. At 35% on Ituziel, you're going to be spamming aoe heals constantly until he's dead, and getting 2 convictions in 1 GCD is truly priceless there. I see your point about communion, but without CDs (healer's haste), it is NOT instant like DoL, and as stated already, it's more mana intensive, therefore it is less efficient.

This is dumb. You are dumb.

Oh, the irony.

If you play senticar I highly recommand you go at least 38 in sentinel for MbtL.

Anything above 32 or 33 in Sent is wasted points, as you're improving your single target healing which is used as a backup, not as a main healer. Your primary role is to AoE heal, and you have two skills to do just that. Mbtl is garbage anyways; as you said, it's a big mana hog and the heal amounts are very negligible.. Just hit a DoL and continue.. Soul Drain isn't a bad idea, but again, you're starting to lean more towards an inquisicar instead of a senticar.

I enjoy the 10-12 warden senticar --- 15% better DoLs[/url]

Definitely not bad, but, you're missing the utility and bonuses from inquisitor, plus, you just don't need that big of DoLs honestly. There are fights in almost every dungeon where a mana regen will come in handy more than a higher DoL. All in preference though; if you like it, stick with it. Just prepare to change when you hit the latter dungeons in game.

I just don't understand why people keep trying to go higher in sentinel either. You're playing a group healer, backup single target healer. Not the other way around. You want to max out your aoe healing potential. Your single target healing capability is fine with the standard 32/22/12 or 33/21/12 builds. DoR hits for 3k+ in raid, healing breath hits for 5k+, and Healing Invocation can hit for upwards of 10k. You mean to tell me you need MORE single target healing capability than that? If so, your tank healers are simply fail. You have dedicated ST healers for a reason. If they can't keep the tank up, it's their problem, not yours. You are there for backup, which almost any senticar build as mentioned before does great.

With that said, this is the spec I use: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10...AuMo0xo.Vxk.-0

It's focus is aoe healing, and all the goodies for aoe healing are maxed out. The increased range is negotiable, but there are times in certain fights where it will definitely come in handy. Other than that, pretty much everything is self-explanatory.

I left the interrupt out because the dps classes are already faceroll enough, let those lazy fools do it. I am here to heal, not do a dps' job. They already whine and complain when they have to purge on sicaron, much less actually interrupt something.

I didn't go into improved even justice, as ID is very melee-non-friendly, and I'd prefer not to get mixed up in all that. So I chose survivability talents instead, which help a ton. Almost every fight we do, I am the lowest on damage taken, due to this. That being said, I also didn't get the melee damage bonus talent from Hammer of Justice.

If you don't understand why I chose the talents I chose, I can explain more if needed. I just didn't want to go into extreme detail since most of them are self-explanatory.

[Medik]

Edit: Hammer of Virtue, not justice. Hate that 5 minute edit timer.

Also, here's an updated spec of the same thing. I don't think any of the talents changed, but it was saying it was outdated, so I redid the spec.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10...AuMo0xo.Vxk.-6

[Eosmeep]

Anything above 32 or 33 in Sent is wasted points, as you're improving your single target healing which is used as a backup, not as a main healer. Your primary role is to AoE heal, and you have two skills to do just that. Mbtl is garbage anyways; as you said, it's a big mana hog and the heal amounts are very negligible.. Just hit a DoL and continue.. Soul Drain isn't a bad idea, but again, you're starting to lean more towards an inquisicar instead of a senticar.

I just don't understand why people keep trying to go higher in sentinel either. You're playing a group healer, backup single target healer. Not the other way around. You want to max out your aoe healing potential.

You have dedicated ST healers for a reason. If they can't keep the tank up, it's their problem, not yours. You are there for backup, which almost any senticar build as mentioned before does great.

Your logic that senticar isn't a main healing spec is flawed, because that's where a lot of its strengths are. You won't be pulling very high DPS unless you go too deep in inquisitor and then you become an inquisicar, and even if you do you gimp your healing abilities a ton.

I use senticar as a main healing spec, as it does its job almost as well as a puri/sent as far as tank healing goes while still maintaining good raid heals and utility. For example, healing through AoE damage on Warboss Drak while still picking up tank healing in the interum. Also MbtL is not garbage in 5mans, you can heal the tank and splash heal the melee. MbtL can actually SAVE you mana later because it keeps you from spamming DoL when it's only tank and melee taking damage. Granted I don't keep it up more than 50% of the time because I'm more focused on other things, it is a really useful addition. Vigilance CD (44pt) is a great CD to have for ID when tanks are going to be taking massive hits and cov has a 1min CD on the person it's cast on.

If you want better ST heals and more healing utility go higher in sent, period. In HK a good senticar can take the place of a MT healer and a raid healer. You can do both, it's really not that hard of a concept. A senticar doesn't have to be just a backup healer, you are a bursty raid healer and a solid tank healer. That doesn't mean you can replace a purifier in ID, but you can back them up on a fight like Ituziel to keep a tank from being too spikey (before 30% when your focus is more on raid heals). Granted it's important not to spread one healer too thin, but even a maxed out AoE senticar comes nowhere near the AoE heals of a good chloro on a fight like that, and our healing will always be more bursty which doens't lend itself well to certain fights or phases when AoE damage is constant. But if you have good AoE healing ability and good tank healing you can switch for different phases of a fight when necessary, you're not pigeon-holed like a puri/sent for tank heals only.

Definitely not bad, but, you're missing the utility and bonuses from inquisitor, plus, you just don't need that big of DoLs honestly. There are fights in almost every dungeon where a mana regen will come in handy more than a bit higher DoL. All in preference though; if you like it, stick with it. Just prepare to change when you hit the latter dungeons in game.

Utility is nice but to a point, and that's usually up to personal preference. Mana regen is always nice, but it's not necessary if you at least have purpose from justicar, use mana pots, have a bard in raid, and don't be a baddie and spam DoL when it's not necessary (which I think a lot of people do and it just wastes mana). my 44 sent senticar almost never runs out of mana. If it does it's usually because I wasn't paying enough attention to it. You don't need to get to the point of micromanaging mana, that will only distract you from other raid mechanics as well as healing in general, but you should have a good awareness of your mana bar. And if you're doing it right, you shouldn't be running out that often

[BrownsMageNerfDelivery]

Utility is nice but to a point, and that's usually up to personal preference. Mana regen is always nice, but it's not necessary if you at least have purpose from justicar, use mana pots, have a bard in raid, and don't be a baddie and spam DoL when it's not necessary (which I think a lot of people do and it just wastes mana).

Yes and no. You also have to remember that a DoL can ensure people are topped off before a spike AND maintain PtF to mitigate some of the spike damage. Still, usually boils down to personal preference, though some tools are generally more useful than others (LMR, Embolden, 32 pt Sent utilities, etc.).

I still like having Aggressive Renewal for times when melee can be...a calculated risk.

[Eosmeep]

I usually rely on chloros to keep people topped off from the occasional little damage. If I see >4 people taking damage I'll hit a DoL, otherwise spot heal with healing breath. I think it's best to not get in a "spam mode" mindset. So less faceroll and more calculated "I'm DoLing with a purpose and not just because it's easymode." But yeah those other utilities are personal preference. I never felt like LMR made a huge difference in my builds, maybe because I'm not crit capped in senticar.

I still like having Aggressive Renewal for times when melee can be...a calculated risk.

Definitely a good point, I still feel like AR should give back more mana though, or actually scale with your entire mana pool like purpose does. Then I'd be more inclined to put extra points in to get it. Another personal preference thing. I can live without it.