Disciple and loving it.

[Darkmoore]

What a fun class to play! Amazing the variation of moves depending on the weapon type I am wielding. Wonderful job Sigil, wonderful.

[Lilith]

The damage on disciples is far, far too low. At level 35 I can't kill things fast enough, I actually get respawns in the time it takes me to finish off two mobs (Green 2 dots at that!) if I get an add, which then gives me three mobs, which leads to me being overwhelmed and then dying.

[Darkmoore]

Originally Posted by Lilith

The damage on disciples is far, far too low. At level 35 I can't kill things fast enough, I actually get respawns in the time it takes me to finish off two mobs (Green 2 dots at that!) if I get an add, which then gives me three mobs, which leads to me being overwhelmed and then dying.

After playing for a little while longer, I see what you are saying. This is not really a good class to solo with. Sure, I can stay alive for a long time but the respawns are killing me. I wonder if this is intended? I understand that this is a Healer class, but my Cleric on Live does far more damage than I do.

[Lilith]

its a side effect of the reduction in crit rate without a compensating increase in base damage.

Monks are suffering from it as well.

[Venti]

Originally Posted by Lilith

its a side effect of the reduction in crit rate without a compensating increase in base damage.

Monks are suffering from it as well.

They've been working on the monks the last several patches hopefully they will start on Disiples next. I'd like to start playing mine again.

[Hungkung]

I really like the disciple class as a solo artist, as a group healer, dunno the choas factor ensuring everybody gets what they need when they need it might be past my slow skills.

and as far as the respawn problem, it's why you drag the first pull with a shruiken into a dark corner then 2nd back to the same corner, kill the 3rd in place, repeat as you make your way into a place.

the get out of jail free cards balance out the slow killing, but ya'll are right, we need just a little more dps if we are going to be at all viable over the long haul

[Sailormoontw]

Originally Posted by Darkmoore

After playing for a little while longer, I see what you are saying. This is not really a good class to solo with. Sure, I can stay alive for a long time but the respawns are killing me. I wonder if this is intended? I understand that this is a Healer class, but my Cleric on Live does far more damage than I do.

It's not only the slowest solo class, but the least desired healer. From one thread I forgot, someone mentioned if there are the 4 healers lfg, the last one to choose is disciple. It's not because we are not good, it's because others offer better utilities and better damage, if the healing part is equivalent.

[Hungkung]

good points sailor, there is another thing though, less definable, but something I've often found to be true. Any class that can effieciently solo into the upper brackets of of a game's level-cap tend to get dismissed in groups, or "chosen last", druids did in EQ, hunters in WoW are 2 examples...granted druids in the planes just were sorta sucky healers til later (forget the patch number/expansion number) and there are 200 bad hunters for every good one which plays into it, but in some ways it seems like people inherently resent anyone who can lone wolf it longer than is normal.

(and yes I konw the exception to this are EQ1 enchanters, but that actually took skill and courage to do well solo after 25)

[Sailormoontw]

I remember the devs said disciples shouldn't be able to tank 4 dots, but our counterattacks are only viable when we are getting attacked, and that's one of our utility spells.

Not to mention the bonds system, it's unique in design, but when you compare with the buffs other healers get, bond aren't that powerful, with lots of drawbacks.

The drawbacks I can list it here:
1. short duration : 1 min
I remember when in beta clerics complain some of their buffs don't have enough duration, so they get a globally increased duration, but disciples' bonds remain short duration.
2. One bonds per target :
Whenever you cast bond A on a target, you cannot cast bond B on the same target.
3. One target per bond :
Whenever you cast bond A on a target, you cannot cast another bond A on another target.
4. You cannot use bonds on yourself.

If you check the buffs from other healers, they are plain simple, but a lot more powerful than ours. Our debuff bonds suffer the same drawbacks too.

And take a look at one of the bond for example :
Gift of Vitae : Gives Endurance vs Clerics' Renew : Endurance regeneration

We get it at 42, while clerics get it at 12. They can cast it on everyone, we can only cast it on one member, with short duration and the drawbacks listed above, and the spell would drain our own endurance to give to other, while clericss wouldn't.

I can compare the other bonds with similar buffs of other classes, it's obvious ours are surpar, but I'll stop here.

And about the DPS part, from some experiment of a player who play both disciples and bloodmages, the number shows disciples take 4-6 times time to defeat the same mob as bloodmages do. And from my own experience the clerics tank better, buff better, and kills mob faster(clerics have spells and offensive stance), I would say clerics heal better in healing stance too.

Bottom Line :

The disciple is a unique class, but so are other classes, we shouldn't be supbar just because our class is fun to play. I hope the dev could some day put the issues of disciples on the table, either give us better group utility, or buff our damage, or maybe add a path like shaman. Personally I don't like the path system of shamans, and there shouldn't be too many classes with path system.

Remeber, we are the only healer that doesn't have a stance, we need something to make our healing and damage enough in some situation.

[Nelus]

additional to the above problems i think something went totally wrong with disciple weapons.
it has little to no effect if i equip the best weapons for my level or no weapon at all. only a few more points of damage in average and also the dmg numbers in statistics increase only like 10% - 20%.
also sometimes switching the secondary weapon (without str bonus on both) to a higher dmg weapon will drop your main weapon dmg by far more than it increases secondary dmg. also disciple dmg is fine till about lv 25 but in higher levels its increas does not scale with the general game increases. like other classes keep growing dmg by% each lv like in the low lvs while disciples % increase gets smaller and smaller each lv.

maybe it would help just to fix the weapon thing to balance the class out better. fixing and making the buffs and bounds more usefull would help also

expanding the finisher chains would rock too, it makes fun to play even if they add useless chains.

well what i would change would be:
-make weapons more noticeable by greater dmg effect (maybe 2x or 3x the current effect)
-increase buff duration of our short buffs to 10 or 15min and make the very short buffs stronger so its worth triggering them.
-bonds should be castable on self as all healers can do with comparable buffs
-more finisher chains or skill chains as they rock and are what makes our class special maybe some buff or mana-, endheal chains
-those additional stuff could be introduced like cleric affinities where you can chose 1 path you like that adds some stuff in that direction. i.e.(heal, dps, buff)
ofcourse numbers need to be tested and set so disciples dont get overpowered but comparing to cleric they wont with this changes.