"Stream of Life" - L6 Cleric Utility

[Istar]

Our Cleric is changing from Spirit of Healing as this has proved too hard to maintain., and too dangerouse.

Any tips on how to use Stream of Life, what can be done to increase the 15 HP per round he can heal.

With the nerf to surgeless healing we are not 100% sure how this works now.
- Looks like it may still works with "Beacon of Hope" for an extra 5

 

[Lord Ernie]

Our Cleric is changing from Spirit of Healing as this has proved too hard to maintain., and too dangerouse.

Any tips on how to use Stream of Life, what can be done to increase the 15 HP per round he can heal.

With the nerf to surgeless healing we are not 100% sure how this works now.
- Looks like it may still works with "Beacon of Hope" for an extra 5

My own cleric recently dropped Steam of Life because of the surgeless healing nerfs. It's still a good power, though.

The only real remaining way that I'm familiar with is to use magic items that boost healing, without requiring a surge. These are: Healer's Armor, Weapon of Healing and Healer's Brooch.

There are a few other items (and the Saint ED) that say "whenever you use a healing power", but those are debatable, as you're not 'using' the power when you take the ongoing damage.

 

[chitzk0i]

Picking up Divine Power at level nine is the icing on the cake for Stream of Life: the regeneration cancels out the ongoing damage!

 

[Istar]

Picking up Divine Power at level nine is the icing on the cake for Stream of Life: the regeneration cancels out the ongoing damage!

Ah he mentioned a power at level 9 that had regen 5, we have a Shaman that has a daily that can give back 5 but he is new to the game so would need to coach him.

 

[Istar]

My own cleric recently dropped Steam of Life because of the surgeless healing nerfs. It's still a good power, though.

The only real remaining way that I'm familiar with is to use magic items that boost healing, without requiring a surge. These are: Healer's Armor, Weapon of Healing and Healer's Brooch.

There are a few other items (and the Saint ED) that say "whenever you use a healing power", but those are debatable, as you're not 'using' the power when you take the ongoing damage.

Yeah our Cleric was devastated when I sent him the new rules.
He dropped Astral Seal and went more strength based and self healing

So he might have some of these:
1. Healers Armour - is that the name of it, I think he is eying up something else for armour.
2. Mace of Healing +2 I think he has so that must be the +2.
3. Healers Brooch - so this still works
4. Beacon of Hope - that must still add +5 to Stream of Life.

The Spirit is too dangerous, as all it has done is make him a massive target to the enemy and he cant get it to the front line where its needed, he just spends all his actions maintaining it and staying alive.

Stream of Life isnt even a minor action to activate and he only needs to be within 5 of the PC needing healing.

 

[Riastlin]

Yeah our Cleric was devastated when I sent him the new rules.
He dropped Astral Seal and went more strength based and self healing

So he might have some of these:
1. Healers Armour - is that the name of it, I think he is eying up something else for armour.
2. Mace of Healing +2 I think he has so that must be the +2.
3. Healers Brooch - so this still works
4. Beacon of Hope - that must still add +5 to Stream of Life.

The Spirit is too dangerous, as all it has done is make him a massive target to the enemy and he cant get it to the front line where its needed, he just spends all his actions maintaining it and staying alive.

Stream of Life isnt even a minor action to activate and he only needs to be within 5 of the PC needing healing.

Heh, surgeless healing didn't get nerfed that badly so as to eliminate Astral Seal. Unless of course he just didn't have much or any Cha bonus. Even with a 16 in Cha though Seal is pure win imo. -2 to all defenses AND surgeless healing? Yes please.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Heh, surgeless healing didn't get nerfed that badly so as to eliminate Astral Seal. Unless of course he just didn't have much or any Cha bonus. Even with a 16 in Cha though Seal is pure win imo. -2 to all defenses AND surgeless healing? Yes please.

The problem is the opportunity cost. When instead you could be laying damage on the enemy and instead you're nerfing them a bit and doing a little bit of healing you actually make the encounter LONGER and the party takes more damage in the long run than if you just go STR cleric and break heads. You CAN still go whole-hog super healer cleric and dish out an amazing amount of healing, but you can't really keep a whole party going just with Astral Seal anymore, they're going to have to dip into their surges.

The thing is a lot of characters were built on a sort of middle ground lazer/healing kind of build that relied on Astral Seal plus some ranged attacks, and that just doesn't work too well anymore. You're better off either full pacifist heal-bot or skull cracking STR cleric (which while much maligned is still an awesome build, almost too good). Of course now with Essentials the Warpriest option is open, which MAY be a little better STR cleric. I tend to think it still doesn't dish out quite the same damage, but it does have more flexibility.

Anyway, surgeless healing is still good IF you have every option to leverage it, otherwise dump Astral Seal, it is really a trap option.

