You may have heard that the Sentinel’s Fate NDA was lifted today. To an MMO blogger that means it is time to collect every bit of information you have and throw it up on your site as soon as possible with your thoughts half formed! Everyone is going to be doing it and we all want our share of the pie! In all seriousness I’m just really excited about what is coming up for EverQuest II. I want to talk about a few different subjects over the course of the next week … few days …hours. To start I thought I’d go to what I consider one of the more exciting topics! I’m talking of course about the new templar and cleric class AAs that will be available in less than two weeks! I’m going to avoid giving specific values since they are prone to change but I want to talk about in general what they do and whether I think they hit the mark.

Cleric AAs

Historically speaking the cleric lines have been one of the better designed and more powerful areas of templar and inquisitor AA. We pick up a lot of power here so I did not expect some overly amazing improvements in these areas since they’re already pretty good. With that said I have to be honest and say I was not overly enthusiastic about the offerings. The abilities were mostly a recycle and did not wow me. I just didn’t feel like any new group was broken. At any rate, lets get to them!

Steadfast Resolve – Enhances Steadfast by increasing the duration you are immune to stifle and interrupt effects. The final rank improves the chance of stifle immunity to 100%

Steadfast is already a pretty exceptional ability. If you’re standing still you cannot have your casting interrupted and I consider that awesome. The secondary effect of the ability is a bit confusing. It has a chance to give you a buff that makes you immune to stifle and interrupts (which are already prevented so it never made sense to me). This buff lasts 2 seconds and was just a nice “value add.” With this new ability the immunity duration increases. When you hit the forth rank your chance of stifle immunity is now 100%? I still don’t have my head wrapped around it. Does it have a duration? How often will the buff proc? If the buff proced aren’t you already immune? Does 100% mean the buff always procs? What triggers it to begin with? Some clarity on this subject would be awesome. Regardless I’d say this is the best of the bunch and well worth the points, especially if it makes you 100% immune to stifle at all times while standing still.

Holy Reinforcement – Increases the duration and lowers the reuse time of Holy shield

Holy Shield basically lets you give a single target AoE immunity, (unless it is targeted), for 30 seconds. It has a 1 minute 19 second recast. I’ve honestly never found much of a use for it. It sounds worthwhile but since it is for a single target it just isn’t really there. Now increasing the duration and lowering the reuse in the same ability is a great upgrade! I can’t deny that. The core ability is just not that exciting so this is one I will be taking a pass on.

Devout Aura – Improves duration of divine aura

Divine aura was awesome in EverQuest. In EverQuest II there is absolutely no reason to ever spend points on it in my eyes. For 10 seconds you’re immune to damage… unless that damage would deal more than 50% of your hit points and it is on a really long recast. Adding to the duration is nice but when the ability you’re modifying is barely breathing it seems less than useful. I hate to sound so negative but I guess not all abilities can be good!

Holy Avenger – Reduces the resist-ability of all hostile spells

If you’re into the DPS line of the cleric AAs I think this ability is pretty much awesome. I don’t nuke all that often nor would I spec down the wisdom line but if I were to do so it would be to get this ability. Great option for the healer who wants to squeak out more DPS.

Divine Healing – Adds: Increases base damage, healing and taunt amounts to the group to Divine Recovery

Divine recovery is one of those abilities I want to love. It improves your group’s casting and recovering speeds for 25 seconds. It has a recast of just under 4.5 minutes. The ability has a lot of merit and I’m sure a lot of clerics use it to great effect. I imagine it is more inquisitor or non-main tank templar focused. With divine healing, however, it becomes a whole lot more attractive to everyone. Great upgrade I’d say and would cause me to likely get the ability.

Divine Guidance – Increases the group’s max hit points and will grant a heal when targets take damage. It lasts 20 seconds and the recast is 3 minutes.

This is the new “final ability” for the cleric line and I’d say it is pretty useful. It is one more “OH CRAP” spell that will be useful rather frequently. It isn’t anything different than we’ve seen before but it will get the job done and I like it. Anything that makes me do my primary job better is okay in my book.

As I said earlier there is nothing earth shattering here (unless Steadfast Resolve is actually 100% stifle resistance) but they’re not terrible. Basically this is like opening a birthday gift and getting something nice but not what you wanted. Other than the divine aura addition I’d say good job SOE on keeping it above average and even keel. Next up, templar AAs!

Tags: EverQuest II, MMO, MMORPG, Sentinel's Fate

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 18:19 and is filed under MMO Guide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.