While researching player opinions on mod 16, I came across someone complaining that clerics were now just a class that stands in a corner somewhere. This sounded like an odd complaint, but I'm starting to see where it came from.
The problem is that divinity has turned into a simple resource pool for encounter powers, and one that drains extremely quickly at that. It takes less than half a dozen attacks for me to run out, and then I'm basically down to at-wills.
This wouldn't be so bad if using at-wills helped to regenerate divinity, as you could then weave back and forth between using them and encounters. But no, you're supposed to stand still and pray in combat to regenerate divinity, and it takes a while to boot.
The idea of a cleric pausing in combat to pray may have made sense in Everquest back in 1999, but in an MMO with action combat in 2019 it's absolute madness and makes you feel like a right muppet, especially when you have to keep interrupting your prayers to dodge out of telegraphs, all the while contributing nothing to the fight.
I assume you are playing as a Devout (healing) cleric? Divinity management is not nearly as bad for the Arbiter, DPS spec. You can just quick tab to convert any of the Burning or Radiant pips you build up from using different encounters to get Divinity back.
ReplyDeleteHaven't really had an issue with Divinity on my healing spec. The key is to not just spam your powers, only use a heal when it's really needed and at other times you can use your Encounters that don't use Divinity such as Geas. Having a Doohickey that you can use almost as a 4th encounter power to deal damage is a great help, too, though their damage is about to be nerfed in mod 17.
I'm levelling as Arbiter actually, and it has been getting better lately now that it's easier to generate stacks quickly. I guess the mid levels are the worst. Still feels like a terribly clunky mechanic though compared to how it was.
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