The Arbiter Cleric or
Never get out of Divinity - Mod 21
by@bifflinculte - Forsaken Rebels
29.10.21
Here’s a guide to get the best out of the Arbiter path. The cleric class has encounters with very high magnitude compared to the other classes and above all without cooldowns, meaning there is no reason your cleric isn’t top dps!
This build works great for pve and boss fights. Mastering it requires nevertheless training, but also makes it fun to play
Principle of the build
This build is based on the fast cast of encounters without cooldown. The main advantage of this strategy is to provide the best ingame dps in any situation.But it involves a precise rotation and hence requires practicing before mastering it.
The whole gameplay is based on only 3 encounters (Daunting Light, Searing Javelin, and Forgemaster's Flame) since they don’t have cooldowns. However they consume a lot of divinity. The capstone of the build is hence to generate if efficiently.
Arbiter’s interface and stacks visuals
The divinity bar (min 0, max 1000, 1150 with Expanded Faith feat): actually your mana reserve. Each divinity based encounter will consume some until it’s empty.
o The judgement stacks (min 0, max 6): everytime you cast a fire power, you’ll generate radiant judgement stacks (yellow). Everytime you cast a radiant power, you’ll generate burning judgement stacks (red). You can gather either radiant or burning judgement stacks. Generating radiant stacks will erase existing burning stacks and vice versa.
Radiant judgement stacks will buff next radiant encounter, same for fire.
Channeling (tab) will convert them into divinity. That’s what this build is about.
o The radiant and burning shifts (min 0, max 4): your goal is to increase these to 4, but without a difference greater than 1, else they are reset to 0.
o Contrary to the other dd classes, the arbiter isn’t obsessed by cooldowns, since most of the encounters he uses are divinty based.
Feats
Lightspeed : Daunting Light deals damage much faster and grants an additional burning judgement stack after you have cast Searing Javelin. Very useful enhancing of Daunting Light and increased Divinity generation.
Focused Light : casting Forgemaster's Flame makes Daunting Light single target with enhanced damage. Makes the perfect encounters combo for boss fights.
Sudden Verdict : your encounters have 25% chance to instantly fill the Judgement Gauge. If you use Channel Divinity, it will restore a large amount of Divinity. If not, your next encounter spell will deal much more damage. Capstone feat, the highest source of divinity.
Critical Sun : if Celestial Prominence lands on a crit, it can be used a second time without consuming AP. Now works with charged daily.
Perfect Balance : After 4 radiant-burning encounters rotation, your divinity gets automatically refilled. This is the key feat of this build. With some training on the rotation, you’ll be able to spam encounters without interruption.
This set of feats is best for both pve and boss fight situations, no need for an extra loadout. Keep it for a healer build.
Encounters for trash
Encounters for boss fights
Fighting boss and mobs at the same time
The mechanics remain the same, first cast one of both Fire encounters followed by Daunting Light.
In this build, Daunting Light works either as aoe or single target, depending on the fire encounter you cast prior to it. So, this spell will never leave your power bar.
Be careful, Forgemaster's Flame is very Divinity-intensive. Using a cd-based radiant spell (Break the Spirit or Geas) can help keep the rotation when you’re out of Divinity.
Prophecy of Doom is a personal damage buff spell and is the best option for maximal dps when you master the rotation.
Divine Glow is a pure utility spell, it will regenerate your Divinity, unfortunately not fast enough for Arbiter. But it also reduces your threat, which is sometimes very useful in difficult boss fights.
Class features
Unlike the other classes, the arbiter doesn’t have useless feats. Many combinations are useful, depending on the situation and how fast you wish to generate divinity.
For enhanced Divinity :
Light of the Scales : tab restores 10% more divinity from judgement stacks, 45 → 49.5. The Arbiter consumes a lot of divinity, this feature is very welcome.
Expanded Faith : 15% extended divinity maximum (from 1000 to 1150).
Critical Insight : whenever you land on a critical hit, you recover 10 divinity. Only good against large packs of enemies.
For better damage :
Divine Equilibrium : increases your damage dealt by 15% whenever your current divinity is exactly half of your maximum divinity. This effect decreases as your divinity becomes further away from this point.
Doomsayer : when you cast an encounter that inflicts a negative condition on an enemy, you deal 10% more damage for 10sec. This feature is only triggered by Prophecy of Doom, Break the Spirit, Geas and Chains of Blazing Light.
Pilgrim's Light : 5% more dps when no allies are nearby. For solo runs.
For defense focus:
Hallowed Armor: reduces incoming damage by 5% while channeling. Useful in endgame trials.
The priority of this build is to cast encounter spells without interruption. So, the class features have to optimize your divinity management. Light of the Scales is the best feature for this, it will increase your Divinity generation by 10%.
Buffing your damage is also a good choice, as long as it doesn’t hinder the cast of encounter spells.
In practice, divinity management in aoe situations is easier, mostly because Searing Javelin and Daunting Light don’t consume a lot of divinity.
However in boss fights, Forgemaster's Flame is expensive and a high generation rate of Divinity is crucial.
