Anybody tried an all-cleric team?

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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

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.

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 )

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Originally Posted by Lyonheart

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 )

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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 :)

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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)

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Another new toy for you clerics to play with.

http://rift.zam.com/en/item/B59FDA82...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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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:

1. F9 - Turns on Purpose and Aggressive Renewal (starts 3 sec channeling) on all clerics.
2. 7 - AoE spam on just the tank (the other clerics are still channeling)
3. 7 - AoE spam on just the tank (the other clerics are still channeling)
4. F7 - AoE spam for all clerics (the other clerics may be on cast timer)
5. F7 - AoE spam for all clerics (the other clerics may be on cast timer)
6. F7 - AoE spam for all clerics (the other clerics may be on cast timer)
7. 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. :)

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?

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Originally Posted by 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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Gomotron

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

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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).

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

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).

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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...

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

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).

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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.

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Originally Posted by Gomotron

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Gomotron

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.

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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

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

Another new toy for you clerics to play with.

http://rift.zam.com/en/item/B59FDA82...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.

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Found another item for young cleric teams:

http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8CE1A671...g-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/F9C0C8EC...xtraplanar-Gem

And a lvl 45 version: http://rift.zam.com/en/item/8AC7C185...1/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/img831/4...1021215640.jpg
Uploaded with ImageShack.us

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Originally Posted by Apatheist

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

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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.

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! :)

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/attachmen...1&d=1320163201
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfEE415m3Ww&hd=1

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

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

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Originally Posted by Smedbox

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

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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.

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.

Bummer, Trion fixed Reparation in the patch today:

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