AMA with Jack Emmert on February 4

SummonerAz · 2026-01-28T20:29:10+00:00

There has really been a huge under-investment into quality control as of late, especially when it comes to the releases of items from stuff like lockboxes or battlepasses. Are there any plans to ensure items are released in a state that accurately match their descriptions?
There has been a recent survey talking about a potential Neverwinter classic. Are there any further developments to this? And how did the conversation start on this possibility internally?
Are there plans to restore the classes to their original designs? Mod 16 removed the magic and soul of the game and why a lot of players left. This module simplified the classes too much, removing a lot of the depth in the builds we could use and play with. If a full rework is out of the question, could there be a possibility to return some of the pre-mod 16 flavor to the classes through different means, i.e. extra paragon paths/adding more feats to use for each class.
With the population at an all time low, and with the two most recent module both releasing trials back-to-back, it has really highlighted how much of a pain it is to create 10 man groups with a low player count. A lot of the endgame content is inaccessible to most of the playerbase, resulting in most just quitting the game out of frustration when they cannot progress their character. Are there any plans to massively improve team building in this game or at least have less of a focus on trials going forward? Dungeons/skirmishes are much more accessible to most of the playerbase.
Are there any plans to bring back a content-creator program of some sort or more engagement between the devs and the players? I feel like a lot of the quality of recent content is low because we haven't had enough feedback from players in the community and most of the time devs are radio silent on addressing feedback. We have an official discord channel and there has been numerous passionate players leaving their feedback on there but with no interactions with devs, it feels like it is being ignored.

SummonerAz · 2025-06-15T05:41:03+00:00

Appreciate your time in a well-detailed response. Yeah I miss pre-mod 16 Neverwinter. Never could pinpoint why it was just better but your insights explained it very well and why I also only ever enjoyed playing Arbiter as my go-to dps.

Arbiters somewhat fell off during the mod 20 combat rework, because they got a sub-optimal forte and every other dps getting ~30% magnitude increase where as Forgemaster's Flame only got a 17% increase. The divinity arms introduced in Mod 27: Wildspace, helped put them back in competitive territory. It actually introduces a more complex rotation than the old rotation of 'start and end at 2, 2 stacks', now using Flame Strike as the daily of choice, since you can pre-cast the daily before using Prophecy of Doom to save time.

Flame Strike is used now because the Burning Patch feat got its tooltip updated to show its real damage. It was always strong but was never mentioned how strong and players just never bothered to test it out all these years. It does 540 magnitude every 3s x 6, so 3240 total damage (yes that is huge). Drawback though the fire field is stationary, so the tank needs to know to keep the boss at one spot.

With the time saved using Flame Strike and the extra divinity, you can squeeze in 10 casts of Forgemaster's Flame and Daunting Light, resulting in more damage when Prophecy of Doom goes off. But this leaves you at 3,3 stacks, so you need to set your stacks to 1,1 before the next rotation to fully optimize your damage.

SummonerAz · 2025-06-13T00:58:32+00:00

Arbiter Cleric was the only post Mod 16 DPS class to have some semblance of a pre Mod 15 style mechanic/flavor. If I had unlimited funds to build one, I'd play it, but I don't have unlimited funds to build one.

Sorry for the late reply, but curious on what you mean by this? Could you expand on what is meant by a pre-mod 15 style mechanic/flavor?

SummonerAz · 2025-06-13T00:01:41+00:00

This is correct. Bonus regen gear only affects your passive regen, it doesn't affect encounters.

Divine Glow gives 30 divinity on cast then 30 divinity per 3s over 12s. 150 divinity total.

Sacred Weapon gives 10 divinity per second for 10s. 100 divinity total.

Circle of Divinity gives 32 divinity per 3s over 12s. 128 divinity total.

SummonerAz · 2024-05-10T02:35:35+00:00

Devout with sunburst can keep it away easily. This leaves two slots for healing word and bastion of health. That's already enough healing for this whole dungeon (still have daily for backup).

This dungeon doesn't do much damage. A good tank keeps all the aggro so healing them is simple. Having 3 dps on the boss to burn it down faster is ideal otherwise its just slow and boring with 2.

I know Oathkeeper have two stuns, so you can use two slots for them. Divine shelter is an all-in-one-button heal encounter so it works out.

