OP Devotion Build

[bluebutton]

Nimblee was asking about my Healadin build during a DDOS. So I'm putting a nwcalc link here.

I'm about to respec now that I've played a healadin for a few months. I have a better idea of where I want power points and feats to go.

[tornnomar]

Blue, when the new build is finalized, could you post that as well?

[bluebutton]

Here's the new build

*NWCALC is inaccurately reflecting my power point assignments, but the feats are fine. Also, there are a lot of filler power points flying around so there are a lot of points in stuff I won't ever use.


A 4th point in:
Bond of Virtue
Shield of Faith
Oath Strike
Aura of Wisdom
Aura of Truth
Vow of enmity\


Load outs:
Class Features- Auras of Truth and Wisdom. (Solitude if I'm soloing)
Dailies: Shield of Faith and Divine Judgement
At-wills: Oath Strike and Radiant Strike

First two Encounters for healing in a party:
Bane and Bond of Virtue

3rd Encounter varies between:
Vow of Enmity
Relentless Avenger
Burning light
Templar's wrath

I replace Bond of Virtue with Smite when I'm not trying to heal

I want the Justice Capstone because I'm trying to place Bond of Virtue (and Shield of Faith) as often as possible. I would guess this becomes a "lots of little heals" build vs a pure Light build which can pump a big heal every 10 seconds with Divine Calls. I'm happy with the Justice build, but I'd be interested in taking my GF or GWF into a dungeon with a Light build OP just to observe how the big heals work out.

[Tyrandil]

I think Justice is better than Light for a healadin. I've tried it both ways: in my experience, the additional healing from Light is way, way more than anyone ever needs and it just ends up being wasted. Justice heals enough, and the super-fast cooldowns, party buffs, and additional damage seal the deal.

[bluebutton]

...the additional healing from Light is way, way more than anyone ever needs and it just ends up being wasted.

For now at least. Who knows what Cryptic has up their sleeves.

[bluebutton]

I hate being slow so I put a lot of spare points in movement (lots of dark enchantments in utility slots).

I used to run a Protection (Tank) OP before respec-ing to this Dev OP. Whn I switched, I resurrected my Guardian Fighter alt which had been on the shelf for quite a while. Moving as an OP is really different than as a GF even though these two classes don't get any speed boost from their <shift> and instead <shift> to raise their shields.

The biggest difference is that when the OP (both paragon paths) raises his/her shield, nothing else can be done other than moving. While the GF can still use at-wills while shielding, the OP can't. So shielding 1) drains stamina/guard 2) doesn't refill Action Points(AP) 3) no at-wills 4) no encounters. Yikes!

Generally speaking, unless there is a pressing reason I feel I'm better off without the shield up because using at-wills and encounters contribute to AP gain and [Shield of Faith] is, to my mind, the center of being a dev OP because you reduce the party's damage taken by 50% and you increase the healing they receive by 20%. My goal is to hit [Bond of Virtue] and then [Shield of Faith]. I'm not sure how the math works, but if the tooltips are to be believed there's a lot of heal buffing along with some really nice mitigation of incoming damage for the party.

Because AP is so important, I try to be close enough to hack away with at-wills even though the damage done is paltry. The point is AP gain not damage output. I bash away while waiting for an encounter to be freed up. In the meantime, I move out of reds to minimize the time I need to have the shield up for myself.

On the other hand, the shield is an awesomely 360 giganto-healing-shield vs a 45 degree wedge shield. There are two times I feel I'm most effectively using this 360 shield.

First, a nalfeshnee periodically has this cross red zone that comes before a big hit. At this point, I can predict about when one is going to come, put up my shield and move to surround fighters in the center. As far as I can tell, no one dies if I have this placed. I have noticed that the shield comes up more predictably if I am moving while I hit shift. Otherwise, there's sometimes a frustrating delay.

Second, epic Craigmire Crypt end boss. When Blackdagger goes berzerk with bloodlust, the party can be well shielded. It's convenient to have the party come into the circle; however, it seemed like it worked to run and cover party members as needed.

Sometimes I will bring up the shield and run a circle around the outside of a mob. I do that because if I catch one of my teammates, it counts as an attempted heal, sets off Burning Guidance, and does ~2K damage for each member of the mob. Not a lot, but fun to watch. And more damage than I would do with my mace in that same amount of time.

Which brings me to [Relentless Avenger] which is like the GF's [Lunging Strike] but the max range is 20' and it disperses ads near whatever you hit. Since I don't like being slow, I tend to slot this whenever I want to go anywhere fast. Examples would be Syndrith in epic Temple of Spider, Gorristo in Demogorgon phase 2, and Demogorgon phase 3. This is fast, but it scatters enemies so it's not nice to use it if other party members need the ads clustered. In Demogorgon phase 3, most of the ads are too heavy to move far and it's chaos, so I feel the trade off between being quickly near enough to Demogorgon to heal the melee characters offsets the annoyance of dispersed ads.

