Perhaps you should listen to people who have completed the content then. That or continue to doompost on quite possibly the single best class in the game, your call
You’ve got it all wrong. PD is the class I enjoy playing MOST in this game. But not for all the support and status prevention stuff. I play PD because I loved the DoT spreading playstyle and dealing heavy damage over time as a caster cleric, an identity that has become pretty obsolete with the advent of Exorcist and Druid buffs.
So I’m trying to see what the niche is now that I can’t get as much out of that playstyle any more. I’m not ‘condemning’ the class, but excuse me if I question people trying to tell me how brilliant all of these supportive options are when they’ve always seemed quite paltry to me compared to what other classes can offer.
1.) PD is a green class it’s goal is support not DPS. Don’t compare it to exo a pure dps class which also happens to be holy damage and has several multipliers against dark demon types (which is like most end game content now). You already get disenchant which makes Velco an actual joke for like 1/2 the fight, and get bloodletting which is EXTREMELY useful in Velcoffer. On top of HF which is point 2.
2.) Healing Factor HP recovery is much stronger the Druid2 HoT idk where you got the idea that Druid2 is HoT is better then HF, maybe in a group setting but HF lvl15 can yield basically immortal regeneration for like 2.5 ppl. You know those movies where like there is a super villian or hero and their arm gets chopped off and it regenerates right back? yeah that’s Healing factor, even with like a minimal amount of con investment it still does it, not sure how long you’ve been playing PD for lol.
3.) On the note for “wow I really need a c3p3kabba3 in velcoffer” completely true - if you running with people that are relying too much on Kabba’s safety crutch to have a “smooth” run that is - lol.
I’ve been in and seen several parties where there was c3p3pd3 instead , and the disenchant is a noticeable (extreme difference) in the amount of time within the same comp simply because the DPS are no longer being effected/interrupted by Velcoffer’s Curse due to bloodletting + velcoffer having zero defense for 1/2 the fight.
Once people do Velcoffer enough you should know how to avoid skills, and to be quite frank playing with a kabba3 in Velco gives you the lazy excuse to be a bad player and not learn mechanics simply because you can face tank it. If said kabba3 was a PD3 in a well skilled party would say that PD3 is better always lol.
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Well if disenchant is really that good against bosses, then that’s great. I’ve always read the description and thought “monsters don’t wear armor, so what bonuses are being stripped?” without really looking into the actual mechanics behind that. The attribute’s wording is a little misleading that way.
I’ve played PD since the game was being playtested. It was the first character I made (my original was a chaplain plague doctor build) and my PD is currently hogging up my strongest caster gear. As someone who mainly farms for gear to sell and has over 10 alts, I’m late to the party when it comes to doing stuff like Unique Raid and Velcoffer. Again though, I played the DPS style plague doctor and never put much faith or attention in PVP abilities like Beak Mask or disenchant.
To be frank I think you sadly fell for the trap that is DMG vs Support in the point hungry mess that is Plague Doctor. Disenchant’s attribute is a gamechanger in new higher tiered content, but needs at least 9 points to ensure you always cause the debuff.
It’s a trap to invest too many points in Incin and BDS sadly, there are several more important support skills that help your party way more. Your PD dps isn’t a huge gamechanger if it loses a few SFR, but if you could make a bosses armor be nonexistant your DPS sky rockets.
Also normally when you plop a HF down, it’ll go to a squishy DPS that is actually a dps. If those members actually die then that’s where the trouble begins sadly.
sidenote: you can teamstorage transed stuff now, no reason to not explore other caster classes lol
And yet we return to the point that you are comparing damages between a support-oriented class and a damage-oriented class.
It worked before Exorcist cause we didn’t had a proper magic damage class so far for Cleric in endgame. Druid was not that great, so Taoist and PD had this role until now. Now that they introduced a proper magic damage class and gave Druid more damage capabilites / QoL, these support classes had to go back to support.
If you cared mostly for the damage, and you can’t find PD’s support attractive, then I have bad news for you: you should not main Plague Doctor. Cause trust me, it will still do the same damage as it was doing before, but not as good as a proper damage class.
Good luck with your build.
IMC’s MO, at least with new bosses like panto rex and velcoffer, is to boost their defense/mdef to very high values. This makes skills like disenchant really crazy.
Someone should make a pardoner3 / PD3 in rank10 lol, would be the highest effective dps of any group since the uptime of disenchant would be maximized.
Well I might just go ahead and do that then, since I need an excuse to make a pardoner anyway. Buuut maybe not for my main.
max SPR decatose build, it would be hilarious.
I’m fine playing support if it means doing an effective build. Again, I just don’t think there’s enough support here for it to be considered a support-oriented class and having trouble understanding just what kind of build-defining support it brings to the table. Seems like the answer to that is bloodletting and disenchant. Which is fine, I guess, now that I better understand what disenchant actually can do.
Still I hate that even at max rank, disenchant only has a % of working. Isn’t that really unreliable for an ability with a 30 second CD?
that does seem funny, but ugh I hate skills that have RNG associated with them. At least pardoner has some other interesting mechanics to work with. It also just feels bad that PD has nothing in their kit that scales with SPR at all.
at max rank disenchant is 100%, so you can get 9 in it and then divine might before casting it
just get
15 healing factor
9 disenchant
5 bloodletting - EDIT
1 in every thing else
rest of points where you want
Ouch, well RIP my Pandemic if I have to put that many points into healing, disenchant and bloodletting.
