My Scrubby DC

Hey Guys, this is Threat. I would consider my DC to be my main character, although it was not the first I made. I don’t claim to be the best DC player as we have quite a few in our guild who are very good, but I would like to share some things I have learned along the way in hopes that it may help some other players as they learn the class themselves. This isn’t a “character build guide” kind of post, but more theories and reasoning about some choices I have made and why I made them. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and if it starts a discussion, that’s even better.

1. Loadouts

Since the mod 11.5 update, I have found Loadouts to be incredibly helpful. The DC can do many things, but in my opinion it is ultimately a support class. The best part of playing DC is adapting to situations to help the rest of the party burn down enemies as fast as possible. By having multiple loadouts prepared, I am able to quickly change at the beginning of a dungeon in order to compliment the rest of a group. If there is a 2nd DC in the party, it is really beneficial for you to each run different paragons and feat paths in order to gain the maximum amount of buffs. Loadouts were huge for me and make me enjoy playing this class even more than I did before.



2. Paragon Path – Anointed Champion (AC) or Divine Oracle (DO)

The main difference between these two paths is that one (Anointed Champion) focuses more on power sharing and the other (Divine Oracle) focuses more on a straight damage increase and is a more balanced support.

Anointed Champion (AC) – AC brings a lot of power share to the table in order to help his/her team. Typically you want to focus on gaining as much natural power as you can, while still maintaining fast dailies, and spread that power to everyone around you. I say “natural power” because it’s important to note that is what is being shared, your unbuffed power, not power after things like Bonding stones, Ring of Rising Power, etc. For Yellow Personals, I focus on spamming dailies asap so I tend to take Holy Fervor to build AP and Hastening Light to decrease cooldowns for the party after each daily cast. The main sources of power share are the daily Anointed Army, the At-Will Blessing of Battle (with the Battle Fervor feat) and the feat Weapons of Light. Basically, I’m just building divinity with BoB, and spamming AA as much as I can. I like to stay nice and close to the action to try and spread my power to as many players and companions as possible. If I am the only DC, I rotate between Hallowed Ground and AA, but if I am the only DC, I tend to play Divine Oracle.

Divine Oracle (DO) – The biggest thing that separates a DO is the Personal skill Terrifying Insight and in my opinion, it is a must-have. This skill is a 20% damage increase to everyone in your party. This is passive and doesn’t require you to do anything other than accepting a group queue and casually standing somewhere within 150’ of your allies. A DO still has all the other encounters that are usually used by an ACDC, but I find that when I am the only healer in a group, I can play with some added defensive encounters and still maintain high damage buffs with Terrifying Insight. Since a DO’s buffs are coming from damage percentages rather than your Power stat, it’s a bit easier to use a DO build early on with a lower item level. My general setup would include Divine Glow, Break the Spirit and Astral Shield and my main daily power is Hallowed Ground. The other thing to note about DO is the encounter Prophecy of Doom. An empowered PoD will add a 25% damage resist debuff to a target. This 25% debuff isn’t enough to replace Break the Spirit in a normal dungeon run, but with a 2nd DC in the party using BtS, I will use PoD. Also, in large group content like eDemo or Dragonflight, this encounter straight up rocks and would replace BtS. A 25% debuff given to 10+ people is much better than a 30% damage increase given to 5 people. It’s also a big AP gain when killing trash mobs. A DO can spam dailies too just like an AC (maybe faster with PoD), but unfortunately there isn’t really a great 2nd daily. I tend to use Hallowed Ground as much as I can, and I splash in either Flame Strike or Divine Armor just to make the Hastening Light proc and lower everyone’s cooldowns.



3. Feats – Righteous (Ri) or Virtuous (Vi)

The two main feat choices for a DC are Righteous (Ri) and Virtuous (Vi). Basically Faithfull (Fa) is only used in PvP.

Righteous (Ri) - Righteous (Ri) is focused on doing damage and debuffing enemies to make them take more damage. The capstone feat, Avatar of the Divine, lowers cooldowns and generates a ton of Action Points, allowing for very fast daily casting. This is also a great path for solo play as you will be doing much more damage to your enemies. Most DC’s will run a build that has the majority of their feats in the Ri path. When you are using encounters like Astral Shield, which will mitigate a lot of damage for your allies, you can afford to heal less and debuff more, making this feat path very effective. This path also has the Weapons of Light feat in the third section, which shares 10% of your power. So even if you preferred to use the Virtuous path, you may want to put enough points in Ri to get this feat.

Virtuous (Vi) – Virtuous (Vi) is the regenerating healing path and generates a ton of health for your allies. The capstone, Shield of the Divine, basically turns your heals into very long regens and you end up covering your allies in many, many small Heal over Time’s. The moment they take any damage at all, they regen right back up to full. People will say that DC’s are not very good “healers” because they have lower numbers on the chart than a Paladin or Templock. This is false. The reason DC’s have lower numbers on that chart, is because they do not allow their allies to take damage in the first place, thus lowering the amount of actual healing used. DC’s are excellent healers when they want to be. With that being said, although I used Vi a lot early on, I find that I am using it a lot less as my item level increases. For a long time, I used a ViDO build that was extremely balanced and had a lot of healing and straight damage increase buffs. There are still certain situations where I prefer a Vi build, but for the most part, I mainly run Ri now. Vi does have a nice power sharing feat in the second section for an AC (Battle Fervor), so even if you prefer the Ri path on your AC, you may still want to have a few points in here to get this feat.



4. 2DC Groups

When you have two DC’s in a group, it is ideal for you to be using different skills and encounters since our stuff does not stack. Take a moment to talk with the other DC and see what they are using. Here is just an example of a 2DC setup:

RiDO, Prophecy of Doom / Divine Glow / Forgemaster Flame, spamming Hallowed Ground daily

ViAC, Astral Shield / Divine Glow / Break the Spirit, spamming Anointed Army daily

This is just an example. It covers all the bases and makes sure every buff and debuff is being used. You can run any set up you like, but the important thing is have 2 different paragon paths (a DO and AC), and splitting the dailies so that you can try to keep maximum uptime on both AA and HG. The different path feats (Ri and Vi) are less important as long as at least one of you is using Ri.



So, if you managed to read through all this preachy rambling from a scrub DC, thank you. Again, I don’t want to be telling people specific things they should or should not be doing with their build. I simply wanted to lay out some of the theories that I use when I am playing on my DC and the reasoning of why I make these choices. Feel free to comment or make suggestions in this thread or reach out to me any time in game. I am always happy to discuss theorycraft with anyone.

Threat