 

[Riastlin]

The problem is the opportunity cost. When instead you could be laying damage on the enemy and instead you're nerfing them a bit and doing a little bit of healing you actually make the encounter LONGER and the party takes more damage in the long run than if you just go STR cleric and break heads. You CAN still go whole-hog super healer cleric and dish out an amazing amount of healing, but you can't really keep a whole party going just with Astral Seal anymore, they're going to have to dip into their surges.

The thing is a lot of characters were built on a sort of middle ground lazer/healing kind of build that relied on Astral Seal plus some ranged attacks, and that just doesn't work too well anymore. You're better off either full pacifist heal-bot or skull cracking STR cleric (which while much maligned is still an awesome build, almost too good). Of course now with Essentials the Warpriest option is open, which MAY be a little better STR cleric. I tend to think it still doesn't dish out quite the same damage, but it does have more flexibility.

Anyway, surgeless healing is still good IF you have every option to leverage it, otherwise dump Astral Seal, it is really a trap option.

Well, YMMV of course, but the thing is, you are dealing damage with Astral Seal, its just that its coming from your allies and not you. Astral Seal increases their hit rate by 10% for everyone in the party. Often times, you'll deal more damage this way (by turning misses into hits) than you will by hitting them with a cleric power. Of course, this also assumes that your party focuses fire (which they should be doing anyway) and that they are smart enough to take advantage of the +10% to hit. Keep in mind too that the -2 to all defenses works for you on your next attack as well since it goes away at the end of your next turn, meaning its that much easier to keep it up (essentially a +20% to keep it up since its Wis +2).

Admittedly its not always sexy going with Astral Seal, but with the right group it can be killer. The only time Astral Seal really doesn't do anything is when the group doesn't try to take advantage of it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, YMMV of course, but the thing is, you are dealing damage with Astral Seal, its just that its coming from your allies and not you. Astral Seal increases their hit rate by 10% for everyone in the party. Often times, you'll deal more damage this way (by turning misses into hits) than you will by hitting them with a cleric power. Of course, this also assumes that your party focuses fire (which they should be doing anyway) and that they are smart enough to take advantage of the +10% to hit. Keep in mind too that the -2 to all defenses works for you on your next attack as well since it goes away at the end of your next turn, meaning its that much easier to keep it up (essentially a +20% to keep it up since its Wis +2).

Admittedly its not always sexy going with Astral Seal, but with the right group it can be killer. The only time Astral Seal really doesn't do anything is when the group doesn't try to take advantage of it.

Pre-nerf is was inarguably the way to go. Post-nerf the increased to-hit of the rest of the party generally doesn't make up for the loss of damage output, and remember that the alternative is something like Righteous Brand, which also has a buffing effect (admittedly not as general a one, but applied properly it is a pretty handy boost). Astral Seal still has to HIT to give the bonus, which means it is only up around 50% of the time. Same is true for other powers of course, but the average of a couple extra hit points a round healing you get out of it doesn't really negate even one attack by most monsters over the course of an encounter.

There was some pretty good number crunching on this a while back. The upshot was that even pre-nerf it really depended on the makeup of the party, etc. Post-nerf there are a few edge-cases where Astral Seal still makes sense, but they are like epic tier high damage output enemies that are close to impossible to hit or something like that. For the vast bulk of situations you'll encounter Righteous Brand will result in lower overall damage to the party and thus more hit points coming out the other side of the encounter.

All of this is pretty much in the realm of min/maxing though. The one observation beyond that I have to make is a healing focused group will endure a lot of LONG encounters. They may well come out of them in good shape, but against opponents that already take a good while to kill it can be a pretty boring strategy where you just chip away at the enemy and negate most of the damage coming back at you.

 

[Riastlin]

Keep in mind though that you are 10% more likely to hit with Astral Seal at the outset because its Wis +2 as opposed to just Wis. So with an average hit rate of (I believe) 60% or so, Astral Seal becomes about 70%, then about 80% to hit in the following round since you still get the Wis +2 and the -2 to defenses.

That being said, I think you are right to an extent. If you are trying to go with Righteous Brand, then you are also obviously pumping Str up along with Wis (in all likelihood) which now makes Cha your third stat, meaning you won't get much of an extra boost out of it for the heal effect. If you are going laser/healic route though your Cha bonus should be at least +3 at level 1 meaning 5 HP per round at level 1, which is actually pretty good. Certainly this tapers off at higher levels to an extent but you also get the chance then to boost with items too (just not as much as before).

I still think that the damage is likely to even out between the two since I would rather have the ranger/rogue/sorceror/etc hit more often than add the little bit of damage from Righteous Brand. At the very least I think that the extra damage that the rest of your party deals out will make up for most of the damage you personally pass on since clerics are not high damage classes anyway, but I'll concede that I have not crunched the numbers myself. In the end of course, I would always counsel the player to pick the power that they think they would enjoy the most. I don't think either Seal or Brand would gimp your character or your party.