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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Ugh, are you running Riftstalker and 4 bards?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Did you try ISBoxer for those ground based spells? ISBoxer has a pretty nifty feature for that, worth to try out.
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.
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
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.
Inqs get a mana drain that restores about 50-75% of mana channeled.
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.
muahahah beat ya to it :)
I think I'm going to resub this upcoming week during the 7 day free play week.
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by cichard
, , , 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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Apatheist
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.
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).Quote:
Originally Posted by Apatheist
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:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz
Been through Trions entire support page and tried everything from updating drivers to tweaking the game .cfg file and nothing fixes it.
My experience with 3x Bards leveling to 50 was this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by JamieW
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?
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.
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 npQuote:
Originally Posted by Apatheist
I haven't PvP'd at all yet, we'll see how that goes :P
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 ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Apatheist
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.
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 ).Quote:
Originally Posted by crowdx
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Krago
Are you using the dedicated heal for the tank as a spam key?
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.
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).
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. :)
Just curious: what does spec have to do with FTL? Maybe a more poignant question: FTL = Focusless-Targetless-Leaderless?
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.