Anybody tried an all-cleric team?

[lofblad]

Did anybody try an all-cleric team, with a Justicar tank? I read something about it in another thread, but I don't know if it was a suggestion rather than somebody who tried it.

[Gomotron]

I have tried it.

Justicar tank works OK and I have read on other sites about how they are capable of tanking raid mobs. My personal experience is that it seems to work OK but you have to outwear/outlevel an instance for a reliable smooth run every time. If you are lower level or same level, I tend to wipe a lot. Once you are 2-3 levels above, you'll do better.

However, I found that once you reach the 30's, I had a hard time with DPS and boss mechanics. Honestly, I am a below-average skill boxer, so you might have more success.

[Gomotron]

Oh and FYI. I ran a group with 4 Wardens. Stacked HoT's are da bomb! Hard to deal with burst on the Justicar though. That was the main reason for wipe-age, once the Justicar went down it was game over.

[lofblad]

Cool, nice tips! I was thinking of going with a group of three Cabalists, which seem like a lot of AoE damage. Might be fun. I'll probably go with a dedicated healer, it's hard in instances, at least at these lower levels to keep the tank alive.

I'm 35 now with my initial group btw. Warrior tank, Cleric healer, Rogue utility, 2x Mage dps.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I have a 5-cleric team at 29. Mine are Justicar/shaman with a couple points in druid for the healy pets. Problem with 'em is the group heals are kinda like Chloro: the DPS-while-healing doesn't stack for the whole group at the same time. You can redirect all healing to the tank but as soon as you start taking heavy AoE damage, the group just falls apart.

Back to my rogue group. :P

[Gomotron]

Ugh, are you running Riftstalker and 4 bards?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Eventually 4 ranger/bard split specs and 1 full bard spec. My newbie (26 at the moment) will be a ranger/bard split spec. Basically, gives you full pet/DPS abilities while getting most of the healing-via-cadence/Coda of Restoration from Bard.

[Gomotron]

Interesting.

Are you having your bard tank? Pets tank? I'd love to see some vids of you boxing an instance. I just can't see that group working... I don't mean to imply that I don't believe you, I just mean that my Warrior tank seems a little squishy when fighting 3+ mobs in instances. I am amazed that you are able to get it done with your group.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

4x pigs does pretty good with all the healing the bard subspec puts out. I suspect it won't scale well enough to do expert dungeons but for normals it works pretty well so far. I'd record an instance vid but with 4x 47s in the group, it'll be a while before i'm doing at-level instances again.

[Gomotron]

Cool. Thanks for the info. I think I am going to try EQ2 again just for kicks. But I'll keep Rift in mind if I don't care for EQ2.

[JamieW]

I've been leveling up a trio of clerics (they're 36 now). I was doing Inquisitor/Cabalist/Sentinel for a large amount of their leveling. I tried Warden for HOTs, but the healing wasn't good enough with just 3, whereas a burst heal from 3 sentinels could top off any 1 character pretty well.

With the recent changes, and as the levels have passed I have gone more heavily into Cabalist and swapped Sentinel out for Justicar. Take Inquisitor at least high enough to get Soul Drain. Get Justicar high enough to get the AE insta-heal with Conviction, and the conviction builders. Then Cabalist to get good ranged AE/damage bonuses. With the armor/endurance shield from Inquisitor and the survivability buffs from Inquisitor, I can take some damage. With AE pulls, the Justicar heals pretty well from just my outgoing damage, but I can always throw ae heals if needed by using some life-based abilities to work up a conviction. I also got Harsh Discipline and Aggressive Renewal from Inquisitor to help regen power and give myself a nice health boost mid-fight if necessary.

I do swap out to an Inquisitor/Justicar/Sentinel role when I am going into a big single-target fight (like the big-game MOBs in Scarwood), so that I can have additional healing on-demand from Sentinal, and since I don't need all of the AE.

I would say the most disappointing part of the clerics, even more-so with the recent Cabalist changes, is the amount of ground-target based spells. I'm used to DAOC where you can /gset <range> a ground target and then /gassist to pick it up on your other teammates. Unfortunately with Rift, trying to manage ground targets is a bit more than I like to do... which made the top-tree Inquisitor spell no fun for me.

[lofblad]

Did you try ISBoxer for those ground based spells? ISBoxer has a pretty nifty feature for that, worth to try out.

[JamieW]

I normally run ISBoxer for my setup.

I've used the mouse repeater a bit, but in the heat of battle, I prefer to not have to try and choose a ground target manually. If there's some better way to bring it in with button-presses, I'm all-ears. If you're just referring to the mouse repeater ability, I've tried that and do not care much for it.

[Oatboat]

Clerics are fun.

I'd run Inquisitor/warden for pvp and then switch one to tank for 50 rifts and it worked just fine. I didnt like the melee cleric builds i stuck purely with casters. Cabalists are okay but i found they werent as useful as Inq.


my clerics back when i played

http://youtu.be/eVzg45Gh1h8

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My desire when doing my multibox groups has been to have enough passive healing while DPSing to survive instances. So far, the clerics and bards have been the only fully successful groups at this, though the bards are the only ones that reliably survive the final encounters of zone invasions. My cleric group can heal passively enough to keep my justicar tank alive but there isn't enough group passive healing to keep the other 4 alive. I'll admit I haven't tried inquisitor builds because they seemed too squishy. I may have to retry them with a different spec and see how it goes.

The other consideration is extended battles. My clerics were having mana issues, though I think a split spec where I had two of the mana regen abilities would probably solve much of that. My bards have zero issues with mana, even moreso once one of them got the -12% ability cost aura.

[Oatboat]

Inqs get a mana drain that restores about 50-75% of mana channeled.

[JamieW]

The Aggressive Renewal channeled damage ability in Inquisitor fills my power bar up about 75% of the way if it is allowed to channel for the full time. That being available every 30sec along with the power reduction ability in inquisitor will keep you from being power hungry. The Harsh Discipline channeled damage ability is much less useful in healing, but it does help a bit. Being on a 1min cooldown also makes it less useful. I put them both in a macro with shards of light (Sentinel) or distorted shadows (Cabalist) as the fallthrough channeled ability depending on the build. The armor buff in inquisitor also helps keep you from being so squishy with a nice endurance and armor factor buff.

But, I agree, for boss battles, the passive healing available in a cleric build isn't enough. However, their access to effective instant active heals more than make up for that, depending on the numbers in your team. I have a much easier time with rift bonus bosses in my trio of clerics than I had when leveling up my trio of rogues. But I'd assume that scaling up to a full group, the passive healing capability of the bards would work good enough.

[Oatboat]

muahahah beat ya to it :)

I think I'm going to resub this upcoming week during the 7 day free play week.

[Apatheist]

Eventually 4 ranger/bard split specs and 1 full bard spec. My newbie (26 at the moment) will be a ranger/bard split spec. Basically, gives you full pet/DPS abilities while getting most of the healing-via-cadence/Coda of Restoration from Bard.

My question is, what's your DPS like with bards? I imagine 4x cadence spam would make you very hard to kill, even in PvP, but while you're using cadence you're doing next to no damage. So you can really only heal *or* DPS, not both. If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to have 1-2 dedicated healers and 2-3 dedicated DPS?

I'm only going by what I've read, though, I haven't actually played yet. Downloading it this weekend and I can't decide between a tank (Justicar) and either 4x chloro, 4x bard or a mixed group. Seems like stacking classes in this game loses a lot since many heals/buffs don't stack.

[cichard]

i use warrior tank 3 mages and a cleric now and it works out great i run a chloro as full time healer and a inquiscar for support and 2 mage dps every expert is cake with this set up if anything needs more healing i put 1 of the dps mages to party aoe healing (lifegiving veil) while the other chloro is tank healing (lifebound veil)

[Apatheist]

i use warrior tank 3 mages and a cleric now and it works out great i run a chloro as full time healer and a inquiscar for support and 2 mage dps every expert is cake with this set up if anything needs more healing i put 1 of the dps mages to party aoe healing (lifegiving veil) while the other chloro is tank healing (lifebound veil)

Would the same setup work with clerics? I mean, if you just ran one Chloro, 4 clerics. Spec one of the clerics as a tank for PvE and you could switch the other 3 between heals and DPS, the same way you do with your other mage. I'm leaning more towards clerics over mages now, since it seems like clerics (instant heals, better passive talents to reduce damage, better armor/shieldetc) would do better for PvP.

, , , Which reminds me. What's the deal with queuing as a group for BG's in Rift? I remember reading something about a limit on how many players/characters you can queue with, but I can't find it now.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Seems like stacking classes in this game loses a lot since many heals/buffs don't stack.Except bards. Everything stacks with them so far as I can tell. That may get nerfed someday but for now there are no restrictions on codas/etc like there are with chloros and clerics. I LOVE them for rifting and invasions.

like I said, they won't scale as well as holy trinity groups end-game but I'm not caring as I'm not a raider or big PVPer.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My question is, what's your DPS like with bards? I imagine 4x cadence spam would make you very hard to kill, even in PvP, but while you're using cadence you're doing next to no damage. So you can really only heal *or* DPS, not both..I sometimes fail to open the bonus rift stage for at-level major rifts, so yes DPS isn't uberness. I'm still not 50 so I'm still in the exploratory stages. We'll see how things go when i'm able to play again (can't really do much as I just got out of back surgery today).

[Apatheist]

I sometimes fail to open the bonus rift stage for at-level major rifts, so yes DPS isn't uberness. I'm still not 50 so I'm still in the exploratory stages. We'll see how things go when i'm able to play again (can't really do much as I just got out of back surgery today).

I just updated Rift to 1.4 today (I had it installed from about a month after release, when it worked fine) and I can't even run the client now. As soon as I enter my login details and click play, the client screen turns black and stops responding :mad:

Been through Trions entire support page and tried everything from updating drivers to tweaking the game .cfg file and nothing fixes it.

[JamieW]

I sometimes fail to open the bonus rift stage for at-level major rifts, so yes DPS isn't uberness. I'm still not 50 so I'm still in the exploratory stages. We'll see how things go when i'm able to play again (can't really do much as I just got out of back surgery today).

My experience with 3x Bards leveling to 50 was this:

3x Ranger/MM until about level 12 or 14. This was before they nerfed Motif or restoration to be much further up in bard spec. Switch to 3x Bard/Ranger.

3x Bard/Ranger until about level 34 or so. The pet stopped leveling with me, and the DPS experience was getting worse. I ran in some warfronts in the late 20s and basically used cadence almost all the time, with motifs cycling through. It was fun, and damage was decent. When I hit the 30s, I stopped being able to get through dps checks on rifts for bonus stages, and leveling was slowing down. I swapped to Saboteur.

3x Saboteur/Bard to 50. I kept enough bard to have Motif of Regeneration and Cadence upgraded for heals. But my primary rotation consisted of loading up charges and detonating. I focused on range of charges/bombs, and making sure I had the AE bombs/charges upgraded as much as I could. I also had Riftstalker in there for the extra survivability at times, but ended with MM or Ranger as the 3rd soul, so that damage was calculated off of the bow damage vs. 1-h weapon damage. Leveling with these guys was very quick, I could ae whole groups of enemies down rather well, and could still heal myself up rather well. I had difficulty with bonus stage rift bosses with these, but I'm sure if I'd gone to 5x characters, they would've been no problem.

All in all, the rogues were fun to level up, and much more survivable and had a lot more dps than the 3x warriors I leveled up previously (that is, after the 1.1 nerfs to reaver).

My 3x cleric team, however, is now level 43 and the damage continues to scale well. Survivability is not an issue yet. I regularly open full bonus stages on rifts and drop the boss without an issue. AE dps is even better than with the Sabo rogues, and I get good heals while doing ae damage, rather than having to spend time using cadence. All in all, the clerics are probably the most fun out of the 3 classes I've leveled thus far.

[Apatheist]

My experience with 3x Bards leveling to 50 was this:

Great info! That's exactly what I wanted to hear. I was already leaning towards Clerics. I'm thinking cleric x4 plus one mage, now. Mixing in a mage gives me access to all the great archon buffs, and the option to go either Chloro heals or add another ranged DPS for PvE.

For PvP, 4x cab/inq/x and a stormcaller? You could really rip up big groups of enemies very quickly. Check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRKA6pfuEg8. If a coordinated group can do this, I don't see why a multiboxer with control over all 5 characters couldn't do even better. The precice control means, if you got really good at it, you could even precast soul drain before using maelstrom. As soon as they landed they'd have a massive storm and 4 crit soul drains in the face. :D

Here's a question. Are archon or bard buffs worth sacrificing an extra cleric for? Or would I simply be better off going 5x cleric? And have you tried multiple chloros?

[jca]

Can't speak for PVE b/c I'm more PVP focused, but for PVP I don't think you can beat an all cleric team. Durable as hell and you can go 12 into Warden, Justicar and/or Sentinel for AoE heals . With a minimal point investment they won't be the strongest heals, but multiply them time x toons and they're pretty strong, plus keeps you from putting all your eggs in one basket. Single most important thing for pvp though, 12 points in Inquisitor gets you Perseverance. That addresses a multiboxer's biggest Achilles heal. As an added bonus, they probably have the simplest class mechanics which means less micromanagement.

[Apatheist]

Just thought I'd come back and give you guys an update. I ended up rolling 4x cleric, 1x mage. Just hit level 30 today, it was going really quick with the bonus XP this week.

1 - Justicar tank
2 - Chloro
3x - Inq/Just/Sent

I started out with one of the clerics as pure healer spec, but I found that as soon as I got reparation and the important talents on my chloro, my healer specced cleric was doing almost nothing, so I specced him back to Inq. I set up mapped keys for each ability and a hotkey with 4-5 steps with delays between each step. Sort of like a fake castsequence. Put Healing Breath on round-robin, so it pops a 450-500 point instant heal on the tank every 2-3 seconds, plus whatever the chloro is healing for. So far I've cleared Realm of the Fae, Iron Tomb, Darkening Deeps, Deepstrike Mines, Foul Cascade, all at equal or lower level (as soon as the random dungeon queue started putting me there, since that's all I've been doing to level :P)

Having fun so far!

[leroyreborn]

Just thought I'd come back and give you guys an update. I ended up rolling 4x cleric, 1x mage. Just hit level 30 today, it was going really quick with the bonus XP this week.

1 - Justicar tank
2 - Chloro
3x - Inq/Just/Sent

I started out with one of the clerics as pure healer spec, but I found that as soon as I got reparation and the important talents on my chloro, my healer specced cleric was doing almost nothing, so I specced him back to Inq. I set up mapped keys for each ability and a hotkey with 4-5 steps with delays between each step. Sort of like a fake castsequence. Put Healing Breath on round-robin, so it pops a 450-500 point instant heal on the tank every 2-3 seconds, plus whatever the chloro is healing for. So far I've cleared Realm of the Fae, Iron Tomb, Darkening Deeps, Deepstrike Mines, Foul Cascade, all at equal or lower level (as soon as the random dungeon queue started putting me there, since that's all I've been doing to level :P)

Having fun so far!

i got a team like this. hit 50 the other day. have not tryed experts yet but cleared everything else np

[Apatheist]

I haven't PvP'd at all yet, we'll see how that goes :P

[Apatheist]

I was bored today and decided to play around with specs. I've been full Inq until now, switched it around and went 11 just, 2 inq, rest in cab. Two points in Inq just for sanction heretic, which works really well in the cabalist rotation. I have to say, this spec is much more effective for boxing, has equal or better single target DPS and vastly superior AoE and utility. Inq single target DPS is technically higher, but from a multiboxing viewpoint, that's balanced by the fact that the cabby rotation is much easier to "macro" efficiently through ISboxer. The large amount of short cooldown abilities work brilliantly utilizing the "pressed or released" function in keymaps, with Shadows Touch or Tyranny as a filler nuke.

