Clerics?

[Aristox]

Tell me what you like and dislike about clerics.

[Mick]

It's my impression that if Clerics are the premier healing class why does almost no one play them? 

Lack of spells? Or too difficult to get the spells to Legend (a theme I've heard more than once). Druids and Shamans have much more to offer in terms of utility.

Maybe some more fun spells?

Mages also don't get seen much in groups and probably could use some balancing.

[Kadaj]

I think the biggest problems with clerics are the one dimensional gameplay.

Leveling --
     While leveling, they basically can blind an enemy, hold an enemy and cure someone. Their mem and spell damage does not allow them to be efficient casters like druids and mages and they have no in combat skills besides turn. So they basically do one of the 3 mentioned things and then assist.

Grouping --
     With the addition to shamans and the revamp to druids, I would imagine a clerics life is absolutely boring. Healers are now only required for a handful of fights. Their buffs are nice, but only at legendary. The DO bring a lot with animate dead, only once the cleric is legend. Again they have little to do, no combat skills, no offensive spells that are useful to cast. You pretty much make your corpses assist and afk if there's a druid/shaman in the group.

I think a good way to increase the effectiveness of clerics would be to add some more combat skills and allow them to cast without losing their combat round, like paladins and DKs.

Smite could be a similar skill like strike but perhaps have some affects like an ocean scouts zap(short term blind/hold/silence).
Having a spell that they can cast in a lower slot that does decent damage and then allows the cleric to smite them to add bonuses to the hits.(longer hold/silence/blind/para)
Perhaps adding a spell that makes the target become immune vorpal for a short period while having a long CD would be beneficial on some fights.

The cleric is the center piece of a group, one that brings it together and ensures the groups success...if it was still the year 1998. The clerics are just an archaic class that desperately needs a look at. Right now unless you're doing something crazy for a fight, there really isn't a need for one.

I do love the idea of battle clerics, wielding big ass 2 handers, wearing + damage that also increases their spell damage and just going shoulder to shoulder with their melee group mates.

These are just some of the ideas off the top of my head. I have a level 30 cleric this wipe, which was the first in about 10 years and I got so bored I rerolled to a druid and haven't looked back.

[el conquistador]

it feels really good when you heal a tough fight and make the right decision every round and keep your team alive. 

then there is the other 99.9% of arctic when you are just following the group around doing basically nothing.  maybe throwing 1 heal every 2 or 3 minutes until you get to a fight where you are actually needed.

i think it would be fun if they got a couple of combat skills.  maybe some kind of weak area attack similar to assail or like a chance for a little stun like zap

[Chase]

This is the 2nd wipe I ever play a cleric and I just legend my cleric today, I'll try to summarize what I like and dislike about my cleric experience.

1) Spell loads: Loading spells for my cleric wasn't so hard except for legend spells like animate and circle which require a big group full of bashers to dominate Soth, however I tend to find it easier to spell up a druid or a mage for example.
Generally speaking it's easier to spellup other casters than clerics because their high end spells load on specific tough mobs that require a special group combination of char classes to win, while that's not the case for most top spells for other casters.

2) Healing in group: I healed most of the wipe since it started until clan shamans started having 6+ regen then I felt kinda useless, if I group with 1-2 healing wave shaman then I'm totally useless even in some high zones since I don't heal at all even on end fights.

Maybe if we give clerics more damage spells like a mage/druid or more combat skills like Paladins they'd be fun to play, but unless the fight is super hard I'm hardly needed in a group.

3) Heal quest: Heal quest is overall a good one but the load % sucks I had to run heal quest 7 times to get heal and I know others who ran it around the same number of times if not more to get heal.

4) Pre-Legend Clerics: They're super boring to play, I totally ignored my cleric and just ran around with my basher leveling it up and use cleric to cure up until level 25 where I just grouped for high zones and healed until clan started having good shamans.

5) Legend clerics: Even thou I've only been legend today I can see the potential of a legend cleric between mass crit, animate corpses and rapture, I believe legend clerics are very well balanced and they become very buff and allows them to be critical in groups as much as a legend shaman but again it could get boring to just order corpses to assist all the time and sit tight watching the group kill mobs and hardly needing a heal until a major fight comes where I have to watch group and keep everyone alive.

The only disappointment I have is from healing mist, the spell is totally useless the healing done is a joke compared to healing wave or healing cloud and theoretically clerics should be the top healing class. Even legend healing mist is useless I have to stack 2-3 of them just get decent healing done to group.

Overall from my experience shamans and druids are easier to level and spell-up their chars and more fun to play compared to clerics.

But once a cleric is legend I believe he's as good as either in a group and  but again not as fun to play.

My recommendations would be to maybe try and make cleric top spells load on more mobs (if not on easier ones like the change done to druids this wipe) give them more damage spells or skills and to diffidently buff-up healing mist spell.

[Heo]

I played a healer last wipe in a clan.

I've always enjoyed playing healers because a good healer can make more difference than any other character, and I setup a really sophisticated client setup to make sure I could respond extremely quickly to anything that happened in a big fight.

