tagtarsis
New Member
With the end of Beta coming and the week of Riftdrawals on the horizon I decided to start a Cleric Discussion. I am passionate about the cleric, and it matches my desire to play a healer helper who can do other tasks if needed.
Last night I was able to watch as a Cleric speced in Justicar tanked his way through Iron Tomb. Overall he did a great job and using the shield he negated a good amount of damage. Only concern I had with it was he did occasionally run into mana issues, but I am sure this may get better the deeper we go into game and perhaps will improve with different soul choice to back it up, perhaps something that allows for mana regen, we will have to research this some.
Twice now I have been the healer on IT both times went ok, but I am still hesitant to spend my mana on damage spells. As I get the experience with it, I might start casting more damage spells, but as my experience with other games have shown healers who do damage always run out of mana at a bad time leaving the team with no heals a few deaths, rezs, down time, and sometimes a wipe. (Will get back with you on this as I see more instances and know what the balance is in this game.)
Here is the build I used in Iron Tomb last night. You will notice that I took all the + to heal bonuses I could squeeze in.
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00Gje..x0xxzs.xo
I wanted to talk about the tactics I put in place last night for me and discuss other options.
The problem with these links are they do not reflect how many ranks you have in each skill, but I can use it to show you what I was doing.
First things first. Although our Cleric tank was taken little damage from the trash mobs I made sure to cast Healing Spray and Healing Current on him. This gave him a heal over time for the duration of the trash pull. This was interesting to me that most of the time he would get up to max health, and probably waste my healing, was told I did a bit of over healing in the instance. This was not my concern at the time, nor was I interested in having him toped off but it just so happened that I was able to since he was also self healing with his convictions. (Justicar AOE Healing from damage done).
Once I was sure that he was doing ok I would occasionally throw a few spells on mobs but would never let it effect my mana more then 10 %, needless to say I rarely dropped below 75% mana not for lack of healing but for lack of casting damage spells also. (he did a great job maintaining Agro)
For damage, I would use the 2 instant cast spells, Life’s Vengence (higher damage but with long cool down) and Banish a DOT that is no cool down. I realized afterwards I could have also stacked Waterjet but I avoided use of 2 second cast spells due to the desire to be ready to cast heals at a moments notice. One spell that I took off my hot bar due to concern with its side effect was Crushing Wave. There was no reason I would ever see in an istance that I would want to knock back a mob. (Great PVP skill though)
Healer’s Covenant: I cast this a bunch the other night, but I only used it in major fights. The ones with stronger mobs and the bosses. This skill starts off the fight with an instant cast damage reduction by 40% for 10 seconds. This made early boss fights easy on me and allowed me to easily heal the 3 boss part all the way through.
Quietus: Its on long cool down but Silencing the enemy for 5 seconds were fun, in boss fights I waited for my Healer’s Covenant to end and then I used this on the mobs. Damage reduction is almost as important as my healing and I do not think these things are reflected very well. Also used it on the mage in the 3 boss fight. Made for major reduction in damage from him.
Touch the Light: Makes your next heal spell instant cast. I used this a few times to get my 3 second cast time heal off and this made for a quick burst when I was distracted. (This was the case in the only part that we got adds that were on others and I had to heal the mage through it. BUT neglected tank for a short time. I came back to him and used this to get my heal off on him quickly.
Healing Breath: This heal is instant and is a small heal, but its also AOE heal with the points I put in. It is very little mana but you can not spam it because it has a 8 sec cool down. This means its your emergency heal or the top off heal. I used it right after I healed our mage on our tank, before activating Touch the light. It gave me enough time to get my other spells in line.
Haling Invocation! This is a 3 second cast heal that heals for a lot of health. When this thing crits it hits for about 900 points, but the normal hit is about 600 health. (Biggest Crit I had with it was at that moment I used Touch the Light, it crited r over 1000 hit points. 1 just 2 heals our tank went from very low to almost full. It was spot on, and I was shocked so much that I had already cast another heal that ended up being over healing.
These spells were by far the most used in that last instance.