There's also the issue of survivability, but really, as a multiboxer you're never going to be able to micromanage single knockbacks, snares, ground targeted CC that some Inq specs have access to, so I think it's a moot point. Our survivability in PvP comes from stacking heals and burst damage, which the justicar/cabalist build has plenty of.

[jca]

I was bored today and decided to play around with specs. I've been full Inq until now, switched it around and went 11 just, 2 inq, rest in cab. Two points in Inq just for sanction heretic, which works really well in the cabalist rotation. I have to say, this spec is much more effective for boxing, has equal or better single target DPS and vastly superior AoE and utility. Inq single target DPS is technically higher, but from a multiboxing viewpoint, that's balanced by the fact that the cabby rotation is much easier to "macro" efficiently through ISboxer. The large amount of short cooldown abilities work brilliantly utilizing the "pressed or released" function in keymaps, with Shadows Touch or Tyranny as a filler nuke.

There's also the issue of survivability, but really, as a multiboxer you're never going to be able to micromanage single knockbacks, snares, ground targeted CC that some Inq specs have access to, so I think it's a moot point. Our survivability in PvP comes from stacking heals and burst damage, which the justicar/cabalist build has plenty of.

Gotta disagree with you, but in a nice way ;)

I have 5-man and 10-man cleric teams. Nobody main heals, but all have 12 points in either Justicar, Warden or Senticar. I then go 12-14 into Cab on everyone and the rest in Inq. 12 gets you all the basic tools in cab. For a single toon, 12 points in cab would be a waste, but time x toons, the AoE potential is huge. Even with x toons though, your single target burst is awful with cab.

Don't short-change stacked CoB's and Soul Drains. Add those 12 in cab to that and an Inquistor heavy spec still has huge AoE and much much better single target burst, much better survivablity and cc. Round robin Excommunicate into your dps spam and melee will never touch you. Those knockbacks also interupt casting. Multiple Inq. gives you an always available AoE fear and more importantly, fear protection from Perseverance. Also, Tyranny + Bound fate pretty much drops any group. A couple LaDA proc'd BoD's will pretty much drop anyone single target.

[crowdx]

So what are people using for healing if they are using a cleric for main heals? I have been struggling with heals on my pally main tank using a cleric warden/sentinel/purifier build with warden as the main soul.
Any advice?

[Krago]

So what are people using for healing if they are using a cleric for main heals? I have been struggling with heals on my pally main tank using a cleric warden/sentinel/purifier build with warden as the main soul.
Any advice?

I have been using a Cleric Purifier/Sentinel/Warden 51/3/12 ( I believe, would need to double check on the last two souls ).

I have been using Alge's mouseoverui click heals and I also have a dedicated key with a healing rotation for buffs and heals for my tank ( was pally/reaver/warlord, now he is void knight 51 points ).

I also have a chloro in my group but was wanting to move him to pure DPS no healing but I have an issue with ISB.

It has somehow remembered a key binding I setup and now cannot get rid of, so my healing is all screwed up.

May have to crawl through the XML files tonight.

I want to validate that I can just use my cleric to heal regular level 50 dungeons.

[crowdx]

I have been using a Cleric Purifier/Sentinel/Warden 51/3/12 ( I believe, would need to double check on the last two souls ).

I have been using Alge's mouseoverui click heals and I also have a dedicated key with a healing rotation for buffs and heals for my tank ( was pally/reaver/warlord, now he is void knight 51 points ).

I also have a chloro in my group but was wanting to move him to pure DPS no healing but I have an issue with ISB.

It has somehow remembered a key binding I setup and now cannot get rid of, so my healing is all screwed up.

May have to crawl through the XML files tonight.

I want to validate that I can just use my cleric to heal regular level 50 dungeons.

This seems a similar setup to what I am doing, I am also using Alge's mouseover method in ISBoxer to select the toon I want to heal. It seems at level 26 my tank seems take too much damage and so the warden has problems keeping up on the heals.
Are you using the dedicated heal for the tank as a spam key?

[Smedbox]

Hey guys, I'm going to 5-box a full Cleric team on October 15 (from level 1) for 24 hours straight during Rift's Extra Life event. I'm hoping to clear the first dungeon within that time, and I'm going to live-blog the whole thing. Check out the web site at http://boxofchocolate.smedis.com/.

My thinking was a pure tank (Justicar/Shaman), a pure healer (Sentinel/Warden), and 3X dps (Cabalist/inquisitor). Do you have any links to good specs at http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html? Any suggestions on different specs than what I've planned? I want everyone ranged except for the tank.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

At those levels, I did my team as 2 druid, rest justicar and just melee'd everything down. The pets will keep you healed for most stuff (except the harder invasion bosses that AoE all over the place) and your AoE heal will fill in for the bosses in Iron Tomb (or whatever the guardian noobie instance is called).

[Smedbox]

I want everyone ranged except perhaps for the main for FTL. After the event, I'm planning on keeping the team and continuing them to 50, but a leisurely pace, so I'd appreciate level 30, 40 and 50 spec links as well. :)

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Just curious: what does spec have to do with FTL? Maybe a more poignant question: FTL = Focusless-Targetless-Leaderless?

[Smedbox]

I prefer ranged because positioning is not a factor. In many cases, facing direction is not a factor either (you don't have to face any particular opponent to DOT or Debuff them). And there's no question that ranged is preferred in PvP. Since you don't gain anything by going melee, I see no reason to choose that approach when there are ranged alternatives available. Follow The Leader is my preferred method of targeting and movement, allowing for a much greater margin in error (computer performance and network latency). FTL does not mean that it's difficult to switch to a new leader. That can be just a keypress away and you're on the go again.

[Zub]

I think you both have a different definition of FTL

[MiRai]

FTL is a type of targeting system and has nothing to do with spec or anything like that. As Ugh stated it stands
for Focusless, Targetless, Leaderless.

http://isboxer.com/wiki/WoW:FTL

I realize the URL has "WoW" in it but the page itself has general FTL information.

[Apatheist]

Gotta disagree with you, but in a nice way ;)

I have 5-man and 10-man cleric teams. Nobody main heals, but all have 12 points in either Justicar, Warden or Senticar. I then go 12-14 into Cab on everyone and the rest in Inq. 12 gets you all the basic tools in cab. For a single toon, 12 points in cab would be a waste, but time x toons, the AoE potential is huge. Even with x toons though, your single target burst is awful with cab.

Don't short-change stacked CoB's and Soul Drains. Add those 12 in cab to that and an Inquistor heavy spec still has huge AoE and much much better single target burst, much better survivablity and cc. Round robin Excommunicate into your dps spam and melee will never touch you. Those knockbacks also interupt casting. Multiple Inq. gives you an always available AoE fear and more importantly, fear protection from Perseverance. Also, Tyranny + Bound fate pretty much drops any group. A couple LaDA proc'd BoD's will pretty much drop anyone single target.

I'm still undecided, but I feel like Cabalist has more reliable burst and doesn't rely on either GTAE or PBAE spells to AoE nuke. That's my biggest gripe with Inquisitor. I try to go at least 20 points into Cab if I'm sub-speccing. You knock the cooldown off tyranny and you get an instant full mana heal, plus all the passive buffs.

Also, something I've noticed, I much prefer 12 points into Warden for heal stacking. Justicar is great in PvE, but in PvP it has a lot of flaws. First, you have to nuke to build convictions before you can heal. Not a huge deal for Inq, but for Cabalist it's a pain sometimes. Second, I've found reparation not to be that great. Targets tend to die so fast when I single target them (Cabalist, ST+Obliterate pretty much globals anyone) that I don't really have a chance to passive heal all that much. Also, it's very easily purged out. A well placed AoE purge can really ruin your ability to heal until you rebuff, if you even notice to rebuff in the middle of a fight. With Warden, my flood is ticking for around ~150-200 (x5) and it's consistent, no cooldown and available when you need it. Plus you can single HoT stack ontop of that with spray. It's much more reliable healing than the reactive effects from Justicar.

There are good and bad points to both Inq and Cab. At the moment I'm leaning towards, http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10eod.Vt0z.V0VVx.Exobxx0q

Most of the best parts of Inq. Solid ranged AoE, passive buffs and an extra mana cooldown from cabalist. AoE HoT, extra knockback, 10% extra instant damage and a trinket from Warden.

With Corporeal Punishment up (which it always is, when you're spamming tyranny) you actually get 40% bonus damage with tyranny using this spec. 40% is higher than you would get going furhter into Cabalist for Negation of Life, which is where most of Cabalists burst comes from. If you pop off a few tyranny's first, then use Bound Fate, I've seen some pretty crazy numbers. Enough to rival soul drain, and BF is ranged.

[Apatheist]

Double post :P

PS,

Starting my rogue group now to compare their mobility. The only issue I have with clerics is their lack of ability to DPS effectively while running around.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

With Warden, my flood is ticking for around ~150-200 (x5) and it's consistent, no cooldown and available when you need it. Plus you can single HoT stack ontop of that with spray. It's much more reliable healing than the reactive effects from Justicar.

Hmm...I may have to give that spec a try when I get bored with my rogues. The AoE healing (especially during elite invasion boss fights) was my biggest gripe about my justicar builds. This might be enough to keep me happy.

[Smedbox]

That looks very interesting, Apatheist. Looks like 5 of those should be great for questing and PvP. Then for expert rifts and dungeons, I could switch out one of them to a Justicar role and possibly another one for main heals and support?

[Smedbox]

One thing though: It seems like it could be useful to have the cabalist "Dark Harbor" resistance buff. If the justicar tank has 20 points in shaman, he could get "Heart of the Frozen Sea" for a stacking resistance buff, and "Courage of the Eagle" for a wisdom buff for everyone. It seems like that wisdom buff could be really neat for an all-cleric group.

[jca]

I tried having all my toons spec'd 12 into Warden, but my experience was that those stacked Healing Floods simply weren't as good in practice as they seemed on paper and they suck up mana like nobody's business. Keeping the single-target HoT's up on everyone just isn't practical unless you're using a designated heal-only toon. I now keep a 4/4/2 mix of Ward/Just/Sent as my healing sub-specs.

I do like the build above. I've played with the idea of going a few more points into Cab. but so far I haven't been able to justify the lost points in Inq. I still want to play with a bit more in Cab., but my gut tells me that 20 in cab. gimps your Inq. too much w/o enough payoff. I'm always open to be wrong though.

LaDA is easy to use by adding a jump to your key-down and making sure your BoD macro has all the other instants following it. I'll wait until I have at least 2 procs and then use this.

Regarding Justicar though, I think everyone is grossly underestimating the power of DoL. This is the best AoE heal in the game. Period. Building convictions is a non-issue as your justicars are offensive toons and build them quickly as a normal part of their play, especially if BoL and SH from Inq. is part of their spec. With 4 Inquisicars in my 10-man team, a single DoL x 4 will bring any toon from almost dead to full health and top everyone else off in the process. That's one GCD and instant.

Btw, all this is from a pvp perspective.

[Apatheist]

With 4 Inquisicars in my 10-man team, a single DoL x 4 will bring any toon from almost dead to full health and top everyone else off in the process. That's one GCD and instant..

Warden and Justicar are roughly interchangeable (12 into Warden or 11 into Just). In my experience, the healing output is fairly similar. Justicars burst more healing, Warden has more reliable top-up healing. I keep flood up almost constantly while I'm actually fighting and if someone gets focused enough to outdamage the flood ticks, I'll toss a spray on that target with click healing.

Justicar can be good, I just get really irritated with having to rebuff constantly in PvP before I can heal, with people always purging me.

With primary Inquisitor and 20 subbed into Cabalist, I never have mana issues. Aggressive renewal and vile power are both on 60 second cooldowns and give close enough to full mana.

The only thing you're really losing from Inq by putting 20 into Cab is the passive bonus to vex and sanction heretic. It doesn't effect your primary damage abilities at all. Trading circle of oblivion for no cooldown tyranny and bound fate is a good deal.

By the way, is it just me, or does bound fate hit ridiculously hard? My gear is terrible (I've just hit 50, still in mostly level ~40 blues and a few quest items). I've seen crits up to like 2200-2300+ with corporal punishment up. That's more than my BoD hits for, and it's AoE.

[jca]

You're right about being susceptible to purges. That's probably the only big drawback of Justicar sub-specs. At the same time, to really make a significant different, everyone has to be purging your toons and that means they're not doing damage. Most things just don't live long enough to purge enough off enough toons to be that effective with it. Especially if you stack junk buffs as well.

Don't get me wrong. I love Healing Flood. It's a great, low-maintenance way to keep everyone topped off. The big problem though is burst. PvP is all about burst damage and to counter that you need burst healing. Healing Flood, even stacked and with Healing Spray, won't save a toon that's getting focused and in immediate danger of dying in the next 2 gcd's. Combine them though with an instant bit of burst healing to let the toon live at least a couple more ticks and it's incredibly effective. A big drawback of Healing Flood though is that it only effects up to 5 toons. That means that while you can keep it up on your own group it contributes nothing to the rest of your team in WF's. Both the Sentinel and Justicar AoE heals can hit up to 10 toons.

I do find the points to get the vex and sanction bonuses to be absolutely worth it. Maybe having a larger team makes a difference here, but spreading stacked vex around is not trivial damage. I've had people dies from just that if they're not getting heals. That also provides a low-grade HoT as well. Sanction though is a beast + a DoT + Instant. I place a lot of value on instant casts and sanction is pretty important to be effective there.

The problem with instant Tyranny is that it really isn't instant. You still have to wait for decays to build. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that the talent for reducing Tyranny's CD doesn't effect Bound Fate?



And yeah, stacked Bound Fate's always make me giggle like a little girl. It hits incredibly hard.

[Apatheist]

Justicar AoE heals can hit up to 10

This is a good point. It does make us much more useful in bigger fights. Maybe what I need to do is use the video feed function and set up a little mini buff window for each of my toons, so I can see more easily when I need to replace cavalier.


That looks very interesting, Apatheist. Looks like 5 of those should be great for questing and PvP. Then for expert rifts and dungeons, I could switch out one of them to a Justicar role and possibly another one for main heals and support?

This is pretty much what I do. I leveled 4 clerics and a chloro/archon (which I later changed to chloro/lock) but I really didn't like the way the mage sync'd with the clerics, so I leveled a 5th cleric solo and I much prefer it. For instances, I change one of my clerics to Justicar and one to Warden and I haven't found anything I wasn't able to clear yet. 4x DoL is basically a tank cooldown . . . with no cooldown. If you ever get in trouble, pop DoL and the whole group is instantly full again. I much prefer 11 points into Justicar in PvE, because you can always rely on having conviction.




The problem with instant Tyranny is that it really isn't instant. You still have to wait for decays to build. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that the talent for reducing Tyranny's CD doesn't effect Bound Fate?

It doesn't effect BF, but it reduces the cooldown on tyranny and obliterate. Tyranny you can spam nonstop, but after the first hit, you only have time to build up one decay between GCD's, so subsequent tyranny's hit for a bit less. It's still nice damage, though, for an instant spammable AoE. It's like 300 for tyranny itself plus around 100 per stack of decay (up to 3 max). Decay builds up at around 1 per 1.5 sec.

[jca]

Oh, one thing I wanted to add.

