Neverwinter Devoted Cleric Mechanics Guide

Neverwinter Devoted Cleric Mechanics Guide by lanlin

Hi everyone,

looking at all those “guides” around here displaying what u should do in terms of

– Character creation and stats
– Powers (including some theory)
– Heroic&Paragon Feats
– Value of Basestats (Power, Recovery, Crit)
– Usage of certain Skills
– …

it is obvious that so far most of those are based on assumptions, no real theorycrafting included. Many things in this game can be verified just by “try and error” and i certainly don’t claim to be the only one that wrote a correct guide so far, yet probably the only one that reasearched every detail on why things turn out the way they are.

The reason I am doing this is because i looked at some guides and a part of them (not all ofc!) contained some really awkward numbers…

While indepth theorycrafting may seem overkill for Neverwinter, a game that doesn’t (hopefully: yet) have any difficult or diverse content, being a hardcore player to the limit i actually feel uneasy about not knowing everything behind the scenes everytime i play a MMO…

So everyone feeling the way i feel that’s missing out on time to do it yourself – this is for you guyz!

First things first – Character Creation

Creating a character is always a pretty hard choice for some people…
Should u go for the most stylish one? Or maybe the most useful one for the class? But then again which is the most useful? And how much bonus do i get from choosing it?

To make things easier i will shortly display the advantage of choosing the 2 more useful races – for clerics:

Rank 1: Human

Those 3 additional heroic Feat points are very useful for a cleric. Effective Gains from choosing this:

+ 2 Wisdom
+ 3% Defense (ratingbased)
+ 3% maxHP
+ 6% Divine Power gained

Rank 2: Half-Elf

This time the bonus gained is more obvious since it doesn’t depend on the feats u choose. Gains:

+ 2 Wisdom
+ 2 Constitution
+ 1 Intelligence
+ 1% Critical Severity (effective bonus, not related to ratings)
+ 1% Deflection Chance (effective bonus, not related to ratings)

Dwarf is semi-useful as well and excels in PvP environment… Everything else lacks in a competitive sense. However for min-maxing Human or Half-Elf is definately the way to go while the difference between those 2 is SO small it doesn’t even really matter.

As for the Ability Score Rolls go for the 20 Wisdom 13 Strength 13 Charisma Roll with the 8 on Dexterity(as a Halfelf delete and recreate your Character until u get the +1 Intelligence addition since this can’t be seen in the scorerolls…).

As for leveling up put +1 into Wisdom and +1 into Charisma each time you get the choice.

Powers and Theory

To keep things “short” i will just focus on building a cleric that focuses on PvE healing and supporting rather than DPSing or PvPing. Still u can quite usefully DPS with this choice as well since there aren’t too many powers u can choose from anyway… Rather than listing every possible power i will just focus on the powers u WILL be using and give some additional information – those that the awesome *cough* tooltips are missing out on.

When skilling make sure to put at least 1 point in every encounter-power or on-will-power… the bonus you receive on skilling more points into 1 thing is only marginal, thus it’s good not to miss out on any ability that might come in handy in the future.

Of course every number of Divine Power, Action Points gained or Cooldowns that’s written in here is the Basevalue – unmodified by any Feats or Stats.

Skills you should put 3 points into:

At-Will Powers:

Astral Seal:
Autohitting with this is a loss in every aspect – damagewise as well as a loss in divine power generation… However it grants a tremendously useful debuff on the target you use it on. Still you want to use it as little as possible, while still having a high uptime of the debuff on the maintarget your party focuses on. By using 2 additional points into this, you increase the duration of the debuff from 8 to 10 seconds; this increases the interval u need to cast the spell by 25%.

This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 1.5% Action Points on every hit.
Hittimer: 1s.
Duration: 10s.

Sacred Flame:
This is the Autohit u will obviously use most of the time – while Lance of Faith would be stronger damagewise, the Buffeffect every 3rd hit grants is a nice addition. This buff grants 50(?)% of the damage dealt with the last blow as temporary hitpoints to all targets in range.
[Not quite sure of the exact percentage here yet – but it definately scales with the damage u deal]

This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power on every hit as well as 1% Action Points on the first and 2nd hit, 1.5% on the final hit.
Hittime: 0.75s, 0.75s, 1s.