Side note about [RA], it is really useful in the defend the circle demonic HEs. Point at your companion, run into him/her, and the bad guys get flung back. Fun to do and watch.

[Tyrandil]

Nice tips, Blue!

I agree, the OP is really slow, and it's important to have something that gets you around the fight quickly. [Relentless Avenger] definitely fits the bill for that. I also really like using [Radiant Strike], which I noticed you also slot as standard: while it has a shorter range, it's an at-will so you can cast it over and over. It also does AoE damage and buffs your subsequent at-will attacks. The only downside to using it is that between it and [Oath Strike], my other favorite at-will, there's no room left for the Dev OP's direct-heal at-will.

What are your thoughts about the [Divine Touch] encounter power? It's one of my favorites for healing: it doesn't do much damage, but in conjunction with [Bond of Virtue], it's a huge burst of healing for everyone in the party.

[bluebutton]

I've been playing around w [Divine Touch] and my initial thought was that it was overkill since I was frequently seeing heals of 50-100K. However, the more I think about it, with [Bond of Virtue] passing around 15% of that to the whole party wherever they are, a few big nearby heals should in theory help everyone. I'd like to see this in the eCC boss fight. I've only been trying this in Demo and that environment is too chaotic for me to figure stuff out. I tend to "spam and hope" in there.

[bluebutton]

Ran eCC with Ziek, Rabbit, Udo and Paul while slotting [Divine Touch] with a brief bit of [Sacred Weapon]. With [SW] I actually got a heal over 1 million HP -- clearly overkill.

With [Divine Touch], I regularly saw multiple heals of 50-70K -- meaning multiple party members at the same time. The group stayed alive really well and we finished Blackdagger in one try. The party had a total of 12 downs and 1 of those was Ziek before we even got to Blackdagger. We think most of those were from Blackdagger's Bloodbath attack that comes after the keg is popped. We didn't have Teamspeak up. I think if we had coordinated those better we would have had even fewer downs. I died 3 times mostly from not watching my stamina and my shield would drop out unexpectedly.

I can't imagine that the Light path is anything but serious overkill.

[bluebutton]

A couple of developments since I started experimenting more.

1) Solo play
I was getting frustrated with only 4 digit dps while soloing. This in fact discouraged me from soloing at all.

[Aura of Vengeance] + [Aura of Solitude] made everything significantly better.

[Aura of Vengence] procs 15% of my weapon dmg EVERY TIME I take damage. So with my low damage that's usually 3 digit bonus damage. But it procs so frequently that it adds up really well.

[Aura of Solitude] gives a flat bonus increase to damage when you're playing alone.

I took a run with this into Phantasmal Fortress and instead of doing 4 rounds before breaking the phalactery, I got it done in 2. Much better.

2) [Aura of Vengeance] in dungeons.
The devotion OP is about mitigating damage to the team in addition to straight healing. This is another reason why I think the Light path might be overkill. [Shield of Faith] mitigates 50% of all damage. [Bane] can mitigate the damage output by a boss for another 30%. [Aura of Truth] with 4 power points mitigates 12% of all damage. [Aura of Protection] would also fall into this category because it buffs party DR, but I don't usually slot it.

Usually, I slot [Aura of Wisdom] which reduces party recharge speed by 25% with 4 points in it. This makes the party do what it does better. [Truth] and [Wisdom] are my go to class features in a party.

Yesterday, I tried [Aura of Vengeance]. It's the poor man's Burning Guidance. Instead of proc-ing everytime I try to heal, it procs whenever a party member takes damage. Since my party felt overwhelmed by ads in the eGWD boss fight, I slotted [Vengeance] to help the ads could go down quicker. I took into consideration that my Oppressor Thaum CWs already had really good recharge speed and our Tank had a good rotation down. I didn't know what the SW was doing, but I took the risk.

My conclusion is that [Aura of Vengeance] did not hurt the team. Not a stunning revelation, but just something to keep in mind as a possibly useful class feature.

3) Resurrection
I feel I always die when I try to resurrect people and frequently I die right after being resurrected. At this point, I rarely, rarely try to resurrect someone else.

Recently, I've tried shielding people who are being resurrected by another party member. I stand nearby and hold shift. My hope is that I'm shielding and healing the resurrector and resurrected. I think this is working, and at least I feel I'm contributing to keeping the team up.