Don't overlook CoO. I don't like ground targeted spells and used to overlook this one. It's not a replacement for BF, Tyr and SD, it's a complement. Both BF and SD have cast times during which you're not doing damage and people have a chance to get topped off from HoT's, etc. CoB starts doing damage immediately when you start channeling. While it's easily healable when a single toons casts CoO, stacking them makes a death zone for people trying to get on you.

I am fascinated with the Cab tree though and wish I could free up some more points for it. I'm always playing with specs though, so who knows, I may give a more cab-heavy spec a spin for a while.

[Apatheist]

Oh, one thing I wanted to add.

Don't overlook CoO. I don't like ground targeted spells and used to overlook this one. It's not a replacement for BF, Tyr and SD, it's a complement. Both BF and SD have cast times during which you're not doing damage and people have a chance to get topped off from HoT's, etc. CoB starts doing damage immediately when you start channeling. While it's easily healable when a single toons casts CoO, stacking them makes a death zone for people trying to get on you.

I've tried using it, it's just so easy to interrupt/knockback/silence. It also has issues targeting with camera angles, using it at range effectively is iffy at best. It's fairly simple to plant it ontop of your group, but I'd rather use that time for a SoulDrain or knockbacks if it comes to that. With 10 clerics t might be decent against melee rushes, with only 5 it doesn't do enough damage to keep people off me.

It's annoying that Rift doesn't give you the option to save camera angle settings.

[jca]

You're probably right that it's a scaling difference. 5 vs 10 does change some dynamics.

You have got me thinking though. I'd always assumed that spamming tyranny without full decays just wasn't very effective. Cab though is one of the few cleric specs I haven't played to a high level one-boxing so maybe my impression is wrong. I'll play with it a bit, just have to figure out what I could stand losing in Inq.

[Smedbox]

Based on what you've said, I'm thinking of this spec for levelling 5x clerics:

Level 10: 3 Inquisitor, 4 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vz.m.h
Level 20: 11 Inquisitor, 9 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vz.Vzc.E0o
Level 30: 11 Inquisitor, 21 Cabalist, 8 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vd.VzVVx.E0o
Level 40: 21 Inquisitor, 21 Cabalist, 11 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vuzo.VzVVx.ExobM0o
Level 50: 33 Inquisitor, 21 Cabalist, 12 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.VuMo.VzVVx.ExobMxkq

Modifications to Apatheist's spec is:
- Swapped out Warden for Justicar.
- Added Cabalist "Dark Harbor" buff.
- Removed Inquisitor "Life and Death Concord" because I don't want to manage random instas on all characters.
- Added Inquisitor "Clinging Spirit".
- Added Inquisitor "Determination" and "Bewilder" for more CC.

This is the Justicar tank spec I'm thinking of for dungeons:
Level 50 Tank: 38 Justicar, 20 Shaman, 8 Inquisitor: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rnd.qhRsVesdoo.VedzzM.Vh

It has 20 points in Shaman for the Wisdom buff, which seems nice for an all-Cleric team.

Comments?

[leroyreborn]

Based on what you've said, I'm thinking of this spec for levelling 5x clerics:

Level 10: 3 Inquisitor, 4 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vz.m.h
Level 20: 11 Inquisitor, 9 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vz.Vzc.E0o
Level 30: 11 Inquisitor, 21 Cabalist, 8 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vd.VzVVx.E0o
Level 40: 21 Inquisitor, 21 Cabalist, 11 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.Vuzo.VzVVx.ExobM0o
Level 50: 33 Inquisitor, 21 Cabalist, 12 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.VuMo.VzVVx.ExobMxkq

Modifications to Apatheist's spec is:
- Swapped out Warden for Justicar.
- Added Cabalist "Dark Harbor" buff.
- Removed Inquisitor "Life and Death Concord" because I don't want to manage random instas on all characters.
- Added Inquisitor "Clinging Spirit".
- Added Inquisitor "Determination" and "Bewilder" for more CC.

This is the Justicar tank spec I'm thinking of for dungeons:
Level 50 Tank: 38 Justicar, 20 Shaman, 8 Inquisitor: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rnd.qhRsVesdoo.VedzzM.Vh

It has 20 points in Shaman for the Wisdom buff, which seems nice for an all-Cleric team.

Comments?

been running my cleric tank in couple of experts and think with that many points in shaman you will end up being to soft. mien of leadership gives you 1% of armor for every point in justicar. i'm running 51 justicar 8 shaman 6 inquisitor. by having 51 points over 38 gives you. 14% more armor. and found i went oom with out commitment. but the great thing with rift is you can make a spec that works for what you want. just wanted to share what i had found out

[Smedbox]

been running my cleric tank in couple of experts and think with that many points in shaman you will end up being to soft. mien of leadership gives you 1% of armor for every point in justicar. i'm running 51 justicar 8 shaman 6 inquisitor. by having 51 points over 38 gives you. 14% more armor. and found i went oom with out commitment. but the great thing with rift is you can make a spec that works for what you want. just wanted to share what i had found out

Good point, I didn't realize the boost in armor Mien of Leadership gave. With the shaman build I was thinking of improving spell power instead to increase damage (+passive healing), dodge, block and parry - as well as increasing DPS and Healing from the other clerics in the party...

Regarding mana, I'm hoping the crit-heavy shaman build would give about the same mana regen with "Endless Winter', but I may be wrong about that?

[leroyreborn]

Good point, I didn't realize the boost in armor Mien of Leadership gave. With the shaman build I was thinking of improving spell power instead to increase damage (+passive healing), dodge, block and parry - as well as increasing DPS and Healing from the other clerics in the party...

Regarding mana, I'm hoping the crit-heavy shaman build would give about the same mana regen with "Endless Winter', but I may be wrong about that?

not sure on the mana. but one way to find out. try it worst would be have to respec to some thing else

[Smedbox]

I'm trying to do as much of the planning ahead of time - I'm going to do the 24-hour Extra Life event and I don't want to spend too much time respeccing and testing during the event... :) On the other hand, I may not reach many dungeons and certainly not level 50 so the tank spec won't matter too much.

But I could certainly remove two points from Inquisitor and move them to Justicar. I could get 3 pts in Commitment and 40 pts total.

[Apatheist]

You're probably right that it's a scaling difference. 5 vs 10 does change some dynamics.

You have got me thinking though. I'd always assumed that spamming tyranny without full decays just wasn't very effective. Cab though is one of the few cleric specs I haven't played to a high level one-boxing so maybe my impression is wrong. I'll play with it a bit, just have to figure out what I could stand losing in Inq.

With 10 Cabalists, I'm pretty sure you could win Port Scion with nothing but tyranny and DoL spam.


Based on what you've said, I'm thinking of this spec for levelling 5x clerics:

Your first goals with a Cleric group should be 6 points in Justicar, since salvation does next to nothing at low levels and you have no other worthwhile heals with this spec. Next, aim for 11 in Inquisitor for aggressive renewal. I'd just keep going into inquisitor after this, picking up soul drain and the passive improvements to vex helps a more than anything else at low levels.

As for mana, the wisdom buff would help your DPS more than anything. Justicars have zero issues maintaining full mana between commitment and purpose. And, yes, 51 points into Justicar is basically a requirement for a serious tanking build. The increase in armor is huge.

Also, I'd go for as many passive buffs as possible rather than the CC options. You won't use them, especially at lower levels. You run in spamming vex on everything you can find, then hit soul drain and everything is dead. I can see an argument for removing life and death concord if you don't want to manage the procs, I'd put those points into determination and more passive buffs from Cabalist (particularly, the +3 radius on AoE's).

I'm probably going to go back to 11 points into Justicar over Warden, too. I'll miss the 10% buff to instants and the ease of running healing flood but, as jca said, the fact that DoL hits 10 targets is pretty hard to beat.

[JamieW]

I can see an argument for removing life and death concord if you don't want to manage the procs, I'd put those points into determination and more passive buffs from Cabalist (particularly, the +3 radius on AoE's).

I hadn't bothered with this particular passive buff (the additional radius on AE damage spells). With the primary AE damage from this spec being chain damage (Obliterate/Decays, Soul Drain and Bound Fate) vs. traditional AE damage (Circle of Oblivion is only one I can think of), I didn't think that it would be that great of a buff.

Anybody know for sure if the +radius passive buff helps out on the chained AE abilities?

[Apatheist]

I hadn't bothered with this particular passive buff (the additional radius on AE damage spells). With the primary AE damage from this spec being chain damage (Obliterate/Decays, Soul Drain and Bound Fate) vs. traditional AE damage (Circle of Oblivion is only one I can think of), I didn't think that it would be that great of a buff.

Anybody know for sure if the +radius passive buff helps out on the chained AE abilities?

It effects bound fate, circle of oblivion, soul drain, etc. Anything that says it hits more than one target in the tooltip.

3 yards doesn't sound like much, but when you consider the majority of AoE effects are 7 yards, it's almost 50% more range on all your AoE's.

It's even better with bound fate, since BF is a "chain"-like effect from target to target. You could potentially hit players up to 40 yards away as long as there's enough people staggered between to chain the effect. Pretty win. It also helps a lot by preventing targets running out of soul drain range before it goes off, which it's pretty easy to do.

[jca]

I've been playing with working in a bit more cab but am hitting a bit of a bump in the road. Cab just doesn't have any synergy with Justicar. I could give up my Sent sub-specs but not my Justicar's. DoL is just too good.

Perhaps I'll try 14 cab in my Inquisicar specs (which is what I'm doing now), drop the Sent sub-specs and go something like 20-24 cab in 6 Warden sub-specs.

Something else I'm wondering about. Since it's obviously a bit hard to keep track of everyone's decays, would it be worthwhile to play with only 4/5 AfD? That should make your Tyranny's line up with your decay regen. Fill in the gaps with BF and CoS. Seems like the only time that would be a problem is if you went a full 51 for SoA. Thoughts?

[jca]

For Inquisitor-heavy specs, I think not specing LaDA is a big mistake. BoD hits HARD !!! If you're spec'd 5/5 you don't really even have to monitor procs. You're pretty much guarenteed to have them at certain points in your rotations. Then just jump, pop your BoD + other instants and it's done. There's really not a lot of micromanagement involved other than making sure you don't interupt casts when you do it.

[Apatheist]

I've been playing with working in a bit more cab but am hitting a bit of a bump in the road. Cab just doesn't have any synergy with Justicar. I could give up my Sent sub-specs but not my Justicar's. DoL is just too good.

Perhaps I'll try 14 cab in my Inquisicar specs (which is what I'm doing now), drop the Sent sub-specs and go something like 20-24 cab in 6 Warden sub-specs.

Something else I'm wondering about. Since it's obviously a bit hard to keep track of everyone's decays, would it be worthwhile to play with only 4/5 AfD? That should make your Tyranny's line up with your decay regen. Fill in the gaps with BF and CoS. Seems like the only time that would be a problem is if you went a full 51 for SoA. Thoughts?

I've tried leaving tyranny with a 6 second cooldown, but most of the spells strength is being able to spam it on the move to maintain pressure. It's not really about the decay damage. Even without decay, it's like 300x5 damage per GCD. The decay bonus is just icing on the cake.

I don't find I have an issue with conviction. You still have to keep sanction on cooldown and spam bolt of judgment as your primary nuke. I set up a priority keymap to use bound fate and bolt when BF is on cooldown, since BF does better damage even on a single target.

[Apatheist]

For Inquisitor-heavy specs, I think not specing LaDA is a big mistake. BoD hits HARD !!! If you're spec'd 5/5 you don't really even have to monitor procs. You're pretty much guarenteed to have them at certain points in your rotations. Then just jump, pop your BoD + other instants and it's done. There's really not a lot of micromanagement involved other than making sure you don't interupt casts when you do it.

I have to agree. Especially in PvP. The proc buff itself lasts 60 seconds, which is amazing. You can hold onto it until you see a priority target and then just destroy them with bound fate and an instant depravity. Even with 0 crits, it's pretty much a guaranteed one-shot to remove a healer or a DPS that's giving you trouble.

[jca]

Good points. Do you find you're using Vex at all?

[Apatheist]

I spec'd 5/5 mental resilience and 2/2 contempt - so yes! I use vex sort of like a preemptive HoT. If I'm moving and there are only a few targets in range, or they're not stacked close enough for tyranny, I'll mash vex on everything before I stop and start single targeting. That way, I've got 15 seconds of a huge HoT ticking away while I burst people. Vex is actually the biggest reason I'd have trouble giving up too much in Inquisitor, even though I'd love to play around with improved maelstrom and the passive buffs to bound fate.

[jca]

I use Vex a lot myself but was wondering how it fit in with a cab-heavy rotation.

I think I can squeeze a few points to get 20 in cab, so I'm gonna give that a whirl.

[Apatheist]

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.VhMo.V0VVx.Exobxxoq

There's my "final" build. I've done a ton of testing in the last few days with a bit more in Cabalist, bit more in Inquisitor. Even tried dumping some DPS stuff and trying for 5/5 shield of faith in Justicar (not worth the huge damage loss).

This build seems the best mix of ranged AoE, healing and single burst. Also supports the rest of your warfront group really well with the DoL and procs from reparation. Took the extra point out of warden (Justicar only needs 11) and put it into determination.

[Apatheist]

I use Vex a lot myself but was wondering how it fit in with a cab-heavy rotation.

I think I can squeeze a few points to get 20 in cab, so I'm gonna give that a whirl.

Even with 5, vex does a fair chunk of damage. I imagine if you did nothing but stack 10x vex on everything in range it would be a nightmare for their healers to keep up with.

How do you find running 10 characters? Rift PvE/raid mechanics are much simpler than WoW's and most of the warfronts seem like you can clump together in a big group, unlike in WoW, where most of the objectives require splitting up into small groups.

[Smedbox]

Your first goals with a Cleric group should be 6 points in Justicar, since salvation does next to nothing at low levels and you have no other worthwhile heals with this spec. Next, aim for 11 in Inquisitor for aggressive renewal. I'd just keep going into inquisitor after this, picking up soul drain and the passive improvements to vex helps a more than anything else at low levels.

As shown in the spec progression links I posted, that's exactly what I'm doing - first going for 6 Justicar, then going for Inquisitor Aggressive Renewal. However, after that I'd like to reach spam status on Tyranny asap.

Your final spec you posted is very hard to argue against, and I'm switching to that too for level 50. :) I just regret not having the "Dark Harbor" buff - since it stacks with the Shaman resistance buff it could be pretty uber.


As for mana, the wisdom buff would help your DPS more than anything. Justicars have zero issues maintaining full mana between commitment and purpose. And, yes, 51 points into Justicar is basically a requirement for a serious tanking build. The increase in armor is huge.

After talking to people on my server, I think I'll keep the tank role at 40 Justicar for now and see what heppens. The cleric tanks there say it would be a great spec and that they love the Shaman "Jolt" spell for Justicar tanking.

Note that I didn't mean that the Shaman wisdom buff would be to primarily boost the tank - it's meant for the whole group since everyone is Wisdom-based. Basically a 5x factor on that one.

I'm now looking at this progression:

Level 10: 7 Inquisitor, 0 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.V0z..g
Level 20: 14 Inquisitor, 6 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.V0z.V0z.Eoob
Level 30: 14 Inquisitor, 20 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.V0z.V0VVx.Eoob
Level 40: 22 Inquisitor, 20 Cabalist, 11 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.VhMo.V0VVx.Exobboo
Level 50: 35 Inquisitor, 20 Cabalist, 11 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.VhMo.V0VVx.Exobxxoq

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Ho Lee Shit. Apparently I've been playing clerics wrong this whole time. That 30ish cab/inq spec with 6 justicar for the group heal is insane for rifts. Not sure how well I'll survive invasions yet. Should be a lot easier questing with this build. :D

[Smedbox]

:) What rotation did you use?