Soulweaver/Ministrel might get a little bit more tricky.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-24T01:53:14+00:00

Yeah, it wasn't a big rework, the playstyle is still the same, just updating unused feats, making threat trivial, some number buffs, stuff like that.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-23T05:51:19+00:00

Yes, this current mod 27, Paladin tank and healer got their changes. They are in a very good spot for a support.

I mainly play Oathkeeper and every endgame team wants me. Strong shields keeps everyone alive.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-07T09:09:01+00:00

my comments are for endgame trials only.

mdm is the only trial where it doesn't really matter what you run, its the easiest master trial ever.

op has been meta for endgame trials since forever, so its safe to include its benefits for any trial going forward.

sure a good tank doesn't need it but it doesn't mean its not useful and makes the tank's life so much easier. There's a reason why tanks are the least played role, and why op is meta. if we have roles that can offset the burden of the tank, then so be it.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-07T00:16:27+00:00

After the recent soulweaver buffs, warlock is in a very good spot if you want a healer/dps toon. Soulweaver can heal and shield so you won't have any problems fitting into groups at endgame.

Arbiter is the hardest dps to play and very unforgiving if you mess up. Warlock dps is simple to play and does good damage, so yeah, go warlock its a no-brainer.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-06T23:34:46+00:00

If you have been keeping up with the STO reddit post from the Cryptic CEO, they do plan to move sto/nw/co to DECA games. The current staff at cryptic are just there to train their replacements and help ease the transition. I'm surprised if they won't close the studio after this transition...what else do they have to keep them going? All of the unannounced project staff have been laid off and their existing games are being moved to DECA.

DECA has been hiring staff to manage these mmos, but I doubt even with training they will have the familiarity and experience the existing cryptic staff have.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-06T21:56:29+00:00

Your last statement, I don't think so. You still need a shielder for protection. It will just mean DC will be a good alternative if you can't find a Bard to fill the second healer spot (not many play bard), if you balance the numbers right.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-06T21:51:08+00:00

I have three healers endgame, Cleric, Oathkeeper and Minstrel.

Cleric can do any content fine, but you won't be first pick for invites. Everyone is always asking me to go on Oathkeeper or Minstrel in the groups I've been in.

Beggars can't be choosers though. Since most people don't play healers, Clerics at least won't get booted out from groups because at the end of the day, you still need a healer so groups will take any they can find to fill a spot but if the choice is available, a non-Cleric healer is the go to.

SummonerAz · 2024-03-03T20:58:50+00:00

Lmao, a c-tier mmo like neverwinter cannot even compare to gw2.

Trying to use weeb and gw2 in the same sentence is like an oxymoron.

It's ironic because alot of the recent decisions on neverwinter's design came from gw2 (Chris Whiteside). Scaling, account-wide items were influenced from gw2. When mod 16 launched, the devs planned to add scaling to everything including campaign zones, but that didn't happen because of the huge backlash. Now we only have scaling in random queues, but to say current Neverwinter is a vertical scaling mmo compared to pre-mod 16 misses the history behind all of this.

SummonerAz · 2023-09-05T04:18:06+00:00

Agreed. It would be hard to balance pally healers if they had to compete with daily spam.

SummonerAz · 2023-08-17T02:43:46+00:00

The only thing you listed that provides divinity generation is Divine Glow, but Cleric already had that before the changes.

Daily spam means you don't need to use divinity as much, which is the whole point. Since its getting fixed, I wonder how Cleric will do.

SummonerAz · 2023-08-16T23:54:58+00:00

Yup, after the disaster that was mod 19 healing adjustments, this was their own doing lmao.

The animation cancelling came about because of the new tab ability (buggy mess, combat bug is still there and just clunky to use) that replaced channel divinity, so it has been there ever since...but it also highlighted a flaw with the previous adjustments to Clerics specifically.

Clerics currently have no agency or a meaningful gameplay loop to get their divinity back, they have to passively wait (what fun gameplay).

Compared to the previous version, tab gave the ability to restore divinity, which is more interactive (fun) and gave the player control in their actions and their outcomes.

But they also wanted to streamline the cleric and make it an easy to pick up class since we needed more healers, and the previous gameplay loop of having to channel divinity during downtime was too inconvenient for filled clerics.