I could touch on some other things, but I am not yet the best cleric out there. I had a bit of over healing in that instance and that makes me a bit concerned that I do not yet know how to manage the spells effectively.
I will keep working at it.
Last night I was able to watch as a Cleric speced in Justicar tanked his way through Iron Tomb. Overall he did a great job and using the shield he negated a good amount of damage. Only concern I had with it was he did occasionally run into mana issues, but I am sure this may get better the deeper we go into game and perhaps will improve with different soul choice to back it up, perhaps something that allows for mana regen, we will have to research this some.
Twice now I have been the healer on IT both times went ok, but I am still hesitant to spend my mana on damage spells. As I get the experience with it, I might start casting more damage spells, but as my experience with other games have shown healers who do damage always run out of mana at a bad time leaving the team with no heals a few deaths, rezs, down time, and sometimes a wipe. (Will get back with you on this as I see more instances and know what the balance is in this game.)
Here is the build I used in Iron Tomb last night. You will notice that I took all the + to heal bonuses I could squeeze in.
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00Gje..x0xxzs.xo
I wanted to talk about the tactics I put in place last night for me and discuss other options.
The problem with these links are they do not reflect how many ranks you have in each skill, but I can use it to show you what I was doing.
First things first. Although our Cleric tank was taken little damage from the trash mobs I made sure to cast Healing Spray and Healing Current on him. This gave him a heal over time for the duration of the trash pull. This was interesting to me that most of the time he would get up to max health, and probably waste my healing, was told I did a bit of over healing in the instance. This was not my concern at the time, nor was I interested in having him toped off but it just so happened that I was able to since he was also self healing with his convictions. (Justicar AOE Healing from damage done).
Once I was sure that he was doing ok I would occasionally throw a few spells on mobs but would never let it effect my mana more then 10 %, needless to say I rarely dropped below 75% mana not for lack of healing but for lack of casting damage spells also. (he did a great job maintaining Agro)
For damage, I would use the 2 instant cast spells, Life’s Vengence (higher damage but with long cool down) and Banish a DOT that is no cool down. I realized afterwards I could have also stacked Waterjet but I avoided use of 2 second cast spells due to the desire to be ready to cast heals at a moments notice. One spell that I took off my hot bar due to concern with its side effect was Crushing Wave. There was no reason I would ever see in an istance that I would want to knock back a mob. (Great PVP skill though)
Healer’s Covenant: I cast this a bunch the other night, but I only used it in major fights. The ones with stronger mobs and the bosses. This skill starts off the fight with an instant cast damage reduction by 40% for 10 seconds. This made early boss fights easy on me and allowed me to easily heal the 3 boss part all the way through.
Quietus: Its on long cool down but Silencing the enemy for 5 seconds were fun, in boss fights I waited for my Healer’s Covenant to end and then I used this on the mobs. Damage reduction is almost as important as my healing and I do not think these things are reflected very well. Also used it on the mage in the 3 boss fight. Made for major reduction in damage from him.
Touch the Light: Makes your next heal spell instant cast. I used this a few times to get my 3 second cast time heal off and this made for a quick burst when I was distracted. (This was the case in the only part that we got adds that were on others and I had to heal the mage through it. BUT neglected tank for a short time. I came back to him and used this to get my heal off on him quickly.
Healing Breath: This heal is instant and is a small heal, but its also AOE heal with the points I put in. It is very little mana but you can not spam it because it has a 8 sec cool down. This means its your emergency heal or the top off heal. I used it right after I healed our mage on our tank, before activating Touch the light. It gave me enough time to get my other spells in line.
Haling Invocation! This is a 3 second cast heal that heals for a lot of health. When this thing crits it hits for about 900 points, but the normal hit is about 600 health. (Biggest Crit I had with it was at that moment I used Touch the Light, it crited r over 1000 hit points. 1 just 2 heals our tank went from very low to almost full. It was spot on, and I was shocked so much that I had already cast another heal that ended up being over healing.
These spells were by far the most used in that last instance.
I could touch on some other things, but I am not yet the best cleric out there. I had a bit of over healing in that instance and that makes me a bit concerned that I do not yet know how to manage the spells effectively.
I will keep working at it.