[leroyreborn]

yeah i started out and lvl warrior. maga 4x to 50 then got hucket on my cleric team. well mostly cleric got one mage in the group. but there a lot of fun and have a lot of healing passive and other wise. soul drain rules =)

[leroyreborn]

As shown in the spec progression links I posted, that's exactly what I'm doing - first going for 6 Justicar, then going for Inquisitor Aggressive Renewal. However, after that I'd like to reach spam status on Tyranny asap.

Your final spec you posted is very hard to argue against, and I'm switching to that too for level 50. :) I just regret not having the "Dark Harbor" buff - since it stacks with the Shaman resistance buff it could be pretty uber.



After talking to people on my server, I think I'll keep the tank role at 40 Justicar for now and see what heppens. The cleric tanks there say it would be a great spec and that they love the Shaman "Jolt" spell for Justicar tanking.

Note that I didn't mean that the Shaman wisdom buff would be to primarily boost the tank - it's meant for the whole group since everyone is Wisdom-based. Basically a 5x factor on that one.

I'm now looking at this progression:

Level 10: 7 Inquisitor, 0 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.V0z..g
Level 20: 14 Inquisitor, 6 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.V0z.V0z.Eoob
Level 30: 14 Inquisitor, 20 Cabalist, 6 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.V0z.V0VVx.Eoob
Level 40: 22 Inquisitor, 20 Cabalist, 11 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.VhMo.V0VVx.Exobboo
Level 50: 35 Inquisitor, 20 Cabalist, 11 Justicar: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rod.VhMo.V0VVx.Exobxxoq

not sure if you saw it or not but reparation from the Justice tree dose not other clerics with it on. but would still heal your tank if he did not buff him self with it. Righteous Mandate from 14 points in justicar is really nice to put on the tank. only have one on you at a time so no need to have more than one cleric with it really

[Smedbox]

not sure if you saw it or not but reparation from the Justice tree dose not other clerics with it on. but would still heal your tank if he did not buff him self with it. Righteous Mandate from 14 points in justicar is really nice to put on the tank. only have one on you at a time so no need to have more than one cleric with it really

Yeah I noticed that. But Reparation would be great in raids (rifts / PvP) and while I'm with just my clerics I was thinking of using it on two clerics or so. The heal from Reparation does stack on other people, right? If two clerics use it then the other three will get 2x heals?

Not sure what to do with Righteous Mandate. Only the tank will have that many points in Justicar to get it, but it seems the tank won't be overhealed very much by Salvation. It seems to me that this ability fits better on an off-tank...

[leroyreborn]

Yeah I noticed that. But Reparation would be great in raids (rifts / PvP) and while I'm with just my clerics I was thinking of using it on two clerics or so. The heal from Reparation does stack on other people, right? If two clerics use it then the other three will get 2x heals?

Not sure what to do with Righteous Mandate. Only the tank will have that many points in Justicar to get it, but it seems the tank won't be overhealed very much by Salvation. It seems to me that this ability fits better on an off-tank...

yeah every one your group with will get the healing for Reparation so it is great for rifts and the likes.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

:) What rotation did you use?

Throw all the life-based instants and Obliterate on my main single-target button.

Second button has Bound Fate, Soul Drain then tyranny spam backed up by Sanction Hereric/Bolt of Radiance in case somehow I'm out of decays.

Seems to do OK. Still not familiar enough with this to be very successful in instance runs. Seems to just blow mana like no tomorrow and justicar heals are OK but just not enough to keep the tank up in an AoE pull. I may have to setup alternate souls for instance running.

[Apatheist]

not sure if you saw it or not but reparation from the Justice tree dose not other clerics with it on. but would still heal your tank if he did not buff him self with it. Righteous Mandate from 14 points in justicar is really nice to put on the tank. only have one on you at a time so no need to have more than one cleric with it really

Reparation effects the whole group, regardless of who else has the buff. I'm not sure if the tooltip is wrong, the spell has been changed or if it's just bugged, but that was the first thing I tested when I started my Cleric team.

[Apatheist]

Throw all the life-based instants and Obliterate on my main single-target button.

Second button has Bound Fate, Soul Drain then tyranny spam backed up by Sanction Hereric/Bolt of Radiance in case somehow I'm out of decays.

Seems to do OK. Still not familiar enough with this to be very successful in instance runs. Seems to just blow mana like no tomorrow and justicar heals are OK but just not enough to keep the tank up in an AoE pull. I may have to setup alternate souls for instance running.

Single target rotation (priority system, more than a rotation) is pretty simple. Keep spiritual deficiency, sanction heretic and vex up at all times. Use your cooldowns whenever they're up (depravity procs, obliterate, nysyr's, bound fate, depending on your spec). Bolt of judgment when everything else is on CD.

AoE priority depends on your targets range. If they're staying at range, sanction heretic (vex spam is better for AoE situations, but you want to get those two convictions up in case you need to DoL) spam vex on as many targets as you can tab to while you're positioning. Bound fate followed by tyranny spam until bound fate is up again.

If the targets are close (or moving towards you, so they will be within range if you begin casting soul drain early) add soul drain after bound fate. You always want to cast bound fate before soul drain at targets approaching you, especially in PvP. Soul drain is a PBAE effect and can't be avoided by strafing behind you, so make sure you get the burst from bound fate off while you can.

To manage the rotations, I created a keymap for each individual ability in ISBoxer. For the abilities you want to have priority (pretty much everything except bolt of judgment). set them to "pressed or released". Then, create a new keymap called "Cleric single target DPS" with 2 steps. In step one, "do mapped key vex" with a 1.5 second "do not proceed to next step" delay. In step two, "do mapped key" with all of your cooldown keymaps except depravity, which you have to manage manually, and your bolt of judgement keymap last, again, 1.5 second "do not proceed" delay. Then, copy step two 8 times.

The only keymap you need a hotkey for is "Cleric single target DPS" or "Cleric tank single target threat", etc. I use an obscure key combination to call this, which I have set to toggle on my G15. Key name in the G15 is "RSI Prevention key". That leaves my standard, convenient hotkeys free to manage manually if I prefer (which I do in PvP). Spamming your DPS key will refresh vex and sanction heretic every 15 seconds, keep all your procs on cooldown and spam bolt of judgment in between.

My AoE hotkey is set up roughly the same, except that it spams sanction heretic, bound fate and tyranny while I manage vex and soul drain manually. In all of my "rotation" keymaps, I include vile power as one of the automated keymaps. Spamming this on cooldown means I rarely need to stop my rotation to cast aggressive renewal, my clerics are pretty much full mana all the time.

Similar setup for Chloromancer, Warden, Justicar. You just have to add more keymaps for abilities, obviously. What I did was set up a target action group for each class/role and set all keymaps to send to those groups, rather than to particular characters or "all other", etc. That way, if I want to switch any of my clerics to a different role, say if I'm in a rift with someone else tanking and I want an extra DPS, all I have to do is move that character from the "Cleric tanks" action group to the "Cleric DPS" group, and the same hotkey will now cause that character to use my DPS rotation instead. Because your generic "spam" key is calling keymaps rather than specific hotkeys (and only sending keystrokes to the characters in a particular target action group) you can manage your healing, tanking and DPS rotations all with a single button, which allows you to focus on movement, managing cooldowns, etc.

Wall of text much? :P

[leroyreborn]

Single target rotation (priority system, more than a rotation) is pretty simple. Keep spiritual deficiency, sanction heretic and vex up at all times. Use your cooldowns whenever they're up (depravity procs, obliterate, nysyr's, bound fate, depending on your spec). Bolt of judgment when everything else is on CD.

AoE priority depends on your targets range. If they're staying at range, sanction heretic (vex spam is better for AoE situations, but you want to get those two convictions up in case you need to DoL) spam vex on as many targets as you can tab to while you're positioning. Bound fate followed by tyranny spam until bound fate is up again.

If the targets are close (or moving towards you, so they will be within range if you begin casting soul drain early) add soul drain after bound fate. You always want to cast bound fate before soul drain at targets approaching you, especially in PvP. Soul drain is a PBAE effect and can't be avoided by strafing behind you, so make sure you get the burst from bound fate off while you can.

To manage the rotations, I created a keymap for each individual ability in ISBoxer. For the abilities you want to have priority (pretty much everything except bolt of judgment). set them to "pressed or released". Then, create a new keymap called "Cleric single target DPS" with 2 steps. In step one, "do mapped key vex" with a 1.5 second "do not proceed to next step" delay. In step two, "do mapped key" with all of your cooldown keymaps except depravity, which you have to manage manually, and your bolt of judgement keymap last, again, 1.5 second "do not proceed" delay. Then, copy step two 8 times.

The only keymap you need a hotkey for is "Cleric single target DPS" or "Cleric tank single target threat", etc. I use an obscure key combination to call this, which I have set to toggle on my G15. Key name in the G15 is "RSI Prevention key". That leaves my standard, convenient hotkeys free to manage manually if I prefer (which I do in PvP). Spamming your DPS key will refresh vex and sanction heretic every 15 seconds, keep all your procs on cooldown and spam bolt of judgment in between.

My AoE hotkey is set up roughly the same, except that it spams sanction heretic, bound fate and tyranny while I manage vex and soul drain manually. In all of my "rotation" keymaps, I include vile power as one of the automated keymaps. Spamming this on cooldown means I rarely need to stop my rotation to cast aggressive renewal, my clerics are pretty much full mana all the time.

Similar setup for Chloromancer, Warden, Justicar. You just have to add more keymaps for abilities, obviously. What I did was set up a target action group for each class/role and set all keymaps to send to those groups, rather than to particular characters or "all other", etc. That way, if I want to switch any of my clerics to a different role, say if I'm in a rift with someone else tanking and I want an extra DPS, all I have to do is move that character from the "Cleric tanks" action group to the "Cleric DPS" group, and the same hotkey will now cause that character to use my DPS rotation instead. Because your generic "spam" key is calling keymaps rather than specific hotkeys (and only sending keystrokes to the characters in a particular target action group) you can manage your healing, tanking and DPS rotations all with a single button, which allows you to focus on movement, managing cooldowns, etc.

Wall of text much? :P

You do know in rift you can make a macro and put the spells that have cool downs on top and one with out at the button and it will go down the list and use whats off of cooldown. and if ever thing is on cooldown it will keep going until it find some thing thats not

[jca]

I've been playing around with the 20 in cab and have to say I'm liking it :) It hasn't been as cumbersome keeping convictions up as I'd thought it might be. I did go ahead and find a point for Dark Harbor though. You can only kill something once and I'd rather have the extra restistences than a tad more damage.

One thing to note about Reparation. Unless the tooltip is wrong, it doesn't effect any other clerics using Reparation. Just to keep in mind. Might be good not to have all Justicar sub-spec or Reparation only effects those outside your group. I like a mix of Justicar and Warden subspecs.

[Apatheist]

You do know in rift you can make a macro and put the spells that have cool downs on top and one with out at the button and it will go down the list and use whats off of cooldown. and if ever thing is on cooldown it will keep going until it find some thing thats not

Trion removed the ability to cast more than one ability per macro several patches ago.


I've been playing around with the 20 in cab and have to say I'm liking it http://www.dual-boxing.com/images/smilies/smile.gif It hasn't been as cumbersome keeping convictions up as I'd thought it might be. I did go ahead and find a point for Dark Harbor though. You can only kill something once and I'd rather have the extra restistences than a tad more damage.

One thing to note about Reparation. Unless the tooltip is wrong, it doesn't effect any other clerics using Reparation. Just to keep in mind. Might be good not to have all Justicar sub-spec or Reparation only effects those outside your group. I like a mix of Justicar and Warden subspecs.


I'll test it again when I get home today, but as of ~2 weeks ago, when I tested it last, reparation was definitely effecting the other clerics in my group (4 of which have the reparation buff).

Also, random side-note, if you pick up one of the faesource planar focus' that proc a HoT on targets you heal, it's up almost constantly on all targets your reparation is healing (during AoE pulls, at least). I just tried it tonight. Not sure if it stacks from multiple characters, I'm at work so I can't login more than one character on my dodgy old laptop.

Edit -

Managed to login a second client and test reparation. It doesn't heal the cleric casting cleric, but it does heal other clerics with the buff.

[Lyonheart]

Trion removed the ability to cast more than one ability per macro several patches ago.




I'll test it again when I get home today, but as of ~2 weeks ago, when I tested it last, reparation was definitely effecting the other clerics in my group (4 of which have the reparation buff).

Also, random side-note, if you pick up one of the faesource planar focus' that proc a HoT on targets you heal, it's up almost constantly on all targets your reparation is healing (during AoE pulls, at least). I just tried it tonight. Not sure if it stacks from multiple characters, I'm at work so I can't login more than one character on my dodgy old laptop.

they did? that sux!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

As of a few minutes ago on my cleric team:

1) Reparation does indeed heal the entire team, regardless of tooltips to the contrary.
2) Macros still fall-through. All mine are setup with decreasing cooldowns and they work like a champ.

[Apatheist]

Also tested the planar essence I mentioned. It does indeed stack with the same buff from other sources. Meaning, if 5 clerics proc at the same time, you will get 5 stacks of the HoT. A proc from the same cleric twice will overwrite. The HoT procs from every heal I could find to test, including reparation, but only seems to proc from the first tick of castable HoTs. Proc rate seems to be somewhere around 15%, so it's up quite often on a single target and almost constantly during AoE.

Pretty awesome for a single planar socket. The level 42 version ticks 5 times for 110 per second (static heal, doesn't seem to be effected by spell power). Can't wait to test how often the buff is up when I get home on my 5 clerics. With the amount of passive reparation/salvation ticks, I can see 5 stacks of this buff being up almost constantly.

Free 550 point AoE heal every second, anyone?

[Apatheist]

Macros still fall-through. All mine are setup with decreasing cooldowns and they work like a champ.

Wow. I read before I downloaded Rift that they had fixed this. I remember testing it and it not working, so I didn't give it another thought.

Well, I'm already set up to do the same thing, but this certainly simplifies things. I must have done a typo or something in the macro when I test it :D

[Lyonheart]

As of a few minutes ago on my cleric team:

1) Reparation does indeed heal the entire team, regardless of tooltips to the contrary.
2) Macros still fall-through. All mine are setup with decreasing cooldowns and they work like a champ.

what level are your Clerics?

[Apatheist]

#show
cast Sanction Heretic
cast Obliterate
cast Curse of Discord
cast Bound Fate
cast Vile Power
cast fanaticism
cast bolt of judgment
cast bolt of depravity

For anyone that''s interested. You could take fanaticism out, but I usually can't be bothered micromanaging outside of PvP. Just have to reapply vex and your magic debuff every 15/60s. And, as jca said, jump whenever your depravity procs to skip judgment and use your proc, instead.

[leroyreborn]

As of a few minutes ago on my cleric team:

1) Reparation does indeed heal the entire team, regardless of tooltips to the contrary.
2) Macros still fall-through. All mine are setup with decreasing cooldowns and they work like a champ.

dose look like the tool tip for reparation is wrong or its buged and it dose heal others with it on. but keep an eye and patch notes they may change/fix it.

[Apatheist]

This planar essence is awesome with a full rotation. It's pretty much up constantly. I can't wait to see what it's like with all toons logged in.