But playing a cleric was miserably boring, half the time I'd just be watching netflix on my other monitor because I didn't need to do anything the entire zone until MAYBE the last fight, I was just an insurance policy.

Why?

Because druids and shamans took over the role of clerics and made them pretty much useless.

Druids have stoneskin but even more significantly, healing cloud.  Legend healing cloud would keep the group cured FAR better than healing mist, so what's the point?  Nobody would get down to bad or v bad, so I wouldn't have to do anything on that front.

Then you have shamans - they have regen and healing wave.  All of these hit before a player gets down to bad/v.bad as well, so no heals from me.


Spelling up my cleric was not the issue (though it was at times annoying), the issue was that clerics are supposed to be the glue that holds a group together with buffs/debuffs/healing.  Instead, secondary healing classes have made them almost completely obsolete.  So why bother playing a char that doesn't cast a spell the entire zone?

How to change this?

Honestly, either buff up clerics or debuff shaman and druid healing.  I'm sure that's an unpopular viewpoint since everyone always wants to see classes get more power, but that's what happened and why clerics are almost completely irrelevant and unnecessary in groups.  Why bother with a cleric when druids and shamans can do more offensively?

Plus, life is safer with a shaman or druid - groupmates never get down to bad/v.bad/awful, so a slow reaction or lost conc has less impact.

But basically, buffing shaman and druid healing spells so much made them better healers than the primary healing class.

[Dagda]

For the power of the spell, the shaman quest for regenerate is much easier than the heal quest. Very little chance of death unless you do something pretty dumb. Whereas (and maybe I'm doing it badly) the cleric quest if you get a bad timing on something sneaking in, you're one stabbed if they get through protections (which seems to happen a lot).

Cleric need some sort of combat advantage over druids/shamans to make them worthwhile. A group instantaneous heal maybe (before legend)? Mass Cure Serious/Improve to Critical on Legend?

[Gnua]

Tell me what you like and dislike about clerics.

Like: they are great early wipe and are the glue that keeps a group viable.  word summon cloak gust are great spells and no other guild has all 4.  i hear legend animate, rapture, ameliorate, legend heal, legend steelskin is great.  i wouldnt know, i've never had a legendary cleric.

Dislike: very hard to spellup compared to other casters.  our clan had two legendary exotic shammies and two legendary druids (making non-legend clerics pretty much irrelevant) before our wipe day clerics started getting spells like circle and animate.  when asked to rent bots to make room for real people, people (myself included) would rent the cleric (because we were not expecting to legend it) and keep the non-cleric.  groups could then fall apart because the cleric rented.

I think the dragonlance books pretty much sum up the role of a cleric:

“You have served my purpose, Revered Daughter,” Raistlin said, his voice as smooth
and cold as the silver blade of the dagger he wore at his wrist. “Time presses. Even now
come those to the Portal at Palanthas who will try to stop me. I must challenge the
Queen, fight my final battle with her minions. Then, when I have won, I must return to
the Portal and enter it before anyone has a chance to stop me.”

“Raistlin, don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me alone in the darkness!”

Leaning upon the Staff of Magius, which now gleamed with a bright, radiant light,
Raistlin rose to his feet. “Farewell, Revered Daughter,” he said in a soft, hissing
whisper. “I need you no longer.”

[Malaki]

After your fully spelled and got some nice ranks and maybe some gear, so your rolling 10+heals, meming in single tics and have over 550 hp steelskinning, etc - Love them for single person dps and exploring, but i roll my clerics like tanks.

Hate:
Fully spelling up such a damn pain, and thats when you have multiple clans of people helping try to spell you up.
Grindy, and for the value unless your brute forcing a fight which you have to single or double heal each round for a few minutes straight.  You can probably just roll with a shamy / druid in the group.
Did i mention Grindy, and also its a one sided role focused on healing for the most part. when compared to the full spell list.
Its hard to resist fully scripting / triggering / aliasing your way through this roile, cause spamming group every round, and scanning and doing math on the massacre per groupmate vs obliterate and their max health and who needs a heal first vs when your lagged, vs primary heal and 2ndary or tank heal vs group heal.

Would be nice if:
There was some variation over direct instant healing, and healing over time.
The output / there was some command to run to help track in real time your groups HP's and debuffs etc.
Every spell you study, is a chance at something you dont have, no more recognize or nn.  This is so aggravating especially at higher lvl spells.
Adopt a WoW style of spells and types of clerics, or atleast look at the mechanics and setup on how they do it.  Not quite like magic users and the different robes, but maybe something along the lines of hey DPS cleric, Healing Cleric, PVP cleric.
Condense down all the spells to the core function spells, healing, prepping, damage.
Make alot more spells divine, so i dont specifically have to memorize c food or water or restore etc, managing your spellbook i think shouldnt matter as much just so long as your memmed.  Maybe just have a memming debuff when switching roles from healing to damage or whatever for a handful of tics.  And do away with managing a spellbook entirley.

