Clerics?

[gulca]

Here is a quick healing improvement for cleric.


All cure spells are group cures, no legend needed. No target needed. Charmies are included.

Create elixir. Similar to paladin, except it does the basic buff and remove poison/blind instead of food.

Heal. Total hp heal, with steelskin effect that last for 1. round. Also remove all edrain debuff effect.

Hero. Max hp and saves improves by 50 percent for all effect

The only spells that take away melee rounds are damage and debuff spells. Cure and heals can be casted without losing melee.

As for path, a cleric can worship any of the gods

Paladine allows mem during battle.

Mishakal adds 2 slots per circle. Healing 30 percent more.

Morgion increases animate chance and corpse limit. Turn skill increase by 10.

[Willoe]

The path idea is pretty cool.

[Gnua]

3. Nerf shaman and Druid area healing(and I hate when shit gets nerfed)

I agree that the group heal over time is messed up.  clerics should be the best at that (even if it means nerfing shammy and druid) but currently they are the worst.  as far as single target cures, clerics are doing just fine.  legendary healing mist should be as good as wave and/or healing cloud.  before legend clerics are better than druids and shammies in the curing department.  but they pay a double price for this early advantage: they are both harder to legend and relatively less powerful after legend compared do druids and clerics.

[Zozen]

Rename Shaman to Cleric.
Add some "old Cleric" spells and remove other useless ones.
You're welcome.

[Dyl]

I like the idea of prayer a la paladins for specific boosts.

I like being able to 'call' your animates similar to spirits.  It might be interesting to tie this into a 'religious' flag on a particular room similar to weather or terrain where you can consecrate or desecrate the room.  Those flags would determine if the cleric could call his animates (think shoikan grove/buried alive hands climbing up from the grave).  Could also give bonuses/penalties based on alignment of people in the room.... LE cleric 'desecrate' room -1hr -1dr to all LG in room and visa versa.

I haven't thought any of this through, but I like the fact the discussion is happening.

[jrrestad]

What I dislike about Clerics: As mentioned, they are boring and one dimensional. Agree with Kam that healing can be a nerve wracking and yet rewarding experience, and there really is an art to healing and battle mem'ing which seems lost to most. Still clerics are a great class, and just need to be made more "fun" to play. Lack of skills is probably my guess as to why they are boring.

Strength: Clerics often lead groups and are often picking up zone items, yet they can be weak as mages or druids.

Lack of skills: Rapture and ameliorate are awesome, but you have to wait to be legendary

Useless spells: All of your casting will be done from 4rth circle up, with the exception of 'cure blind' in 2nd circle. Making for a very top heavy casting class. This almost works, however, because of the excess of useless spells up there:

Wave of Terror: 8th circle, does not succeed enough to be used. If you need to fear something out, bring a Mountain Scout.
Fear: See above

Healing Mist: This isn't a bad spell to mimic paladins divine focus skill. It is almost a healing wave cast OUTSIDE of battle. I hate clerics that cast/mem this during a large fight, as it heals my opponent as well. At best this can occasionally be stacked outside of combat to mimic regenerate.

Cause light/serious/critical: Damage is terrible, and what cleric mems 'cause critical' over 'cure critical'. So you never really go past 'cause serious'
Flamestrike: Too weak

Darkness: A cleric has almost no business casting this spell. Even if you get a nightvision item, if you need to darkness around bring a DK, preferably with darkness2.0 AKA nightfall.

NPP: This spell would be a worthwhile prep if it lasted like a normal spell, say 'sacred ward' or 'heroism'

Poison: Never lands, but I can poison canteens or water fountains sometimes. Wouldn't be bad if it worked on weapons.

Holy armor/spiritual hammer: Too weak and useless. Not very noticable from being naked

Prayer: Mass bless is useful, but it doesn't last long enough. I end up just meming several 'bless' spells to cast on the important people in the group

Gate: This spell exists for one purpose.... Aspasia (or the equivalent). Now, a cleric being able to pick doors is immensely valuable, but I think the spell could be much more.

Curse/ancient curse: The only way curse is useful, is when its part of an attack (bladecurse) or combined in a skill (hex). As a spell, it sucks because it's too easy to save against. Even if the affects are pretty good, I might as well try to cast 'hold person' instead of this spell. Therefore, this spell exists for one purpose... To curse my chest so thieves can't steal.

Suggestions for improving class:

Here are my suggestions for making them even greater (provided unlimited resources and time).

1) Split up the rapture/ameliorate skills into fragments and give them to normal clerics:
- Rapture, I believe, increases damage and hitroll, allows you to mem in combat, and you can now cast without loosing battle rounds.