[Lyonheart]

So i canceled my wow accounts.. took a chance and am going to try Rift 5boxing on my laptop. I edited my files to the suggested setting for helping performance and lowest settings in game. Well see how it goes 8)

I'm in game now and so far so good. What spec do I want up to the point I can start running instances? I thing ranged is easiest right? as far as questing and rifts before 17-19ish for the first instance? ( 5 clerics of course )

[Smedbox]

#show
cast Sanction Heretic
cast Obliterate
cast Curse of Discord
cast Bound Fate
cast Vile Power
cast fanaticism
cast bolt of judgment
cast bolt of depravity

For anyone that''s interested. You could take fanaticism out, but I usually can't be bothered micromanaging outside of PvP. Just have to reapply vex and your magic debuff every 15/60s. And, as jca said, jump whenever your depravity procs to skip judgment and use your proc, instead.

Hmm, will a macro skip abilities with a cast timer if it would fail because you're moving? That's one big reason I haven't been using macros very much in the past....

[leroyreborn]

Hmm, will a macro skip abilities with a cast timer if it would fail because you're moving? That's one big reason I haven't been using macros very much in the past....

yes if your moving it will just got to something you can cast. well even do it for range. for like a MM or ranger build that has range moves can just put a melee at the bottom of the macro and if can not cast any range spells will default down to melee witch it can

[Smedbox]

yes if your moving it will just got to something you can cast. well even do it for range. for like a MM or ranger build that has range moves can just put a melee at the bottom of the macro and if can not cast any range spells will default down to melee witch it can

WOAH!!!!! Alright, I'll be making some more macros tonight then!!!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

what level are your Clerics?

Hit 35 earlier today. 33 was the sweet spot as it allowed me to get to 11/13/20 for both mana regens, 90% healing from vex and reparation. Reparation is sick healing when AoEing a big pack of mobs.

I also pulled points out of Explosive Energies (+dmg to AoE) and put 3/3 Broad Strokes (+diameter to AoE) and I must say that is much, much nicer. Don't have to stack everything up so nicely, just bomb away.

I will say, though, that even with a full justicar tank, the passive healing from the AoE build x4 just isn't enough to keep the tank alive on the larger/nastier pulls. I stepped into King's Breach at 35 and it was not a pleasant experience. It's plenty of healing for the rest of the group for random AoE/DoT and loose mob damage you take during pulls and boss fights. Just need an honest healer (I'm working on a separate soul for one of the casters just for instances) to keep the tank going unless you're well geared or outlevel the content. I could switch from justicar to warden on the third soul for the casters but the loss of mana-friendly passive group heals is just too negative.

[Apatheist]

So i canceled my wow accounts.. took a chance and am going to try Rift 5boxing on my laptop. I edited my files to the suggested setting for helping performance and lowest settings in game. Well see how it goes 8)

I'm in game now and so far so good. What spec do I want up to the point I can start running instances? I thing ranged is easiest right? as far as questing and rifts before 17-19ish for the first instance? ( 5 clerics of course )

If you're running 5 clerics, one of them will need to be Justicar for tanking. Buy your second role on the other 4 and spec them as suggested above, Inq/Cab/Just. With the second spec, go either Sent/Warden or Warden/Sent. Either works fine for healing 5's. Sentinel is comparable to WoW's paladin, Warden is a comparable to a resto druid. For fights where you need an extra healer, one of each works nicely. It's important to purchase your second spec ASAP for running instances, since none of the instances from 1-49 have any "enrage" timers, if your gear isn't great or if you're struggling a bit, just 2-3 heal through it.

Also, don't get discouraged running the first instance (level 15). Your gear is generally poor and you don't have access to a lot of the abilities that makes the cleric group awesome until 20-30. By the time you get to Iron Tombs, you'll be cruising through them. Level makes a huge difference in this game. Your tank will get trucked a bit whenever a new instance becomes available in the random queue, because the mobs are always 1-2 levels above you. By the time you're equal or higher level, things go much more smoothly.

[Apatheist]

I will say, though, that even with a full justicar tank, the passive healing from the AoE build x4 just isn't enough to keep the tank alive on the larger/nastier pulls.

Reparation isn't supposed to be your primary heal. Think of it like a running HoT, it's just there to take a bit of pressure off your healer.

For instances and harder stuff, I switch one of my clerics to this spec - http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10jeG.E0Ezbcz.xE0xVxRq

The only spell in the healing rotation that isn't instant is Deluge, so it's a nice for movement fights. Also gives you a 40% "pain sup" to use on the tank, 5% constant damage reduction buff on all your AoE heals and a 5% crit debuff, which is very nice stacked with the static crit buffs Inquisitors already get. My Inq's are up to like 20% crit with buffs in mostly ~40-48 quest/instance blues.

[Lyonheart]

so staves on the followrs and one hand mace and shield for tank im guessing? Also, for rifts and questing.. still keep the lead toon tank spec?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

so staves on the followrs and one hand mace and shield for tank im guessing? Also, for rifts and questing.. still keep the lead toon tank spec?

Yes on the staves-x4 + sword/board for the tank for harder elites.

For questing, I keep mine all 5 AoE spec (inq/cab/just). I blow up rifts as fast as I can pull them into a clump. :) [edit] If I can remember, I'll make a video of me clearing a rift with mine.

[edit2]
p0w6lJWr8TY

[edit3] Fen, this one has SOUND!

[JamieW]

Yes on the staves-x4 + sword/board for the tank for harder elites.

For questing, I keep mine all 5 AoE spec (inq/cab/just). I blow up rifts as fast as I can pull them into a clump. :) [edit] If I can remember, I'll make a video of me clearing a rift with mine.

Ditto here with just 3x on the clerics.

The only trick is when pulling an elite, sometimes he sticks to one of my clerics, and it's not my main. Just be aware and have DoL ready to spam a couple of times to heal him back up to full before continuing with the dps.

[wyofiddler]

Yes on the staves-x4 + sword/board for the tank for harder elites.

For questing, I keep mine all 5 AoE spec (inq/cab/just). I blow up rifts as fast as I can pull them into a clump. :) [edit] If I can remember, I'll make a video of me clearing a rift with mine.

[edit2]
p0w6lJWr8TY

[edit3] Fen, this one has SOUND!


Nice Vid!!!
I love the AoE, definately want to try this team once my first group hits 50..... if 1.5 ever finishes DL'ing grrrrr :/

[MiRai]

[edit3] Fen, this one has SOUND!
No idea how I missed this one the other day... probably because of the edits (and it not being in the movie
section *cough*). Either way... Outstanding. :)

[wyofiddler]

Ditto here with just 3x on the clerics.

The only trick is when pulling an elite, sometimes he sticks to one of my clerics, and it's not my main. Just be aware and have DoL ready to spam a couple of times to heal him back up to full before continuing with the dps.

For you guys running this 5x Cleric team, do you put DoL on a mouseoverui click healing setup like Alge described or just use a keybind? Or even 5 character specific keybinds for which toon will receive the heals?

[Smedbox]

For you guys running this 5x Cleric team, do you put DoL on a mouseoverui click healing setup like Alge described or just use a keybind? Or even 5 character specific keybinds for which toon will receive the heals?

IMHO, all AoE heals goes to a key press. It's not targeted on a specific character so there's no need for mouseover. I currently have it on F10.

For mouse over single-target heals I still use keys. I mouse over a raid frame and hit one of my "raid heal" keys (happens to be shift-1 through shift-5 in my case) and it will cast the corresponding heal spell on that character, no matter which character I happen to have as main at the moment.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

IMHO, all AoE heals goes to a key press. It's not targeted on a specific character so there's no need for mouseover. I currently have it on F10.
^^^ This.


For mouse over single-target heals I still use keys. I mouse over a raid frame and hit one of my "raid heal" keys (happens to be shift-1 through shift-5 in my case) and it will cast the corresponding heal spell on that character, no matter which character I happen to have as main at the moment.
I don't do this. I have my healer's main heal multi-step keymap/macros set to go off when I'm spamming my attack keys for the rest of the group, so my tank is constantly healed by default.

Then I have basically set up ISBoxer's keymaps + repeater region so that I have the same functionality as the HealBot addon in Rift for click healing other slaves that need it. Works damned well for the most part, though I admit to not needing it most of the time due to having so much passive group healing. If I can remember, I'll post my King's Breach video tonight and you'll see my click healing keymap notifications going off. ISBoxer is very slick with the repeater region thing. ;)

[Smedbox]

I don't do this. I have my healer's main heal multi-step keymap/macros set to go off when I'm spamming my attack keys for the rest of the group, so my tank is constantly healed by default.

Then I have basically set up ISBoxer's keymaps + repeater region so that I have the same functionality as the HealBot addon in Rift for click healing other slaves that need it. Works damned well for the most part, though I admit to not needing it most of the time due to having so much passive group healing. If I can remember, I'll post my King's Breach video tonight and you'll see my click healing keymap notifications going off. ISBoxer is very slick with the repeater region thing. ;)

I use the mouse-over Shift-1 to Shift-5 for occasional off-healing. (Healing people who isn't the main character.) For healing my main, I use numpad 1-5, which casts the same spells as Shift-1 to Shift-5 but on the main character. I like pressing buttons on the keyboard rather than mouse-clicking anything... ;)

I don't do a lot of dungeons (yet), but I've done a few where I had set up stepping keymaps for spamming heals on the tank automatically. They're a pain to set up and needs constant tweaking and modifications as you level up and get new abilities or respec. And I feel like I have no control over what's happening...

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I don't do a lot of dungeons (yet), but I've done a few where I had set up stepping keymaps for spamming heals on the tank automatically. They're a pain to set up and needs constant tweaking and modifications as you level up and get new abilities or respec. And I feel like I have no control over what's happening...
Sure, there are caveats to it, like having to interrupt things on occasion to get it to cast. For most cases I've encountered, there are very rarely events that need me to actively heal someone aside from the tank. And even in those rare events, I can usually just ignore it and let the alt die and it won't affect the outcome in the slightest.

I'm sure things will get a lot different in expert dungeons. We'll see how things need to go when that time arrives. ;)

[Lyonheart]

^^^ This.


I don't do this. I have my healer's main heal multi-step keymap/macros set to go off when I'm spamming my attack keys for the rest of the group, so my tank is constantly healed by default.

Then I have basically set up ISBoxer's keymaps + repeater region so that I have the same functionality as the HealBot addon in Rift for click healing other slaves that need it. Works damned well for the most part, though I admit to not needing it most of the time due to having so much passive group healing. If I can remember, I'll post my King's Breach video tonight and you'll see my click healing keymap notifications going off. ISBoxer is very slick with the repeater region thing. ;)


I do not see where you have your repeater region set up on the screen? do you have it over your top bar? Also, how do you like the fun/play style of these clerics compared to when you were leveling your rogs?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I do not see where you have your repeater region set up on the screen? do you have it over your top bar? Also, how do you like the fun/play style of these clerics compared to when you were leveling your rogs?

I run in raid mode so I just see the raid bars on the left edge of the screen; I have the repeater region on top of the raid bars.

I like the clerics better so far. The rogues are WAY better for the harder invasion events as they put out STUPID amounts of raid healing and buffs. The clerics are more exciting to play due to the massive AoE and the ability to respec one to a real tank and one to a real healer for the more difficult content that eats the pigs.

[Smedbox]

I've updated my blog at http://boxofchocolate.smedis.com/ to include all builds that I'm planning on using for my 5x Cleric team on October 15 for the Extra Life event. It has build links for each step of the way to 50.

[Apatheist]

I use the mouse-over Shift-1 to Shift-5 for occasional off-healing. (Healing people who isn't the main character.) For healing my main, I use numpad 1-5, which casts the same spells as Shift-1 to Shift-5 but on the main character. I like pressing buttons on the keyboard rather than mouse-clicking anything... ;)

I don't do a lot of dungeons (yet), but I've done a few where I had set up stepping keymaps for spamming heals on the tank automatically. They're a pain to set up and needs constant tweaking and modifications as you level up and get new abilities or respec. And I feel like I have no control over what's happening...

Not really. I run Ward/Sent because it's more mobile and has slightly better HPS, but it's also a much more difficult rotation to set up. You could easily keep a tank alive with nothing but healing grace spam and use DoL +reparation for group heals and it would be require almost no micromanagement other than hitting your DoL hotkey whenever the group takes damage.

Set your tank to focus and put these two macros on your Sentinel's heal key -


Hotkey 1 (use the same hotkey as your DPS spam, or include this in a keymap) -

#show Healing Breath
cast @focus Healing Breath
cast @focus Healing Grace

Tank cooldown on a separate button -

#show Healer's Covenant
cast @focus Healer's Covenant

You may need to complicate things once you get into Expert modes, but these two macros plus the passive heals and occasional DoL from the rest of your group is easily enough to manage every instance from 1-50, including the two level 50 instances, (assuming your toons are geared enough for the instance in the first place).

[Krago]

Thanks to all of you and your damned thread I started a new all cleric team.:eek:

Well, it's actually 4 new clerics that will be lead by level 50 but still ...

[Apatheist]

PS,

Here's something I've been toying with. This is my new PvP build I call my, "Inquisitank"! Focusing on mobility and survivability.

4 clerics specced as - http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rdj.VhRs0x.Vgobxx0V.yox0o
1 cleric specced as - http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=10rdx.VhRs0x.Vgobxx0V.VVb

Here are the major things you'll lose compared to a standard PvE Inquisitor build:

- No fanaticism (though you could swap a point from corporal punishment if you think it's worth it, I don't)
- Roughly 20% less damage from vex and sanction heretic.
- No DPS armor buff (not an issue, as I'd use the endurance/armor buff in PvP, anyway)..
- Less passive buffs to DPS, as your secondary and tertiary souls are focused mostly on survivability

Here's what you gain.

- No fewer than 5 ranged, instant cast life nukes (to build convictions) on relatively short cooldowns as well as your depravity proc. Really nice mobile single target damage.
- Shards of light is an awesome filler for when your depravity hasn't procced
- A significant amount block, via spellpower, plus an extra 15% from precept, when you're in melee range
- The option to toggle any of your clerics that get focused into Mein of Leadership (huge armor/hp buff)

And here's what makes the build. Absolutely huge damage mitigation. 15% passive from shield of faith plus 11% from protect the flock and reinforce (both of which proc from reparation and DoL, which means they should have 100% uptime since all your nukes are instant). PvP gear caps at 30% player reduction. So, with gear, you will have a combined total of 46% reduced damage from all sources before any armor or resists. Plus a decent block rating vs rogues/warriors, plus bonus armor/endurance from Justicar and the Inquisitor buff.


It's a very simple spec to run, which makes it even better for PvP. You can run the whole thing with 4 hotkeys (plus your standard follow, assist and utility stuff, obviously)

Key 1 -

Create a keymap for your "Spam" key. Step one calling excommunication on "pressed or released" and a 6 second round-robin Step two calling the following macro.

#show Sanction Heretic
cast Precept of Refuge
cast Sovereignty
cast Sanction Heretic
cast Life's Vengeance
cast Bolt of Radiance
cast Shards of Light

Key 2 - Bolt of Depravity

key 3 - Vex

Key 4 - Doctrine of Loyalty

Enjoy!

[Apatheist]

Also, I just got my Clerics wisdom/toughness high enough to start T1's. Cleared them all today. The first run is always slow while you're figuring out the best way to handle the extra mechanics, but all-in-all, I found T1's easier than when I first started doing the normal mode verions. I guess because I've spent a bit more time farming rifts, Mathos rep, geared out my planar focus, etc.

Some of the mechanics the riftjunkies guide says are "heal intensive" are a complete joke with Clerics :D For example, in T1 Lantern Hook, the last boss is supposed to be a DPS race before the room fills up. I just park my DPS/Healer in one spot until I get 3 of the things on me, then move. Reparation, healing flood and planar procs easily outheal 2 stacks of them.