Crazy:
Would rather have classless characters, or multi class characters and i could just swap roles as needed, and grin the skills / spells as needed without having to change which character im logged onto.
So i dont have to grind my way on multiple characters multiple times, to and through legendary.
Give them alot more xp for healing group mates, just like melee gives xp for hitting.
And if everyone is going to script / almost fully automate this type of character anyway, why not make the skills / spells that way in game. (Setup healing target priorities / roles etc)

[reed23]

I've mained a healer for about 15 years now.  The only reason I play a cleric is because they are the most powerful class days 1-6 of the wipe, which are the days when the most hay is gained or lost.  After day 6, they are completely useless outside of about 5 fights in the entire game.

I enjoy playing a healer, but mostly because I am one of the leaders in our clan.  If I was merely following a clan leader around, i'd script the healer and never look at the screen.

From a healing perspective, druids & shamans are a hell of a lot easier to heal.  There are heal-over-time spells that make you have to pay attention to the healing aspect a lot less and allow you to contribute to the group in other ways.  Heal should be the buffest and easiest healing spell in the game.  Period.  Currently, it isn't.

Animates - over the course of the last 10 wipes, immortals continue to nerf animates into oblivion.  I'll take the blame for most of these, but it's harder and harder to find elite animates anymore.  Also, animates not being able to do several kws, etc. make them hard to utilize in legitimate zoning.  Wheras spirits pop out of basically every mob and can be called from zone to zone and after KWs need to be done i.e. enter mist.  Also, control is a skill, not a spell - another check in the Shaman column.  Having to cast the animate spell, dealing with failed animates, bapt it gives me anxiety just thinking about it.

No alternate use - druids and shamans have great altnerate uses and therefore make the classes more enjoyable to play.  Druids have better frags, prep, and movement helps.  Shamans have elite dps and their pets are so much more user friendly and easier to obtain.  Clerics have 0 frags and their pets are almost impossible to manage from zone to zone.

Easy fixes: make healing mist an ELITE spell.  not a dog shit spell.  make healing mist rank an ELITE rank.  It should be on the same level if not more buff than healing wave/cloud.

Make almost every mob animateable and once animated, "callable."

Make spells like flameshroud, cause critical, dispel evil/good, etc. legit frags.  I'd make flameshroud an area frag.

Give clerics legit prep spells.  Currently, I can't think of a single prep spell I use for the group outside of cloak of bravery LOL.

Having some sort of DPS route that clerics could get +dams and make them a melee class would be an interesting option too.

[gulca]

I'm not sure if cleric changed too much since I last played, but I usually try to legend one if I had a chance.

Here are some aspects of cleric things I find fun. Some might not be true anymore...

1. Gate: ability to conjure different class charmies with their skills or spells. It's like having a minor dual class.

2. Animate: having corpses that hit harder than tanks and with right weapon, they are immune fire/ice shield

3. That legend skill that makes you hit really hard. Fun when you use a 2 hander and have a paladin haste you. Double obliterate.

4. Turn. Ok I have been deleted over and over the wipes for this but it's still fun to do. Also a quick way to regain xp.

5. Summon circle and utility spells. Nice way to pick up players over the course of zoning.

6. Sunray: fun spell even if it doesn't work most of time

7. Healing mist: I think it's a nice concept that it flows into other rooms and stackable. I would increase the random healing or decrease the spell circle.


Here are some suggestions maybe to improve the class

Dispel evil/good: aura that doubles dam against opposite alignment

Steelskin: cast on others

Heal: stays with the char until he reaches below zero and it heals to full. Wears out after 1 min. Yes now tanks can tank overkilled damages and soth. Only 1 aura at a time.

Cure crit: this will take the heal place. Massive instant cure.

Turn: after activation, auto turn effect every round on undead and zombified targets. Either hurts them or decrease their stats.

Animate: I agree most corpses should be animatable. I also believe corpse should share some damage with the owner. The more corpse he has, the more danger he might have to face if they take damage from area.
Maybe limit corpses to different categories, high hp low dam, high dam low hp. Everytime you call them from a different room, they lose Max hp and dam?

[Jorake]

First I will say the answer is not to debuff druids and shamans.

The main thing about clerics has already been said. They are boring to play. I Mained a cleric for several years and even before shamans and druids and I still disliked it. They are the most repetitive caster class period. I will say that the cleric legend skills are super nice and it’s fun to watch a cleric obliterate with rapture AND the skill that lets you group crit is also bad ass. And legend heal can do a minor regen.

I thought it might be cool to let clerics have different paths like scouts. Healer, zealot(melee damage) and holyman(group buffs).

[Mick]

PAths would be great for Cleric.

It's probably not doable with the amount of time needed but to keep it Dragonlance canon, having the ability to be a cleric of a certain god (for instance Good clerics could choose Paladine (maybe more leadership/group type buffs) , Mishakal (super duper healer) or Kiri Jolith (Battle Cleric) would be verrrry cool.

Also, please don't debuff Shamans.

Make Summon work in clan more like rit voyage.

You can't make Steelskin castable on others cause of Steelskin rank. Or make it not last very long?

Maybe more group buffs.

See Gods point above cause that would be awesome. :D

[Kam]

I feel like nobody knows about the spell cure massive that went in this wipe.

[Heo]

Agree with all of Reed's points.