Encounter Powers:

Sun Burst:
This spell does an average amount of damage and healing… What’s awesome about this spell is the amount of divine power and Action Points it generates. Both – divine power generation and Action Point generation – depend on the amount of targets hit by this spell. Although theoretically 10 Targets can be hit with 1 Cast (5 people healed and 5 Monsters dpsed), still the “cap” for Action Point and Divine Power gains is 5.
Thus you gain the full amount if you only hit 5 Monters while not healing anyone in your party with it. You don’t get the full amount though by healing you and your 4 party members with the spell though, because it excludes the caster himself from the targetcap.
Also: Overhealing does not count towards the targetcap as well. So you can’t push divine power and/or action points with it without effectively healing with the spell (ok u can push divine power anyways by using the talent “Ethereal Boon”, but u get the point).

This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 5% Action Points for every target hit like explained above.
Casttime: 1s.
Basecooldown: 14s.

Healing Word:
This spell is the best Single-Target Heal we currently got… Still its usage is quite situational. The worst thing about this power is that it does not scale with increased Recharge Speed at all! You can swap this skill out in combat after using 2/3 stacks of it though and it continues to recharge while it is not active in ur Hotkey-Bar, so the best way to use it is to swap it in and out while in combat to use 2 charges every 30 seconds.

This spell grants 12% of a Divine Power Bar (while using a 3p Divine Fortune passive) and 2% Action Points on each usage.
Casttime: 0.5s.
Basecooldown (constant): 15s/charge.

Forgemaster’s Flame:
The by far strongest HPS skill that currently exists – hands down. Of course it only heals in Divinity Mode and it almost shouldn’t ever be used while not in Divinity Mode, since the amount of Divine Power or Action Points it grants is neglectable. Used in Divinity Mode it radiates twice the base-damage dealt by the DoT as healing for every player standing relatively close to the target. The debuff lasts 5 seconds ticking once per second.

This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar and 5% Action Points per usage.
Casttime: 1.5s.
Basecooldown: 18s.
Duration: 5s.

Prophecy of Doom:
An awesome spell to get Action Points. If used correctly in a Fight with many adds (so yeah – always?) and combined with Sun Burst a single Cleric can achieve a 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground – which is more beneficial than anything else u could possibly do.
Only put it on adds though that you are sure of to be dead while the debuff is running – u don’t ever want to proc its damage or use the weak debuff cause its Cooldown is way too long for a “normal” usage. If u have enough Divine Power to spare it is useful on this spell, but it’s not required. This one is also an awesome Switch-In for Healing Word once in a while.

This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar on usage as well as 12.5% Action Points if a Monster dies while debuffed with it (25% Action Points if cast with Divinity Mode).
Casttime: 1.5s.
Basecooldown: 28s.

Divine Glow:
The best support spell there is for the cleric. Really! This one is awesome! It can be used diversely; for once it is a useful Divine Power builder if it hits enough targets and passively reduces defenses of every target hit by 15% for 8 seconds. If u spend Divine Power on it instead of trying to build it up, this is where it really gets awesome… If ur party positions well u can hit ur primary target as well as every Damagedealer with it, effectively granting both, a 20% damage Buff on your party for 8 seconds as well as the -15% defense on the target; all while dealing a quite moderate amount of damage – what more can u ask for?

If used out of Divinity Power Mode this spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 3% Action Points for each target hit (up to 5).
Casttime: 1s.
Basecooldown: 18s.

Astral Shield:
Currently an immensely overpowered spell, never to leave the Hotkeybar… It grants 24% damage reduction for every person within the circle as well as providing a healing effect that ticks once a second if it is used in Divinity Mode – which should be the case 100% of the casts on this, since the heal is very strong… Additionally each tick of the heal provides the Foresight passives Damage Resist Buff to everyone.

This spell grants 10% Action Points on every use in Divinity Mode.
Casttime: 1s.
Duration: 15s
Basecooldown: 22s.

Passive Powers:

Healer’s Lore:
Since it plainly increases your healing not too bad of a choice, but i personally don’t always use it since more protection from damage is stronger than more healing in general.

Divine Fortune:
A must-have in some Skillsets to build up enough Divine Power, else neglectable.

Foresight:
An all-time use passive as a healer just put it in ur Hotkeybar and never switch it out again. It provides flat 11% damage reduce currently – maybe bugged, maybe intended, u can’t know for sure on this game anyways…
Just use it for now.