[Krago]

Also, I just got my Clerics wisdom/toughness high enough to start T1's. Cleared them all today. The first run is always slow while you're figuring out the best way to handle the extra mechanics, but all-in-all, I found T1's easier than when I first started doing the normal mode verions. I guess because I've spent a bit more time farming rifts, Mathos rep, geared out my planar focus, etc.

Some of the mechanics the riftjunkies guide says are "heal intensive" are a complete joke with Clerics :D For example, in T1 Lantern Hook, the last boss is supposed to be a DPS race before the room fills up. I just park my DPS/Healer in one spot until I get 3 of the things on me, then move. Reparation, healing flood and planar procs easily outheal 2 stacks of them.

Nice to hear!

Would you be able to record a T1 run?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Yeah, I have yet to have to "not stand in the fire" on mine. I'm sure it'll get more interesting in T1's but leveling instances are, as you mentioned, a complete joke. My warden healer build has a little trouble keeping up with damage on the tank in a few cases, which I'm not sure about yet. Giving some thought to respeccing him to Purifier for better single-target heals, though the HoTs are really nice when I have to move the group or healer as it keeps the healing going.

[wyofiddler]

Thanks to all of you and your damned thread I started a new all cleric team.:eek:

Well, it's actually 4 new clerics that will be lead by level 50 but still ...

This.

Can anyone clarify boosting in Rift? I would love to pair 4 new (low level) clerics with my 50 tank for leveling, does that work? I guess I'd have to run to each instance, no LFG ports would kinda suck. But does it work other than that?

[Smedbox]

This.

Can anyone clarify boosting in Rift? I would love to pair 4 new (low level) clerics with my 50 tank for leveling, does that work? I guess I'd have to run to each instance, no LFG ports would kinda suck. But does it work other than that?

If you have a full team you don't have to run to any dungeon. You just put your whole team into the LFG tool and instantly teleport into the dungeon. Your team can teleport into a low-level dungeon even if some characters are level 50.

To level new characters quickly using a 50 or two, I just rush through all the quests at insane speeds since the 50s kill everything instantly. It's much quicker to level using quests than to grind dungeons, imho.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

To level new characters quickly using a 50 or two, I just rush through all the quests at insane speeds since the 50s kill everything instantly. It's much quicker to level using quests than to grind dungeons, imho.
Not so sure about this. The collection quests where you have to grab stuff on the ground are a PITA because each of your 4 alts have to grab the items. Instances seems like the faster option if you can stand grinding repeatedly. Tag boosting does work (only need to tap the mob with the noobs, then kill it with the ungrouped 50 for full xp).

[Smedbox]

Yup, it depends on how many characters you level up at the same time. If it's just one or two it's not an issue. If you have more than that, it's alright to simply skip the collection quests where the object disappears after you've looted. The collection quests where the objects immediately respawn are fine.

Also, do some PvP every now and then. You get tons of XP in warfronts and it's a nice way to get some variety and feel out new abilities on the new toons. It's really easy to just jump in if they're all specced the same way. No setup or planning required.

[Krago]

Plus, we have the +100% XP potions now, so grinding dungeons will be faster.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Plus, we have the +100% XP potions now, so grinding dungeons will be faster.

Very true.

[wyofiddler]

I have a 50 warrior and 48 cleric that I would be using to level 3 brand new clerics so dungeon boosting would be the most attractive option if it works out - I'll give it a try soon and see how it works out.

Anyone know if the exp received by the low-lvl alts goes way down in a dungeon group with 50's present? I'll try and test this as well but I'm curious if anyone knows this for sure already.

[Smedbox]

Hmm, I'm saving those for the planar attunement grind... But I've always liked the leveling grind better than the post-50 grind. I get bored doing the same dailies and dungeons over and over again, but not as bored playing low-level PvP, getting new abilities or questing in new zones all the time.

I did a lvl 33 dungeon last night with two 50s in the group. Didn't get much XP at all on the lowbies, whereas it seems I could have leveled them during the same time doing PvP or questing... It would be nice to have an XP/hour addon like I had in WoW.

I leveled a third mage once, using two level 50s. It went insanely fast just doing questing. The third mage barely got any XP at all from the kills but got a gazillion by just turning in quests. Meaning that the XP-boost potions wouldn't make any difference at all in this case, since it's only for kills.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I have a 50 warrior and 48 cleric that I would be using to level 3 brand new clerics so dungeon boosting would be the most attractive option if it works out - I'll give it a try soon and see how it works out.

Anyone know if the exp received by the low-lvl alts goes way down in a dungeon group with 50's present? I'll try and test this as well but I'm curious if anyone knows this for sure already.

If I can remember, I'll test that tonight and let you know how much the XP drops. I think it will be different for each dungeon as well, depending on how far below-level the alts are. You might also be able to take them into higher-level dungeons by running to the entrance versus using the LFD tool.

[Smedbox]

If I can remember, I'll test that tonight and let you know how much the XP drops. I think it will be different for each dungeon as well, depending on how far below-level the alts are. You might also be able to take them into higher-level dungeons by running to the entrance versus using the LFD tool.

Bummer, you can't take the team to a higher level than the minimum requirement using the tool, no matter who the leader is. You can take your team to any lower level dungeon, but I think it checks the lowest level team member for higher-level dungeons.

[Apatheist]

Nice to hear!

Would you be able to record a T1 run?

I had actually been meaning to record instances as I go, but I always forget. I recently stopped playing WoW where I was guild/raid leader of a 25HM guild. In 3 years of raiding, I don't think i once remembered to start recording before the fight. I ended up assigning someone else to do it :D

But yeah, I have a few days off work coming up and I'm planning to stockpile some snacks and pull a few all-nighters. I'll try to remember to record a few. I've been running the daily raid and expert rifts each day, too, so I can probably upload some of those.

[Apatheist]

Nice to hear!

Would you be able to record a T1 run?

I had actually been meaning to record instances as I go, but I always forget. I recently stopped playing WoW where I was guild/raid leader of a 25HM guild. In 3 years of raiding, I don't think i once remembered to start recording before the fight. I ended up assigning someone else to do it :D

But yeah, I have a few days off work coming up and I'm planning to stockpile some snacks and pull a few all-nighters. I'll try to remember to record a few. I've been running the daily raid and expert rifts each day, too, so I can probably upload some of those.

[crowdx]

With this setup, is the healing all coming from passive buffs?
I tried a secondary healer last night with 3 clerics, a mage and a warrior tank. It went ok but I needed to have the mage spec into chloro to spam a heal in their dps rotation on the tank.

[Smedbox]

I have a 50 warrior and 48 cleric that I would be using to level 3 brand new clerics so dungeon boosting would be the most attractive option if it works out - I'll give it a try soon and see how it works out.

Anyone know if the exp received by the low-lvl alts goes way down in a dungeon group with 50's present? I'll try and test this as well but I'm curious if anyone knows this for sure already.

I tried Kings Breach last night, with three level 36 and two level 50. All three had full rest XP but used no potions. They got about 60-70% of a level, clearing the dungeon and completing the three quests in there. I'll do it again tonight without any of the quests and clearing it as fast as I can to see what XP/hour I can get...

[Ughmahedhurtz]

With this setup, is the healing all coming from passive buffs?
I tried a secondary healer last night with 3 clerics, a mage and a warrior tank. It went ok but I needed to have the mage spec into chloro to spam a heal in their dps rotation on the tank.

If you overgear the content, yes you can use all passive. My team needs a dedicated healer (who does nothing but spam heals on the tank) to succeed. This is all clerics, of course. With bards, probably not. No idea about mixed chloro/xxxx mages.

[Apatheist]

With this setup, is the healing all coming from passive buffs?
I tried a secondary healer last night with 3 clerics, a mage and a warrior tank. It went ok but I needed to have the mage spec into chloro to spam a heal in their dps rotation on the tank.

Group healing, yes. Your tank still needs an active healer to keep him up. Especially on trash, which seems to be harder than most of the bosses (though that may just be because I face pull everything and don't bother CCing at all). You will rarely need to group heal with 4x reparation spams going off. Especially if you use heal/shield proc greater planar essences, such as http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8AC7C1850701010101/Crystal-Vine or the one from Iron Pine Peaks (both of which are pretty easy to get).


If you overgear the content, yes you can use all passive. My team needs a dedicated healer (who does nothing but spam heals on the tank) to succeed. This is all clerics, of course. With bards, probably not. No idea about mixed chloro/xxxx mages.

Higher tier content is not possible with 5 Chloros. The amount of healing you do doesn't matter when you're getting one-shot. Even in Tier1, if I take off my toughness gear (T1 requires 45 toughness to queue), my tank gets absolutely trucked from all the crits. Definitely not healable.

[crowdx]

[QUOTE=Apatheist;345993]Group healing, yes. Your tank still needs an active healer to keep him up. Especially on trash, which seems to be harder than most of the bosses (though that may just be because I face pull everything and don't bother CCing at all). You will rarely need to group heal with 4x reparation spams going off. Especially if you use heal/shield proc greater planar essences, such as http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8AC7C1850701010101/Crystal-Vine or the one from Iron Pine Peaks (both of which are pretty easy to get).

I am still only in the early 30s with my first team and they are pretty much geared with crafted chain gear on the clerics and crafted plate on the tank (some blues)

[Smedbox]

I looked up some of those neat healing planar essences:


Level 22 (305 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/91ABE7BD0401010101/Pricking-Faesource
Level 32 (415 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/EBAD9DC40101010101/Stinging-Faesource
Level 35 (550 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/F3F4DCFB0101010101/Spring-Rain-Crystal
Level 42 (550 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/99C3CD840601010101/Consuming-Faesource
Level 45 (750 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8AC7C1850701010101/Crystal-Vine
Level 50 (730 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/96AAF2A70601010101/Grasping-Faesource

[wyofiddler]

Anyone have thoughts for or against running 4 clerics with a warrior tank for pve? I'm wondering if you lose to much synergy on heals for the extra tools a warrior tank gives you. At least _I_ feel like there's extra tools, I have a 50 warrior and not a 50 cleric tank yet, so I'm still biased/simply don't know how big a deal it is for expert-level content.

[Smedbox]

Anyone have thoughts for or against running 4 clerics with a warrior tank for pve? I'm wondering if you lose to much synergy on heals for the extra tools a warrior tank gives you. At least _I_ feel like there's extra tools, I have a 50 warrior and not a 50 cleric tank yet, so I'm still biased/simply don't know how big a deal it is for expert-level content.

I think a Reaver tank, three Tyranny clerics and a Sentinel (or Warden) healer cleric sounds like great AoE fun. :)

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Anyone have thoughts for or against running 4 clerics with a warrior tank for pve? I'm wondering if you lose to much synergy on heals for the extra tools a warrior tank gives you. At least _I_ feel like there's extra tools, I have a 50 warrior and not a 50 cleric tank yet, so I'm still biased/simply don't know how big a deal it is for expert-level content.

I don't see anything in my Justicar tank's toolbox that would be a huge loss if I traded for a Warrior. I did mine as a cleric because I can run rifts and raids as 5x AoE DPS and blow the hell out of things.

[Apatheist]

I looked up some of those neat healing planar essences:


Level 22 (305 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/91ABE7BD0401010101/Pricking-Faesource
Level 32 (415 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/EBAD9DC40101010101/Stinging-Faesource
Level 35 (550 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/F3F4DCFB0101010101/Spring-Rain-Crystal
Level 42 (550 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/99C3CD840601010101/Consuming-Faesource
Level 45 (750 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8AC7C1850701010101/Crystal-Vine
Level 50 (730 health over 8 sec): http://rift.zam.com/en/item/96AAF2A70601010101/Grasping-Faesource


Also worth noting that greater essences stack. Meaning that any essence will stack with another essence, as long as it's not unique equip or listed under the same suffix. So, Faesource will stack with most of the greaters from the Rare Planar vendor in each zone (such as the level 45 Crystal Vine from Stillmoor I mentioned). Vine ticks for 150 and the level 42 Faesource (I'm too poor to buy 5 of the higher level one) ticks for 110.

On a boss fight you can rely on having 2-3 stacks on every character constantly, spiking up to 6-7 stacks if you get lucky. It's almost as good as having a 6th Cleric doing nothing but spamming DoL full time.


Anyone have thoughts for or against running 4 clerics with a warrior tank for pve? I'm wondering if you lose to much synergy on heals for the extra tools a warrior tank gives you. At least _I_ feel like there's extra tools, I have a 50 warrior and not a 50 cleric tank yet, so I'm still biased/simply don't know how big a deal it is for expert-level content.

I would prefer a Warlord/X tank if my only concern was 5man PvE, to be honest. They have better threat and provide some really nice buffs to the party. The reason I went 5 Clerics is that Warriors have no real ranged spec. It's important to remember you won't always be tanking on your primary. I regularly switch my healer and tank to DPS for doing rift raids and zone events. Having one melee toon with 4 ranged will be awkward.

In PvP, the Warrior would pretty much be a wasted slot.

If you're worried about performance, pretty much all the tanks perform the same. Some are stronger at AoE threat, some have more mobility in the form of charges, etc. Some have more ranged attacks. Regardless of all that, any tank is capable of tanking any content. It's more about your gear than your class.

[wyofiddler]

so I spec'd one cleric tank, one heals, the other three AoE dps from the builds listed here... how do you guys get around the "too many people playing the same role" = can't que from the LFG page? 3 pure dps is a no go apparently.

I had this same issue on my cleric/4 mages group, I had to que tank/healer/support/2dps to get in with that group.

Toons are all 18, queing for IT.

edit: I would just run to entrance and zone in but i really want the random LFG loot :)

Edit 2: work around I came up with was spec a second cleric justicar/sham and que that toon as the support, then switch roles once inside. Pretty simple in the end hehe.

[Smedbox]

so I spec'd one cleric tank, one heals, the other three AoE dps from the builds listed here... how do you guys get around the "too many people playing the same role" = can't que from the LFG page? 3 pure dps is a no go apparently.

I had this same issue on my cleric/4 mages group, I had to que tank/healer/support/2dps to get in with that group.

Toons are all 18, queing for IT.

Yeah, gotta have 1 tank, 1 support, 1 heal, 2 dps. Make sure the checkbox for support is set on one of your dps clerics. Add another role if necessary, though you don't have to use it AFAIK.

[leroyreborn]

so I spec'd one cleric tank, one heals, the other three AoE dps from the builds listed here... how do you guys get around the "too many people playing the same role" = can't que from the LFG page? 3 pure dps is a no go apparently.

I had this same issue on my cleric/4 mages group, I had to que tank/healer/support/2dps to get in with that group.

Toons are all 18, queing for IT.

best way to get around the LFG tool is to get a 2nd roll then spec that as what you need to be able to que. there are specs that let you que as support for cleric.
here a popular support spec for clerics
http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/classes-telara/cleric-discussion/183399-duracell-cleric-build-most-seasons-videos.html

i'm not running an all cleric team but close got one cleric tank 3clerics dps.support spec. and one chlor mage. cleared all of expert T1 dungeons working on gear before i try any T2

[Ughmahedhurtz]

11 points in Justicar qualifies for support. (maybe less but that's what mine have)

I just check all available boxes for the 3 DPS and it works.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6112/6215889045_9a4139b693_z.jpg

[wyofiddler]

11 points in Justicar qualifies for support. (maybe less but that's what mine have)

I just check all available boxes for the 3 DPS and it works.


Good to know, that'll make it easier once i get a couple more levels and the dps are running 11 Justicar points...

