Cleric Controversies

tagtarsis

New Member
Cleric Controversies

level 50, check!
T1 Gear, check!
Wisdom high enough to que for T2, check!
Effective strategies to heal through a T2 instance…….. ummm well not quite yet!

I have had 3, very poor experiences in T2 so far, and I have discussed this with others in Reborn and have searched the web for opinions and Cleric builds and strategies. And so far I am still in the same place.

The web has 3 camps. Obviously all three healer souls have a following.

I have also learned its almost imposable to rate a healer by the parcer. Due to the shields and way it will count things before others, the healers parcer is only a measurement and will only obviously spike high for raid and or whole group healing. This has left me with a slightly unusable measurement for performance.

However many online have debated the numbers.

Follow up from my research is as follows: Some claim face roll healer to be the Sent/Purifier, others claim the highest output of healing to be the Warden, still others claim that the best overall healer to be the Sent/Warden. All of the camps have decent arguments and fine reasoning to why they believe this or that. I am still on the fence however.

Pros and Cons

Sent:
Pro’s: 1. High output single target cast, (currently for me upwards of 3000 if I crit.
2. Many utility spells for those uh oh moments.
3. Combat Rez (only soul to provide this if you go deep enough in the soul from healer souls)

Cons: 1. Main heal is 3 second cast (This is where constant heals are an issue, if the main tank takes too many crits or I get crowd controlled in my cast this 3 second cast will be the downfall of the class.)
2. The utility spells are on 45 second cool downs and if your instant cast utility spell is on cool down already you are riding the wave of the 3 second cast.

Purifier:
Pro’s: 1. Shields that keep your tank from taking damage. These will continue to work until the Hp of the shield is gone thus not as much of an issue for the cleric getting crowd controlled, or as worried about the crits in the cast time.
2. Many utility Spells for those uh oh moments, including an Automatic critical heal.
3. Shield after every single target heal.

Cons: 1. The main single target heal is a 3 second cast time, and thus has same issues as the sent main heal. (only positive is that every one of these heals leave a shield on the target)
2. No real AOE team heals.
3. No combat Rez

Warden:
Pro’s: 1. Consistent Heals not affected by the cleric crowd controls, most Heal over Times are instant cast.
2. Faster cast times on the main heal. (1.5 second) Although at base heal its less total overall on a target that has a lot of HOT on them it will be much stronger.
3. Lots of powerful AOE, Group and Raid Heal over times, making him one of the best overall Group healers.
4. At 51 points Warden Build will provide a bonus of about 60% Spell power to all Warden Spells.

Con’s: 1. No combat Rez
2. Base heal is weaker and so reliant on casting your heals prior to stacking the Burst heal.
3. Not many group buffs to provide Endurance.

SO long story short, I am tinkering with all of these builds. I have found so far that Warden on trash mobs keeps a more steady heals on the tank.

The jury is still out on this as to what is the best build for me, but I will keep you all posted and will show you my current builds shortly.

I want to do another T1 to play with the specs and rotations, prior to doing another T2. I am leaning to Warden but I have kept a Sent build for switching.
 
Great info, thank you. I've been debating what souls to use in a healing role on my cleric. I tend to lean toward the warden myself...usually warden/sentinel - I like the instant-cast heals.

I wasn't aware of the shield thing on purifiers...now I'm curious.
 
Here is my thoughts...you should have 4 roles. 1 is Sent centric, 1 is purifier centric, 1 is warden centric. The 4th is your choice of DPS or tank. Part of this game is knowing the fights and knowing which role is best going to work... For example, the last boss in xAP you know is going to be AoE intensive, while the 2nd to last boss is going to be burst damage centric. This way you have the most appropriate healing spec going into a fight. So, it's not that you are bad or undergeared or aren't doing something right, it's simply knowing the fights and dungeons well enough to know "ok, I need my warden spec here".

Does this make sense?
 
So far, Purifier rocks for PVP (trying from 18~22 so far), makes capping fang/flags in Codex much easier when people absorb a third of their health bar. xD I noticed that the 5 point talent for the shield after the 3-second heal is kinda crap at low levels though.

I did do Warden only for PVP/tank heal in a dungeon. It turned out that I had to rely on Sent/Purifier casts to keep the tank up, Deluge with the other HoTs wasn't keeping up. Again, this is only around level 20. :p
 
Point in case, the compounding of the HOTs and Deluge is amazing when you have almost 1000 SP. Due to compounding % added to heals from the 36 + up to 51 points, makes for a very high bonus to the heals... BUT I would like to point out that as you said all the % of your spell power is poor at lower levels mainly because the Spell power is so low up front. It really does not become very effective until much later on.

60% of 150 is useless even at the level of 20, however the 60% of 900 is nice even for level 50.

As for having 1 spec for each, I would wager its more like 2 specs. Many people will not be effective at all 3, but will be much more effective with 2 of them.

I do however have 2 specs. One 51 Warden spec and one split between Sent and Purifier. I do not see as much reason to go deep into Purifier as I do going deep in Sent, deep Purifier only provides a single target channeled heal and 1 other shiled that does not seem as strong as the deeper Sent spec provides. HOWEVER I know some poelpe will be effective with all 3, I just do not see myself getting the chance to try it out, ie a healer who allows someone to die is attacked in chat almost instantly. I have had one major example of this already.
 
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