Could make 2 or 3 skills out of this one alone that add some variability to a non-legend cleric.
- Ameliorate: Great spell that allows your cures to become area cures. This skill could easily be for non-legend clerics, and would bring them up to par with other healing classes. It should probably last more than 3 casts or so.

2) Do a reconfigurement of cleric slots, as was done with Druids. I won't offer a suggestion here and I think Druids were done nicely.

3) Rework or buff some of the particularly useless spells.

4) Existing skills/spells that could work with Clerics:

Spells:
-Absolution
-Exorcism (although isn't this really a repackaged dispel evil?)
-Protection from Undead
-
Skills:
-Bladecurse: Rename this, allow clerics to poison/blind/silence/dispel evil with their hammer hits?
-Divine Focus
-Beseech: Could add different affects to Cleric, this could handle the 'paths' that other people suggested. Beseech Paladine/mishakal/habbakuk if goody for some healing %, or group NPP... Beseech Takhisis/Chemosh/morgion for some spell damage or extra hit chance?

[Jorake]

Take all of what Jrrestad said. Change gate to a guild spell. And so all of those things
This = clerics fixed

[Jorake]

Oh and give them auto haste. Obviously

[Gnua]

I love clerics and already find them fun.  But the only two times I play a cleric is to cloak at physix when papers shop is closed or to pick doors in lemuria when no thief is on.  Otherwise, it just makes more sense to play something else because of 3 critical defects.

1.  group heal over time inferior to druids and shammies.  Could fix this by buffing healing mist or stealing healing wave from shammies and giving it to clerics.  Maybe a legendary "mass heal boost" spell could be introduced to buff healing mist to be on par with healing wave and make cure crit on par with cure massive.  if healing mist were improved sufficiently i might even play my cleric.  but for now i'm happy leaving it in the inn.
2.  low utility/mobility.  When clerics were the top curing option (i.e. before legendary regenerate and cure massive and heal cloud) it made sense that they had low mobility and utility. But now that they are inferior they could use some mobility/utility. Could fix this by giving them a legendary "reverse ritual voyage" which takes them to a groupmate/clannie.  locate object on a gate charmie or as a cleric spell and some sort of "go to guild master in a main town of choice".  if they could locate as well as a trash mage, i could use the cleric to locate and then inertia would have cleric stick around for the zone if something loaded.  but for now i'm happy to locate with a trash mage, and then bring something other than the cleric or trashmage for the zone if something loaded.
3.  very hard to legend compared to druids and shammies.  By the time clans are popping animate dead regularly, the druids and shammies are legendary and so the cleric isnt actually important anymore.  can fix this by swapping animate dead requirement with healing mist.  had it been this way since beginning of wipe, I would have mained a cleric until it legended instead of (happily) abandoning it asap.

the only power increase clerics need is in the group heal over time department.  everything else can be done via utility and ease of legend (which presumably wont upset game balance or cause power creep).  i'm all for making clerics more fun (even though they already are) and there have been many great suggestions to improve fun, but to make me drag the cleric out of the inn they are first going to have to become more powerful (group heal over time) and/or more useful/mobile.

[Matthew]

I want to be a cleric of Morgion and spread disease. Or a priest of Sargonnas and burn the elves. Maybe a cleric of Mishakal and heal the sick, or follow Habbakuk and turn into a great bear. I also want to be a Kender and wap people with my hoopak and find things in my pockets, or yours.

[Nary]

Agree with all points brought up. 

The one thing i would change is how the Turn Skill currently works.  My thought is that clerics should straight up own the undead.  Right now if a mob is over 25 it doesn't really do anything.  Superb Turn should destroy, charm, bash, stun, flee, mind damage, keep trackers out of room, or just damage/kill the undead.  Add in quest to make your holy symbol upgrade to add these abilities against undead mobs.  Bottom line, you should really want a cleric in an undead zone.  The way it is coded now, its either dead or you fail.

[Heo]

My two cents -

All these ideas are great and fun.  A number of these ideas seem like they are time prohibitive for a small unpaid staff doing this on their free time. 

But here's the bottom line.  Clerics are supposed to be the top healer option.  That is their class function, their main utility.  Giving them damage or undead control or random elixirs or whatever is nice, but nothing is fixed while they are not the top healer.

People want a char in the group that can keep people alive.  That means cures, getting rid of debilitating group debuffs, basically keeping the group alive and hitting at full power.

Clerics won't be a top healing option while regenerate/healing wave and stoneskin/healing cloud/cure massive exist in their current state.

A regenerate is safer than a heal, and can be cast at good/fair, negating the use of a heal at bad/vbad.  Healing mist is far crappier than healing cloud.

Druid/Shamans should be the secondary healing options with useful other options, something that's useful instead of a 2nd cleric, or in a pinch for a non-super high difficulty zone.