[Smedbox]

I tried Kings Breach last night, with three level 36 and two level 50. All three had full rest XP but used no potions. They got about 60-70% of a level, clearing the dungeon and completing the three quests in there. I'll do it again tonight without any of the quests and clearing it as fast as I can to see what XP/hour I can get...

I did Kings Breach again two times last night. Again with full rest XP and no potions. Without the quests, they got 50% of a level each run. It took me about 30-40 min to clear the dungeon with this group, so it's about 1 level per hour. If you don't have rest XP or potions, it would be half a level per hour.

It's worth it to note that you don't lose any rest XP while you're PvP:ing, so it's a good idea to alternate between dungeons and PvP - PvP:ing to gain rest XP then into a dungeon to spend that on killing mobs.

[Apatheist]

I just started T2's and I have to say, the progression ladder is a bit off. Normals to the two level 50 instances were easy, but you sort of expect that of leveling instances. Stepping into T1, I expected more of an upgrade, but was I was able to largely ignore mechanics and knock over bosses far too easily.

When you first step into T2's, it's a completely different game. Nearly every encounter has additional mechanics that will kill you if you don't deal with them properly. Lots of movement, dispelling and positioning that just wasn't necessary in previous tiers. I'm really enjoying it so far, I was starting to get bored with how faceroll the first 50(.5) levels were. Managed to clear Charmers Caldera, Iron Tombs and Kings Breach over my weekend, but they were definitely not faceroll. Had to re-think my strategy on nearly every fight, add more macros, etc.

Will probably change once my gear isn't bare minimum to enter T2's, but at the moment it's a blast.

Seems like Trion likes mechanics that make people move a lot. I'm noticing my Clerics are doing a lot less DPS stepping into T2, simply because you can't stand in one spot and mash BoJ anymore. I'm seriously considering leveling up a couple of rogues and replacing my Inq's. Rolling 2-3 Marksmen is very tempting at this point, with how ridiculous Vampiric Munitions is, plus the fact that they can pretty much maintain their normal rotation while moving.

I've also noticed in PvP it's really hard to maintain pressure on people when you have to stop and hit DoL every few GCD's, plus the lack of a heal debuff. I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be better to have 2-3 dedicated healers and the rest dedicated DPS. Clerics smashed everything up until T2, but I'm starting to miss the lack of mobility.

[wyofiddler]

I just started T2's and I have to say, the progression ladder is a bit off. Normals to the two level 50 instances were easy, but you sort of expect that of leveling instances. Stepping into T1, I expected more of an upgrade, but was I was able to largely ignore mechanics and knock over bosses far too easily.

When you first step into T2's, it's a completely different game. Nearly every encounter has additional mechanics that will kill you if you don't deal with them properly. Lots of movement, dispelling and positioning that just wasn't necessary in previous tiers. I'm really enjoying it so far, I was starting to get bored with how faceroll the first 50(.5) levels were. Managed to clear Charmers Caldera, Iron Tombs and Kings Breach over my weekend, but they were definitely not faceroll. Had to re-think my strategy on nearly every fight, add more macros, etc.

Will probably change once my gear isn't bare minimum to enter T2's, but at the moment it's a blast.

Seems like Trion likes mechanics that make people move a lot. I'm noticing my Clerics are doing a lot less DPS stepping into T2, simply because you can't stand in one spot and mash BoJ anymore. I'm seriously considering leveling up a couple of rogues and replacing my Inq's. Rolling 2-3 Marksmen is very tempting at this point, with how ridiculous Vampiric Munitions is, plus the fact that they can pretty much maintain their normal rotation while moving.

I've also noticed in PvP it's really hard to maintain pressure on people when you have to stop and hit DoL every few GCD's, plus the lack of a heal debuff. I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be better to have 2-3 dedicated healers and the rest dedicated DPS. Clerics smashed everything up until T2, but I'm starting to miss the lack of mobility.

Thanks for posting your experiences, it helps to have some idea of what to expect once I get to that point with my own teams.

[Smedbox]

yes if your moving it will just got to something you can cast. well even do it for range. for like a MM or ranger build that has range moves can just put a melee at the bottom of the macro and if can not cast any range spells will default down to melee witch it can

This doesn't seem to work. On my chloromancer I have the following macro:

suppressmacrofailures
cast Ruin
cast Nature's Touch
cast Vile Spores
cast Crumbling Resistance

It won't cast Crumbling Resistance if I'm moving... :/

[Apatheist]

This doesn't seem to work. On my chloromancer I have the following macro:

suppressmacrofailures
cast Ruin
cast Nature's Touch
cast Vile Spores
cast Crumbling Resistance

It won't cast Crumbling Resistance if I'm moving... :/

I cut and pasted your macro to my Chloro and it worked fine.

I'll give you a tip, though. Archon buffs aren't really worth it for 5's. Respec your Chloro to the cookie cutter Chloro/Lock build and you will see roughly a 25-30% increase in damage and healing from your mage (at 50, at least, when you have all the buffs). Also gives you access to the, "sacrifice life: mana" ability, which effectively gives your mage unlimited mana.

[Smedbox]

Hmm, odd. I'll do some more testing...

(Btw, this chloro already has the "Sacrifice Life: Mana" ability and is on support role, not the main healer.)

EDIT: Whew! It was just wrong spelling, and I had pasted the wrong macro above. :)

[Apatheist]

Hmm, odd. I'll do some more testing...

(Btw, this chloro already has the "Sacrifice Life: Mana" ability and is on support role, not the main healer.)

EDIT: Whew! It was just wrong spelling, and I had pasted the wrong macro above. :)

I did exactly the same thing when I first started playing. When I googled it to see why it wasn't working, I saw a bunch of posts saying Trion had removed multi-spell macros. I thought for ages that you couldn't do it anymore. Never trust google, it lies to you.

[wyofiddler]

I cut and pasted your macro to my Chloro and it worked fine.

!!! Is this a figure of speech, or did Trion enable paste function in the macro window without telling me about it???

I'm guessing not, but holy cow that would make setting up macros a lot more convenient.

[Smedbox]

Yes, you can copy&paste in the macro window. :) Make sure you use Ctrl+X/Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V and not Shift+Del/Shift+Ins (the latter won't work).

However, I've had some issues with isboxer and copy/paste between characters. It's possible that InputDirector is interfering too, but I've tried disabling that and it still doesn't work all the time. What happens is that it seems like each character keeps their own clipboard, so you can copy&paste within one client but not between clients. I haven't spent much time to figure it out - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it works between some clients, sometimes between others.

I think it always works between the front client on one machine and the front client on another machine - which would use the InputDirector clipboard feature (as well as Rift's). It seems it's always clients on the same machine that sometimes have trouble between themselves.

What I do sometimes instead of copy&paste is to turn on repeater and type in a macro for all clients at the same time.

[Apatheist]

Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but chloro's are great boosting lowbies. I grouped my rogues with my T2 geared chloro and knocked out levels 15-22 (about 30% of that was rested, no XP flasks used) in about 90 minutes grinding the random queue.

Corrosion is basically group invulnerability against big packs of low level mobs.

You can do 1-15 basically naked, since it's mostly crappy greens with 1-2 stat points anyway. Then when you hit 15,, smash out a few instances and get a bunch of blue upgrades from drops/quests. Great way to skip the first few boring levels and get a nice head start on gearing.

[Lyonheart]

Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but chloro's are great boosting lowbies. I grouped my rogues with my T2 geared chloro and knocked out levels 15-22 (about 30% of that was rested, no XP flasks used) in about 90 minutes grinding the random queue.

Corrosion is basically group invulnerability against big packs of low level mobs.

You can do 1-15 basically naked, since it's mostly crappy greens with 1-2 stat points anyway. Then when you hit 15,, smash out a few instances and get a bunch of blue upgrades from drops/quests. Great way to skip the first few boring levels and get a nice head start on gearing.

would be good idea if i could stay connected. I started my cleric team last week, got them to 13.have not been able to stay online with all 5 for more than 10mins or so..then the non stop crashing starts 8( . I hope this hotfix today is the "fix" we need!

[Krago]

would be good idea if i could stay connected. I started my cleric team last week, got them to 13.have not been able to stay online with all 5 for more than 10mins or so..then the non stop crashing starts 8( . I hope this hotfix today is the "fix" we need!

Hey Lyon,

Lax also posted in the crash thread that he has a dev build of IS Boxer that may help.
I am at work, so I cannot try it out.

[Smedbox]

The build has been pushed to live, restarting IS should patch to the latest version that may fix it for you guys.

[Apatheist]

That's odd. I had crash issues for a day or so after the patch, but since Trion released the hotfix for it, it's been fine for me.

[Lyonheart]

So I'm guessing 15 is too early to 5 box the Fae dungeon? I was dieing fast! How/when can a cleric tank have AE threat? also my dps were going oom pretty fast.

[Smedbox]

So I'm guessing 15 is too early to 5 box the Fae dungeon? I was dieing fast! How/when can a cleric tank have AE threat? also my dps were going oom pretty fast.

I haven't tried it yet (will try it this weekend), but my plan for early tanking is:

1. Mien Of Leadership + Salvation + Reparation, for slow and steady AoE aggro building
2. Doctrine of Loyalty for instant AoE aggro
3. Provoke for instant single-target aggro

For the dps characters I'm going to get the Cabalist Explosive Energies to reduce their overall aggro (while increasing their AoE dps). For mana purposes, do you have the Inquisitor spell Aggressive Renewal?

[wyofiddler]

So I'm guessing 15 is too early to 5 box the Fae dungeon? I was dieing fast! How/when can a cleric tank have AE threat? also my dps were going oom pretty fast.

I think lvl 17 or 18 is when you can spec Even Justice to hit 3 more mobs per swing, that makes a huge difference.

Btw, Even Justice eats mana like a kid in a candy store, but I've seen much better mana usage on my cleric tanks after about lvl 25-30 - before that Even Justice would run me out of mana so fast it was frustrating, even using salvation for mana regen I would run oom on a long pull if I didn't pay close attention. Could be a gear issue as well, that's the lvl range when I have been farming dungeons and filled most of the slots with a blue upgrade item.

Edit: no offense intended to kids in candy stores.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

So I'm guessing 15 is too early to 5 box the Fae dungeon? I was dieing fast! How/when can a cleric tank have AE threat? also my dps were going oom pretty fast.

That really depends on gear at that level. In fact, when I was doing Iron Tombs (the defiant 18ish dungeon) I ran them as Justicar/Druid specs. Killed relatively slow but they did well on mana. And at that level, 5 druid pets (just put 2 points in it for the pet and the shield) were enough to keep me healed pretty well with the occasional DoL thrown in.

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00ra_.qhMo.b

[Gomotron]

Druid pets always annoyed me because they would "top up" the health of the tank and if I wan't paying attention, they would draw aggro on pulls and die. It would be better if they didn't cast HoT's. Oh well.

[Lyonheart]

I decided I'm going to finish leveling my rogs. They are 42-44 now and I need money. Also they are my tradeskill team. I have tailoring and RC maxed.. and all the gathering skills maxed. I need to level up my weapon and armor as well. Once i get all that done, ill make some crafted sets for my nubs and start leveling alt teams. At least until Dec 20th ( SWtOR comes out )

[wyofiddler]

I decided I'm going to finish leveling my rogues. They are 42-44 now and I need money. Also they are my tradeskill team. I have tailoring and RC maxed.. and all the gathering skills maxed. I need to level up my weapon and armor as well. Once i get all that done, ill make some crafted sets for my nubs and start leveling alt teams. At least until Dec 20th ( SWtOR comes out )

What's the least painful way you have found to lvl a new team/another team?

Everything seems slow to me, quests/dungeons/boost grinding/etc (i don't pvp, so that's not a leveling option I would pursue)... but then I've never been a fast leveler in any game so maybe it's just me LOL.

On a positive note, I busted out 49-50 on a solo toon today in about 2 or 3 hours. did this on a single invasion event in shimmersand - bosses didn't spawn, GM had to come in and fix it, our raid cleared several dozen rifts and more invasion groups and ended up with over 1100 Magma Shard things from the world event loot as well LOL. Pretty awesome :)

[Smedbox]

I did the Extra Life event in the weekend and finally created my own 5-cleric team. I got level 20 in the 24 hours. A lot of AFK, walking around and trying to wake up. :) I was too tired to set up the tank and healer macros so I didn't do much dungeons. I did the first two bosses in IT at 20 and it was extremely easy though I'm not sure how to manage mana on the tank yet.

Purpose didn't seem to do anything (tried just spamming Strike of Judgment)... While Purpose is on, do all melee strikes use 0 mana? Or does it matter which melee strike I use to try to regain mana (meaning I use should use low-cost strikes rather than high-cost strikes)?

Videos from that first IT attempt is uploaded at http://boxofchocolate.smedis.com.

[wyofiddler]

If I remember right (at work, posting on my phone) purpose lasts for 10secs and returns a % (10%???) of your mana for each melée hit that lands while it's active. if you time it right you can get about half a bar of mana from it, but if you have to move etc and only hit once or twice it doesn't do as much for you. Abilities still cost normal mana while it's active as well, so I try to use my single target spam while it's up instead of even justice spam.

[Lyonheart]

If I remember right (at work, posting on my phone) purpose lasts for 10secs and returns a % (10%???) of your mana for each melée hit that lands while it's active. if you time it right you can get about half a bar of mana from it, but if you have to move etc and only hit once or twice it doesn't do as much for you. Abilities still cost normal mana while it's active as well, so I try to use my single target spam while it's up instead of even justice spam.

Questing is slow if your boxing. There are TONs of those damn loot items off the ground ( click on item types ) and those take a long time for a group. If there were a lot less of those, questing would be better. I found Rifts and Invasions fastest while boxing. I have not done PvP and have not run an equal level group through dungeons either.

I did however take my 44 rog and run 4 clerics through some LFG.. I'm not sure about exp per hour, but They went from 15 to 20 in 5 runs i think .. might have been 6 total. I'm sure that slows down a lot. I'm just trying to get them to 30s so they have most the abilities that make them AE masters 8)

.

[Apatheist]

Another new toy for you clerics to play with.

http://rift.zam.com/en/item/B59FDA820601010101/Sacred-Heirloom-of-Eth#Dropped_By

This thing procs like crazy with reparation/salvation. The animation is funny, too. I just got my 5th one last night, it's like watching a fireworks display.

PS,

Annoying side-note. It's basically impossible for me to kill rogues in PvP now. Vampiric Munitions means I'm healing them almost as much as I'm damaging them, since they drain 50% of your healing. It's not even worth targeting rogues with a cleric group. Even aside from that, PvP in this game is horrible when you're first starting at 50. There's no crafted set (like the 85 rare set in WoW) to get you started. The gap from P6 to P8 is massive, which means the gap from 0 to P8 is just ludicrous. I've literally stood in one place nuking people for 20 seconds and didn't even see their health bars move.

[Krago]

I did the Extra Life event in the weekend and finally created my own 5-cleric team. I got level 20 in the 24 hours. A lot of AFK, walking around and trying to wake up. :) I was too tired to set up the tank and healer macros so I didn't do much dungeons. I did the first two bosses in IT at 20 and it was extremely easy though I'm not sure how to manage mana on the tank yet.

Purpose didn't seem to do anything (tried just spamming Strike of Judgment)... While Purpose is on, do all melee strikes use 0 mana? Or does it matter which melee strike I use to try to regain mana (meaning I use should use low-cost strikes rather than high-cost strikes)?

Videos from that first IT attempt is uploaded at http://boxofchocolate.smedis.com.

I also made a team of 5 clerics and ran around with Smedbox here and there.

However, I only managed to get to level 16 and a bit before the 24 hour mark.