To make it clearer, here’s a summary table of recommended class features combinations, depending on what situation you’re facing and how much divinity you want to generate :
At-wills
The arbiter has access to at-wills with high dps compared to other classes. However, divinity based encounters do much better.
In this build, at-wills are only used for the purpose of quickly generating divinity when you’re out of it, by gathering judgment stacks and channeling.
Continuous channeling is a bad option since it generates divinity at a slower rate and you deal no damage meanwhile.
Conflagrate (aoe, adds 3 radiant judgement stacks at a time), long cast (1.8s) but you can move meanwhile
Lance of Faith (single-target, adds 1 burning judgement stack), cast: 0.6s
Both at-will spells generate judgment stacks at the same rate (1 every 0.6 sec).
Dailies
Arbiter’s dailies aren’t bad neither, but divinity based encounters do much better once again, meaning AP gain is not crucial (unless you use the Music Box set). Take Hammer of fate for single target, Celestial Prominence for aoe, Hallowed Ground for healing and reduction of incoming damage by 10%.
Spell rotation
The goal of this build is to cast divinity based encounter spells without interruption.
Global strategy :
generating a maximum of Divinity by converting Judgement stacks (arbiter mechanics)
keeping the balance between fire and radiant encounters by always alternating both (perfect balance feat)
How we do that :
Casting a fire encounter generates radiant judgement stacks.
Casting a radiant encounter generates burning judgement stacks.
If you’re lucky (25% chance), you’ll get 6 judgement stacks at once because of the Sudden Verdict feat.
Between all encounters, you’ll convert every judgement stack into 49.5 Divinity by quick channeling (45+10%=49.5 with Light of the Scales). The scheme looks like :
Fire encounter ➡ Channel Divinity ➡ Radiant encounter ➡ Channel Divinity ➡…
But there is another trick to refill the divinity bar. With Perfect Balance on, this sequence will generate 1 burning and 1 radiant shifts (≠judgement). They last 1 min, and aren’t lost off battle.
After 4 sequences, you’ll reach 4 burning and 4 radiant shifts and your divinity bar will refill instantly. Shifts get reinitialized.
If either Radiant or Burning Shift exceed one another by more than a single stack, you’ll lose all shifts. The shifts can be spotted in your status bar, red flame is burning, yellow flame is radiant.
That looks easy, nevertheless keeping the rotation requires some training. If you fail it, you’ll be out of divinity very fast...
Always cast Daunting Light after Searing Javelin / Forgemaster's Flame to get the enhanced versions of Daunting Light (Lightspeed and Focused Light feats).
In practice, here’s the secret rotation :
If you’re out of divinity
This happens most of the time during boss fights. The best way to refill jauge is using at-will spells. Casting Lance of Faith will generate 1 burning judgement stack (single target), Conflagrate will generate 3 radiant judgement stacks (aoe). Taping tab will convert them to divinity.
Continuous channelling and the Divine Glow encounter spell generate divinity as well, but at a much lower rate.
The Divine Glow encounter also generates divinity, but at an even lower rate.
Full advanced rotation and other tricks
Priority of this build is to never get out of Divinity. Nevertheless, after some training, you can start skipping Channel Divinity if you think you have enough divinity to finish a fight. Keeping Judgement stacks will empower the next encounter spell you’ll cast. Typically, when your divinity is almost full and you have 6 judgement stacks, channelling is a waste. Channeling after the 4th rotation is also useless, since you automatically get Divinity refilled.
So, the full ideal rotation looks like :
At the end of a fight, always check you don’t have more burning than radiant shifts. If it’s the case, a blank cast Daunting Light will equilibrate them. Shifts last quite long (1 min), this will prepare the next fight.
At wills are also useful to buff an encounter spell. This is mostly useful in boss fights. Using Conflagrate will buff radiant encounter (3 judgement stacks/cast), Lance of Faith will buff fire encounter (1 judgement stack/cast, fastest at-will). 3 stacks grant more or less +50% dps, 6 more or less +100%, the bonus is different for each encounter (see next table).
A hit of FF with 6 stacks will deal… 1370 magnitude.
Systematic judgement stacking to maximise magnitude of your encounters is also a strategy, but you’ll be out of divinity very fast and you’ll lose overall dps at the end. Encounters have already high magnitudes, don’t be too greedy unless you have enough divinity to complete a full 4-rotation.
Encounters Magnitude Table
AOE
Searing Javelin 360+60/burning judgement
Aoe Daunting Light 240+40/radiant judgement
BOSS
Forgemaster's Flame 650+100/burning judgement
St Daunting Light 450+100/radiant judgement
Break the Spirit 400+100/radiant judgement
Geas 650+100/radiant judgement
In addition to having no cooldowns, cleric’s encounters have very high magnitude compared to other classes and low cast times. With 6 Judgement stacks, the encounters hit as hard as dailies...
Boons
Same as every dps class. Just don’t take the encounter recovery boon, the arbiter laughs at cooldowns… Cry, wizards, cry! (Some say that divinity bar is actually filled with wizard tears)
And the unrighteous were turned to ash TO ASH !
GLHF,
Eldoth (@bifflinculte)
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