Sooth:
Maybe useful once threat gets fixed… but since u don’t need much else just get this and save money for a respec in the future when u might need it.

Daily Powers:

Hallowed Ground:
This provides a 30% Buff to Damage dealt and makes your whole party receive 30% less damage for 15 seconds in a very large area, all while healing 5% to everyone in it every 3 seconds… Bring ur uptime on this as high as possible.

Divine Armor:
An “emergency” spell or recommended if u play with 2 clerics for overkill damagereduce. Casting this grants every ally affected by the spell 40% damagereduce for 18 seconds. It also grants 30% of your maxHP as temporary Hitpoints to everyone, but this is almost neglectable when using this… Since everything on Damagereduce stacks further and further this is where it gets retarded! With double Astral Shield, 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground as well as 100% uptime on Divine Armor u almost can’t die to anything…

Other Points:

Spend everything else that’s left with the points in personally preferred Powers, but like i already said it is really useful to give every At-Will or Encounter Power at least 1 Point to not completely miss out on it if u want to use it in a certain situation for once…
I am well aware that you need to spend additional points to “reach” those skills i mentioned, but there as well just take whatever you think might be useful for your style when soloing stuff or PvPing.

Heroic & Paragon Feats

After starting to write like 2 pages of theroycrafting to this and being far from finishing i decided to redo this and shorten it up by an enormous amount.
Why?
Because the choices of what to skill are quite obvious and it doesn’t matter that much to know why u are skilling it in the end (at least until other Paragon trees are released – maybe i will redo this section by then)…
For now i will just list how to use those Feat-Points as a human and non-human likewise, just like XX people did before me (although some guys’ guides had some obscure choices there up to now Oo).

Heroic Feats:
Greater Fortune 3/3
Toughness 2/3 [3/3 human]
Weapon Mastery 3/3
Domain Synergy 5/5
Repurpose Soul 3/3
Bountiful Furtune 3/5 [5/5 human]
Templar’s Domain 1/5

Paragon Feats:
Enduring Relief 5/5
Benefit of Foresight 5/5
Invigorated Healing 5/5
Moon Touched 5/5
Greater Divine Power 1/1
Divine Advantage 5/5
Ethereal Boon 4/5
Rising Hope 1/5

Some words to those choices:
– 1 point in Templar’s Domain may seem awkward, yet the procchance multiplies with the number of target’s hit, resulting in a decent uptime on the buff – which is therefore more beneficial than 3% Divine Power Gain once you start getting some ArmorPenetration on your Gear.
– 1 point in Rising Hope is very useful – it has a ~60% uptime with a single point – awesome.
– HP is definately way more benificial than the Feat “Healing Action”.
– Divine Advantage is to be preferred over Righteous Rage of Tempus, since Monters can gain Combat Advantage on players by them being knocked down for example. The additional divine power may seem cool, but you usually u don’t run out of divine power anyways if u play correctly (definately not as a human), so this possibility is the better one.

Basestat Values

As far as Statvalues are concerned i created a little Spreadsheet on scalings…
All those values ofc aren’t 100% correct because rounding is a serious issue if the game can only display a single fractional digit ( … serious stuff… ).

Google Docs Link

What can easily be seen is that deminishing returns kicks in VERY early and quite “strong”… therefore most stats are viable until like ~2200-2600 rating and then start to lose their effectiveness extremely rapidly.

The goal for a Cleric focussing on pure “offensive” stats right now is this:

Softcap Recovery > Crit up to ~2200 > Power > more Recovery >/= more Crit

The “Softcap” for Recovery is my definition for being able to have a 100% uptime on Astral Shield. To be able to get that safely you need ~34% Recharge Speed. The amount of Recovery u need for that is of course heavily dependant on the ability scores you have chosen…

Easy Formula: ( Charisma + Int – 20 + [Rechargespeedincrease by Recovery] ) >/= 34

After that “Softcap” and getting ~2200 Crit u should focus on Power. Then you could stack more Crit or Recovery while the values on both stats should increase by around the same amount from there on to keep the deminishing returns as “low” as possible.
Also you could decide on focussing on a bit more of defensive stats after getting the softcap and enough crit. Personally i even like that style more; playing a Cleric with the broken Threatlevel, a few hundred points of flat “defense” are useful as well on slots like Amulet, Rings or Belt instead of Crit or Recovery.