I am liking the team however and hopefully will be able to transfer them over to Alsbeth once they have combed through all the logs for titles and rewards.

[Smedbox]

If I remember right (at work, posting on my phone) purpose lasts for 10secs and returns a % (10%???) of your mana for each melée hit that lands while it's active. if you time it right you can get about half a bar of mana from it, but if you have to move etc and only hit once or twice it doesn't do as much for you. Abilities still cost normal mana while it's active as well, so I try to use my single target spam while it's up instead of even justice spam.

I finished the whole IT last night as level 20/21 and I got better at using Purpose. This time I actually just used Even Justice. My single-target macro contains many non-melee abilities too that don't give any mana back at all, but my AoE macro is just Even Justice at the moment.

I time it with Aggressive Renewal on my other clerics, so in my case I hit:


F9 - Turns on Purpose and Aggressive Renewal (starts 3 sec channeling) on all clerics.
7 - AoE spam on just the tank (the other clerics are still channeling)
7 - AoE spam on just the tank (the other clerics are still channeling)
F7 - AoE spam for all clerics (the other clerics may be on cast timer)
F7 - AoE spam for all clerics (the other clerics may be on cast timer)
F7 - AoE spam for all clerics (the other clerics may be on cast timer)
F7 - AoE spam for all clerics (the other clerics may be on cast timer)


I do the first two steps pretty much at the same time - there's no GCD when turning on Purpose. I do step #2 and #3 on the tank only since channeling spells tend to be aborted if you try to cast something else. This went pretty well, and you can do it pretty much at the start of a big group pull - the tank will get a lot of aggro, all clerics get full mana and everything dies. :)

[Smedbox]

For my first dungeon run, I used 1h+shield on my Justicar tank. But now I've read that this is useless and a cleric tank should be using a 2h hammer?

What's your opinion on the matter?

[Apatheist]

For my first dungeon run, I used 1h+shield on my Justicar tank. But now I've read that this is useless and a cleric tank should be using a 2h hammer?

What's your opinion on the matter?

You want a shield as a tank. Almost two tiers of your tanking talents revolve around blocking, including Precept of Refuge, which is a massive mitigation talent. You also gain 5% of your mana whenever you block.

Also, don't bother micromanaging Purpose. Just macro it into your generic single target and AoE rotations. You will gain more total mana using it on cooldown than you will saving it until you're low. Mana isn't really an issue as a cleric tank.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Also, don't bother micromanaging Purpose. Just macro it into your generic single target and AoE rotations. You will gain more total mana using it on cooldown than you will saving it until you're low. Mana isn't really an issue as a cleric tank.

Under level 30, that's incorrect. Once you get Precept of Refuge and the mana regen talent that goes with it (which requires 30 points in Justicar at minimum), your mana regen comment becomes true. I tried weaving purpose into my tank rotation when my noobs were leveling and I found making a macro with

cast purpose
cast strike of judgment

and spamming that for the 10 seconds it was up did much, much better. Like, 20% regen versus 80% regen. You don't need it for trash for teh most part -- you need it for long-ass boss fights, and that's where weaving it into the macro sucks balls.

[Gomotron]

Under level 30, that's incorrect. Once you get Precept of Refuge and the mana regen talent that goes with it (which requires 30 points in Justicar at minimum), your mana regen comment becomes true. I tried weaving purpose into my tank rotation when my noobs were leveling and I found making a macro with

cast purpose
cast strike of judgment

and spamming that for the 10 seconds it was up did much, much better. Like, 20% regen versus 80% regen. You don't need it for trash for teh most part -- you need it for long-ass boss fights, and that's where weaving it into the macro sucks balls.

I didn't find that to be the case for my cleric team through IT and Deepstrike Mines. My tank never ran out of mana (unless for some reason I was spamming Even Justice which dropped my mana precipitously).

As far as 1h+shield versus 2h tanking, it seemed to me that I took less burst damage using 1h and shield than using a 2h weapon (up to about level 28 on my current team). I didn't run an analysis of this but it just seemed that way to me. I know that people have tried to number crunch the issue and say that at lower levels 2-handed tanking is equal to or better than 1h+shield tanking. Once you get the shield skills I think that the numbers favor 1h+shield.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Hell, who knows. I was (likely) doing something wrong with spec or gear. My experience was Justicar sub-30 was a pure mana hog in sustained fights. If you spread out pulls (like when clearing trash) such that you could use Purpose every other pull, it was fine. On the longer boss fights, I ran out of mana faster than Purpose could refresh.

Of course, it's a moot point now at 40 as the mana regen from block pumps so much mana that I could just about spam nothing BUT even justice and not run dry.

[Apatheist]

Under level 30, that's incorrect. Once you get Precept of Refuge and the mana regen talent that goes with it (which requires 30 points in Justicar at minimum), your mana regen comment becomes true. I tried weaving purpose into my tank rotation when my noobs were leveling and I found making a macro with

cast purpose
cast strike of judgment

and spamming that for the 10 seconds it was up did much, much better. Like, 20% regen versus 80% regen. You don't need it for trash for teh most part -- you need it for long-ass boss fights, and that's where weaving it into the macro sucks balls.

This confuses me. The opposite should be true, since Even Justice costs a lot more mana than any of your single target abilities. The only time I had any issues at all with mana was if I tried to non-stop spam Even Justice. I put Purpose in both my single target and AoE macros as soon as it was available and it always reset my mana to full every 60 seconds.

Only thing I can think of is you have too many heals macrod into your threat rotation, which is both unnecessary (with a full group of reparations proccing) and less DPS, which becomes very important when you start running instances with enrage mechanics.

[Apatheist]

Once you get the shield skills I think that the numbers favor 1h+shield.

Should be a no-brainer, really. You get 20% flat chance to block from Precept of Refuge and Safe Haven alone. Plus 30% of your spellpower as block, plus 10% non-physical damage reduction (this plus 3 points into Shaman are the only forms of non-physical damage reductions Justicars have access to).

[Smedbox]

This confuses me. The opposite should be true, since Even Justice costs a lot more mana than any of your single target abilities. The only time I had any issues at all with mana was if I tried to non-stop spam Even Justice. I put Purpose in both my single target and AoE macros as soon as it was available and it always reset my mana to full every 60 seconds.

Only thing I can think of is you have too many heals macrod into your threat rotation, which is both unnecessary (with a full group of reparations proccing) and less DPS, which becomes very important when you start running instances with enrage mechanics.

Justicar doesn't have a lot of melee skills, so my single target macro has a ton of non-melee skills in it. Since those don't return any mana at all with Purpose, spamming my single target macro does barely anything to my mana bar.

Theoretically, Strike of Judgment is the skill you'd want to spam to maximize mana regeneration. But in practice, I found that Even Justice worked really well for me both for mana regeneration, healing, dps and threat - basically everything. This is because I often "overheal" the mana bar so it doesn't matter that Even Justice costs a little more, I still get 100% mana. At the same time, I get 100% mana on all my other clerics because they use their mana regen skill at the same time - so all clerics have nicely synchronized mana bars.

It's good (passive) healing because it's great dps. It's great threat because the Justicar gets 450% more threat (Mien of Leadership) and all other clerics gets 10% less threat (Explosive Energies). So it's an IWIN button that I can and do use often, but I do like to have it under control so I can plan when the IWIN button is available to me and not on CD.

[Smedbox]

Should be a no-brainer, really. You get 20% flat chance to block from Precept of Refuge and Safe Haven alone. Plus 30% of your spellpower as block, plus 10% non-physical damage reduction (this plus 3 points into Shaman are the only forms of non-physical damage reductions Justicars have access to).

Yeah, that's what one might think, right? That is why I was so surprised to see so many posts and web sites about 1h+shield being useless for cleric tanks. Perhaps that's old information and Justicar has changed since then...

[Gomotron]

Should be a no-brainer, really. You get 20% flat chance to block from Precept of Refuge and Safe Haven alone. Plus 30% of your spellpower as block, plus 10% non-physical damage reduction (this plus 3 points into Shaman are the only forms of non-physical damage reductions Justicars have access to).

But in the end, the analysis is not that clean.

While Spell Power increases Block, when talented it also increases Dodge and Parry. Typically, the Spell Power of 2-handers is far greater than a 1-hander and shield (huge itemization problem, IMO). By far greater, I am talking about typically DOUBLE the Spell Power from a 2-hander. Once you spec 3 points into Devout Deflection, the bonuses your get to avoidance seems to offset the loss from Block (+60% to Dodge, +90% to Parry).

I'm not sure anyone has really done a parse of this debate though. I also think that a lot of the early discussions were at a time when Devout Deflection gave a higher mitigation percentage than what is currently listed.

Personally, I notice that I suffer from a LOT of burst damage with a 2-hander so I abandoned 2-handed tanking. However, now that my curiosity is piqued, I may spec 2-handed tanking and give it a whirl to compare.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

But in the end, the analysis is not that clean.

While Spell Power increases Block, when talented it also increases Dodge and Parry. Typically, the Spell Power of 2-handers is far greater than a 1-hander and shield (huge itemization problem, IMO). By far greater, I am talking about typically DOUBLE the Spell Power from a 2-hander. Once you spec 3 points into Devout Deflection, the bonuses your get to avoidance seems to offset the loss from Block (+60% to Dodge, +90% to Parry).

I'm not sure anyone has really done a parse of this debate though. I also think that a lot of the early discussions were at a time when Devout Deflection gave a higher mitigation percentage than what is currently listed.

Personally, I notice that I suffer from a LOT of burst damage with a 2-hander so I abandoned 2-handed tanking. However, now that my curiosity is piqued, I may spec 2-handed tanking and give it a whirl to compare.

A good point. I'd go further and say that there are probably drastic differences in how the two styles scale with gear at higher levels of PVE.

[Apatheist]

But in the end, the analysis is not that clean.

While Spell Power increases Block, when talented it also increases Dodge and Parry. Typically, the Spell Power of 2-handers is far greater than a 1-hander and shield (huge itemization problem, IMO). By far greater, I am talking about typically DOUBLE the Spell Power from a 2-hander. Once you spec 3 points into Devout Deflection, the bonuses your get to avoidance seems to offset the loss from Block (+60% to Dodge, +90% to Parry).

I'm not sure anyone has really done a parse of this debate though. I also think that a lot of the early discussions were at a time when Devout Deflection gave a higher mitigation percentage than what is currently listed.

Personally, I notice that I suffer from a LOT of burst damage with a 2-hander so I abandoned 2-handed tanking. However, now that my curiosity is piqued, I may spec 2-handed tanking and give it a whirl to compare.

At T2 level, the difference is around 230-250 spellpower. Of course, the flat difference as you tier up increases, but the percentage difference in total stats is always roughly the same if all of your gear is the same level.

250 spellpower equates to somewhere around 4-5% dodge and parry.

Compare that against what you gain with shield plus 1H at a similar level.

- 15% base block rating.
- 20% additional block rating from talents
- 1000 armor
- 10% magical damage reduction
- significant mana regen
- access to better tanking enchants

Not even close to worth it. I wouldn't even trade 5% dodge and parry for the 10% magic reduction.

:P

[wyofiddler]

Another new toy for you clerics to play with.

http://rift.zam.com/en/item/B59FDA820601010101/Sacred-Heirloom-of-Eth#Dropped_By

This thing procs like crazy with reparation/salvation. The animation is funny, too. I just got my 5th one last night, it's like watching a fireworks display.

Found another item for young cleric teams:

http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8CE1A67101010101/Gleaming-Life-Crystal

Only lvl 30 req and fairly easy to get, just bought it for all my clerics to fill in until they hit 42 and equip the blue version.

EDIT: Found a lvl 35 version too: http://rift.zam.com/en/item/F9C0C8EC0601010101/Sparkling-Extraplanar-Gem

And a lvl 45 version: http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8AC7C1850701010101/Crystal-Vine

The lvl 30 version of this greater essence will proc multiple times simultaneously on a single char - I assumed they would overwrite/extend the HoT but they don't they stack right up. This is really awesome, tons of fun! Took a screenshot to show it happening, but me, forums, and online picture hosting don't get along sry LOL

Pic of the multi-procs:
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/4470/20111021215640.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/831/20111021215640.jpg/)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

[Gomotron]

At T2 level, the difference is around 230-250 spellpower. Of course, the flat difference as you tier up increases, but the percentage difference in total stats is always roughly the same if all of your gear is the same level.

250 spellpower equates to somewhere around 4-5% dodge and parry.

Compare that against what you gain with shield plus 1H at a similar level.

- 15% base block rating.
- 20% additional block rating from talents
- 1000 armor
- 10% magical damage reduction
- significant mana regen
- access to better tanking enchants

Not even close to worth it. I wouldn't even trade 5% dodge and parry for the 10% magic reduction.

:P

If you do the math, the damage mitigation/avoidance is almost a wash. When I calculated out some theoreticals with my 32 Justicar, really there was a 5% or less difference between the 2. Now granted, this was merely looking at physical damage.

When you take into account the armor factor as well (2% at level 32 for all physical damage taken), the overall reduction in damage is significant (although this could theoretically be offset by taking 3 points into the Shaman damage reduction talent; this assumes, however, that the Justicar wouldn't be taking the Shaman talent to begin with). Add in the magic mitigation when Precept of Refuge is up as well as the mana regeneration on blocking that would allow more AE tanking via Even Justice, and the benefits start to add up.

If there was a decent secondary tree for cleric tanks that had a lot of deep tree mitigation/absorbtion talents, it might be worth it from the standpoint of being able to go deeper into that particular tree by avoiding all of the shield-associated Justicar talents. However, even trying to spec deep into Purifier didn't seem to grant me a lot of benefit. I was hoping that an additional 16 points into a tree would afford me benefits that would make the change worthwhile but I am just not seeing it.

So, in summary, your point is well taken. It would appear that 2-handed tanking does not match up well with mace-and-board tanking, at least on paper. I'm pretty sure that this is as well confirmed IRL as well.

[Smedbox]

Woot, figured out how to embed a YouTube video in a WordPress blog post! I updated the latest posts on my BoxOfChocolate blog so the videos are embedded now. :)

http://boxofchocolate.smedis.com

I added a short video of my cleric team AoE farming for wool to make woolen bags for the whole team. I remember doing that on a solo rogue some months ago. Took like two days to get mats for all my characters then. With the clerics, it took like 20 min! :)

[Smedbox]

My clerics are now 34, doing mostly just World Event dailies and rifts - I'm farming planarite to get the 7k planar focus asap. They just got their own guild called "Legio IX" on guardian, Faeblight, and I made a little celebratory video showing off their AoE powers:


http://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=347&stc=1&d=1320163201 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfEE415m3Ww&hd=1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfEE415m3Ww&hd=1

[wyofiddler]

Nice vid... Do you always play with the UI hidden? :) j/k haha

[Smedbox]

Heh, thanks. :) I just think the UI is unimportant for a screenshot or video, cluttering up the shot.

[wyofiddler]

Heh, thanks. :) I just think the UI is unimportant for a screenshot or video, cluttering up the shot.

One part of me totally agrees with that, while the other part wants to revel in the fountaining flurry of yellow dmg numbers from all that multiboxing AoE goodness :) --- so basically I enjoy both types. With the little bit of RP flavor you've given your team, the hidden ui looks cleaner to me anyways.

[Smedbox]

Hmm... It might be useful to have a special UI layout for some videos. I could have both UI layouts saved to file and swap in the "VideoUI" when recording video. I'll try that out this weekend.

[Smedbox]

Bummer, Trion fixed Reparation in the patch today:

"Reparation: Now properly matches the ability description, no longer healing other Clerics with Reparation."