One thing I want to know though, does the accuracy for disenchant apply only to the PVP armor bonus debuff? Or does it apply to the attributes too?
Yes and no–it’s more of an issue of divergent paths. You can try to be a jack of all trades and supporty build, or you can pick up the big damage skills. It’s a lot harder to do both, PD DPS if you build for it is exceptional because it’s free.
Velco is a great example, in particular fights like the gargoyle or anything that moves around a lot. Dots tick no matter where you are in relation to the boss, you never have to worry about standing and casting/charging a skill or running out of something which will kill you. This also makes it exceptional for PVP just from a damage standpoint. As a PD. you aren’t a sitting duck standing and casting rubric. Your dots are ticking, you are doing a high amount of rapidfire damage which is preventing the enemy from doing much of anything, all while you are running around/circle strafing in a straight line like most TBL clerics do/talk ■■■■ about your TBL teammates in guild chat like any good PVPer would do. You have all the time in the world because the enemy team’s debuffs just turn you into a cute little pillar of light rather than hit you with anything even remotely threatening.
And, y’know, you’ve dissolved their buffs into nothing.
Please do not buff PD.
… Please.
edit: Real talk fix taoist.
I’d rather see Oracle fixed before Taoist tbh. That class is complete and utter poopbutt.
And I imagine people in PVP would just slam down antidotes to deal with BDS? I don’t PVP, but my experiences from Gemstone Fued showed me that actually landing a BDS or Incinerate on a moving target and making it stick is harder than it seems.
Personally I’d like to see Plague Doctor get some small tweaks and buffs:
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Slightly lower cd on Black death steam (maybe like 32s instead of 38).
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Slightly better scaling on Incineration and Black Death Steam (maybe like 10% per skill point on both instead of 5/8%) so points invested feel more noticeable, especially for Circle 2.
-
Methadone’s damage amp removed.
With that said, Plague Doctor is one of my fav cleric classes and is in a fairly decent spot atm, It has a place in both pve and pvp, and when compared to some other cleric classes its quite powerful. Can the class be improved? Yeah I think so, but its far from being in a bad place now that Exorcist is out, they just focus on different roles and have different mechanics.
With the Rank 10 attributes they’ve been hinting, Plague Doctor may get something that benefits the class greatly too (just look at Fencers).
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I’m not holding my breath for rank 10 attributes for PD, you’d think they’d have revealed it already with the rank 10 post they made a while back. But yeah, I would like to see cooldowns lowered rather than straight up damage buffs if any.
I think it’s probably hard for them to balance at rank 10 because there are too many things about PD; buffing one thing akin to doppel or druid or the other rank 6/7s would suddenly make a very specific build feel forced.
My only suggestions would be:
- No drawback on methadone as Valk mentioned
- Some kind of built-in debuff added to BDS that increases damage taken (maybe just poison/fire damage, PD/wugu/pyro best bros?)
Problem is, even small changes like that could just make it too strong. I dunno.
I don’t think Plague Doctor is in a bad position at all, even with the new changes of Druid and release of Exo. Sure it no longer holds the throne of being the best for Cleric magic dps, but it is far from being bad.
PD’s support, aside from removals and prevention of debuffs from allies, is always the spread of debuffs that helps allies in dealing more damage via Pandemic. It can spread debuffs like Hexing, Monstrance to lower pdef/mdef. It can also help to spread beneficial debuffs from allies such as the new Zealot C3’s Emphasis Trust.
Unlike other classes whose DPS mainly comes from area/tile/targeted skills, PD’s are DoT based debuffs. Just fire and let it run its course. This gives PD an edge as they don’t need to stay in 1 area or plant themselves to channel a skill. They can do something else to increase the damage of their current DoTs (eg channeling Sanctuary) or support their allies with other skills.
I find that the real reason why players are disappointed in Plague Doctor now isn’t due to the skillset Plague doctor offers, it is due to the class now no longer holds the “Best cleric magic DPS title”. Most of the PDs took the class due to it being meta DPS in the past, and now leave/intend to drop it for the new fotm DPS Exo. Sadly what they like isn’t how the class works or plays, but how well the class can do in the meta department.
Plague doctor’s skills didn’t even change when druid is reworked and exo is released. It is still one of the best balanced classes around, with skills that can support and deal damage.
Actually, Chortasmata is even better with high CON investment, since the recovery is affected by the 0,5% bonus recovery per point of CON, as it affects all recovery effects like cards (Canceril e.g.), HP potions and recovery skills (e.g. Heal, Chortasmata).
So, a high CON build will actually recover several times the base value of Chortasmata (given it’s easy to reach 500-700 CON, it’s secure to say that you can recover three to five times the base value of Chortasmata in e.g. Velcoffers Nest if you share the highest CON within your party).
This is what actually causes Chortasmata to be such a strong recovery skill. Imagine you have it at level 12[Divine Might + gem] with a 500 CON shared throughout the party.
The 930 base recovery will thus be amplified by +250%, so we’re looking at 930 * 3,5 = 3255 HP recovered per tick.
Even if this is slower than Healing Factor, it affects the whole party, so you can easily recover the average damage dealt by Velcoffer on a decently geared party.
Also, while the buff itself only lasts 10 seconds, it renews itself after running out if you stay inside Chortasmatas AoE. This means you can basically stay in the AoE and just facetank Velcoffers attacks without a problem just by bringing a C2 Druid to the raid.