This cannot happen with the current healing options.  Regenerate/healing wave either need to be nerfed or given to clerics, or another spell that is superior to those needs to be given to clerics.  Clerics should also have a better group heal option than druids have.  Or, give mobs a skill which negates the use of healing cloud.  Make gust get rid of healing cloud, or it only work outdoors.  Have regenerate only castable on someone else once a day, or cure both the mob and the person hitting the mob. 

That's the bottom line.  Otherwise, in a group with a druid and shaman, the healer will literally do NOTHING except MAYBE for the last couple mobs.  That's what you need to fix.  Otherwise it's all window dressing.

[Jorake]

That's all fine and good. But i think you are missing the entire point of why people aren't playing clerics.

Sure shamans and druids have good heals. great heals even. But neither can bring a 800 hp tank from 1hp to 800 with 1 spell. This alone makes clerics the top healing option. It however doesnt address or negate the fact that clerics are BORING as shit to play. I consider myself one of the best nonscript healers still around. I played clerics for 4-5wipes straight. Before legend and after legend. I get to the point where i hardly ever type group to check hps. I watch the battle rounds and see who just got massacred, was it a mage(if i let them in group), was it a tank that will regen those hps on the tic. Who can survive 2-3 rounds in a row while eating 3x oblits and such. Speed read through the spam of a color spray or sunray and see who got blinded, who got weakened, who is more important to restore strength or cure blind right at that time. Kam brought up a good point that battle healing, or planning your moves etc with heals, cure blinds, when to cure this person, which person do you let die when there isnt a choice for both to live. Sure its exciting for that fight. That ONE fight that requires those decisions. EVERY OTHER FIGHT is boring as shit. Cause even if you dont have a druid/shaman. You are just typing heal blahblahtank. Their utility is horrible. Having gate makes it kinda fun, cause you can control a charmie. or legend animate even. you can see fun damage. But even gate lost me when they changed the marilith. I used to love hoarding some decent nolimit prime, and like ebony shield just for my demon. Cause it hit twice and bashed and was fun to play in groups. But thats gone and i never casted gate again other than to pick something.

Druids can cast spells to deal damage and do some nice curing. They get a pet. They are fun at legend. 
Shaman can do some minor damage, but they have stupefy/hex/spook/FRENZY. I play my shamans more for damage than healing. I'm fine with the natural slots they get. I love being able to 2x annih on a bashed mob with a 2hander.
Clerics can animate(when it lands), have 5-6rounds of a group cure crit, and AND and TURN! Oh and heal.

I dont get tired of saying it. The answer isn't nerfing other classes people love playing. The answer is to turn clerics into something that people would love to play.

[gulca]

Here is another way to separate clerics from other healing classes.

Introduce rate of curing.

Each race has innate rate of curing, similar to health.

The rate determines how many hp can be recovered per round, aka 4s. Typical value would be 30hp per tick. Tanks have higher rates than casters and dwarfs have higher rates than elfs.

Let's put up some example.

Bob the warrior has 400 Max hp and current hp is also Max. He got into a fight with toede and won the battle with 200 hp left.

A shaman cast cure crit on him. The cure crit raises his potential hp by 50. It will take Bob 2 rounds to reach 250hp. First round 230, next round 250. Casting more cures will raise his potential hp until it hits 1.5x his Max hp, 600.

Every new damage he gets will lower his current hp and his potential hp by the same amount. Note his current hp may never exceed his Max hp.

So all cures and healing buff from non cleric class can only increase potential hps and curing rates.

Only cleric can raise the immediate current hp either with cures or heal. Heal would change potential hp to 1.5x the max hp and current hp to Max hp.

So what does this mean?

It means that non cleric classes cannot cure and heal the group outright. They can be good cure support over the long term, but never in a real fight. Having a healing cloud or Regen will keep the whole group pretty much at full hp after half a tick to a tick. But if someone is getting obliterated, they will need stoneskin or a cleric cure or a rescue


Clerics will be back as the only real curing class.

A lot of buff and debuff can be applied to rate of curing, Max of potential hp and so on.

You can sell curing potions in shops with this new system as it won't break the game.

Shaman and druids will focus on other stuff but will still be a good part time curing class to a group. 

[Gnua]

All these ideas are great and fun.  A number of these ideas seem like they are time prohibitive for a small unpaid staff doing this on their free time. 

But here's the bottom line.  Clerics are supposed to be the top healer option.  That is their class function, their main utility.  Giving them damage or undead control or random elixirs or whatever is nice, but nothing is fixed while they are not the top healer.
...
That's what you need to fix.  Otherwise it's all window dressing.

I agree with everything Heo said.  Make clerics the greatest primary healers again.  Druids and shammies have stolen their jobs.