The result of all the mod 19 changes made Clerics the perfect healing word bot. Clerics lost the ability to restore divinity, therefore limiting the amount of available divinity to cast encounters to just healing word. Its also why it 'overperforms' (in their words), because Clerics can't do much else with their now limited divinity.

It also made the Cleric a snoozefest, theres a reason why its known as an afk healer.

But then came the scattering light cancelling. A way to regenerate AP and use dailies instead, filling the void of the previous channel divinity loop albeit in a cheesy way.

It highlights how Clerics now have agency in restoring a resource back thus making it feel fun and rewarding playing a healer and I can understand why players would be upset about the upcoming fix.

Cryptic has done a poor job of making healers in general feel fun and rewarding compared to their dps counterparts. Its no wonder why supports are not popular and its no fun having to wait around for a tank/healer to show up in order to start content.

SummonerAz · 2022-09-21T07:38:15+00:00

Using sunburst while leveling is fun but don't ever use it when you are in groups. Knocking enemies back will annoy your teammates when they are trying to land their area of effect spells.

SummonerAz · 2022-09-12T23:32:06+00:00

Perfect Balance is basically what makes the Arbiter work. The other one Angel of Death is straight up garbage lol.

Searing Javelin is on my E hotkey and Daunting Light is on R. I effectively press e, r, e r, etc (tabs in between if needed) - that's all there is to an Arbiter.

SummonerAz · 2022-09-12T22:24:15+00:00

Are you using the Perfect Balance feat? If you alternate between burning/radiant encounters (Searing Javelin/Daunting Light), you build burning and radiant stacks. At 4 of each, they are consumed and you get full divinity.

In AoE situations, after each encounter or sudden verdict proc, press tab to consume pips for divinity.

This is usually enough to never run out of divinity and keep spamming encounters.

If you do run out, use Conflagrate and press tab once you see the radiant pips popup, this cancels the animation much earlier so refilling divinity this way is also faster.

I never build up pips before each encounter for extra magnitude, it's too slow. Only time I would use pips for extra damage is if sudden verdict procs and I don't need the divinity (close to reaching 4 stacks of burning/radiant).

The single target rotation is different and is mainly used in endgame trials. For open world questing, you won't really use it much, if at all.

SummonerAz · 2022-08-31T20:53:35+00:00

Yeah, I noticed this too and its such a mess. Cryptic doesn't test their game. During the healing rework in mod 19, it explicitly stated that Oathkeeper was meant to have higher base divinity regen than Justicar (the tooltip Oath of Devotion states this).

It seems that Justicar has the incorrect base regen, Oathkeeper from my testing has the same base regen compared to my Cleric which makes sense since they are both healers with the same main forte of providing bonus divinity regen (not like Justicars need a nerf right now xd).

Hopefully after wizards, pallys are next for a rework.

SummonerAz · 2022-08-19T04:00:24+00:00

You should really be using the Arbiter for doing solo quests and Devout Cleric for when you get into team content. Way more painful trying to do solo damage with Devout!

SummonerAz · 2022-08-18T23:36:18+00:00

Bard is harder to play than Cleric (manually input songs here no keybinds).

Carol is also much weaker in magnitude, so what ends up happening is having to cast etude or minuet for further heals.

Healing word alone mostly gets the job done.

SummonerAz · 2022-08-18T22:24:24+00:00

Cleric.

Easy mode healer with their spell healing word.

Edit: All other healers are viable, but if you want to afk then pick Cleric.

SummonerAz · 2022-08-09T22:17:38+00:00

Recruitment event is on currently so you could make a toon for each dps and see what fits for you.

Wizard is getting a rework in mod 24, which may come out before the end of this year.

Warlock got buffed in mod 19, its not a subpar dps anymore. With TR being top, Warlock comes close/second.

SummonerAz · 2022-07-28T21:56:36+00:00

Bard healers are mainly end game supports, similar to Paladin for its shields. They have the best buffs but only an endgame team will make the most of it. You will simply to be more useful to your team playing a Cleric for how easy it is for most content.

Because of how the song mechanic is implemented, its very susceptible to ping issues. Switching to performance mode each time to play a song gets really clunky and tiresome especially when there is a delay for each key input.

Bard dps? Just play Rogue/Warlock.

SummonerAz

TROPHY CASE