Clerics?

[Mick]

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

It's a Druid spell? And if it is for Clerics too , no one's seen it and what's the point since they have heal already?

Not understanding this post.

[Gnua]

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 played a healer for the first time in 6 years now. The only reason I played a cleric is because they are the most powerful class weeks 1-6 of the wipe, which are the weeks when the most hay is gained or lost.  After week 6, they are completely useless outside of 5 fights that i will probably never even see all wipe.

all of reed's suggestions are great.  especially the bit about healing mist needing to be at least as powerful as healing wave is currently.  clerics seem to be severely lacking in the heal over time department and become useless long before they legend.  trying to get  animate can be frustrating because if you have a group for it, then there is a good chance that group includes another healer who needs it as well.  the one time it has been up, we've had a group to load it, and no other cleric who wanted it was on, the thief failed the disable.  so i legended my exotic shammy and never looked back.

this has been a great wipe for me but not for my cleric that made all the goodness possible for my other characters.  i'm still loving arctic but clerics are trash.

[Chase]

Couple of other things I hate about clerics (besides healing mist being useless)

1) Animate dead is pretty useless in almost all zones I've been 2 with the exceptions of 2 zones, except if I go animate corpses from a specific zone then fly and walk all round krynn with them to do the zone I actually wanna run, while shamans have it easy with spirits being in most zones and also they can call their spirits without walking around with them.

2) It doesn't seem fair that holyword only works on goodies when you're evil or evils when you're a goodie, this is supposed to be the top cleric battle spell having it powerless in half your zones kinda suck.

[Jorake]

I dont even know what cure massive is..

[Gnua]

I dont even know what cure massive is..

as far as i can tell it is a top tier druid spell which makes clerics even more redundant

[blackmagus]

I agree that healing mist needs to get some serious love, give it a percent proc chance to healing a set percentage of life or just boost the overall heal to something massive on the chance a proc occurs.

[reed23]

Horrible idea from Blackmagus - not surprising at all.

You need reliable heals, not some BS % to heal.  Like when healing cloud was a % to go off - how many people were using druids as reliable healing sources?  Nobody. 

Healing mist needs to be a reliable heal source.  When someone is at awful in the group, are you going to say "I really hope the healing mist catches him this round."  Get real man.

[Kadaj]

At that point....you could......heal them.

But smartass comments aside, healing mist could definitely use some help. It should be on par with healing wave, but you also don't want to make it too strong where it's a "cast healing mist and afk"  I think it would be cool if healing mist also had a chance to remove a negative affect, blindness, free action or something.

[Dagda]

I like the idea of adding shields to the clerics repertoire, a la discipline clerics in WoW, shield the tank to prevent damage, proc shields on other healing casts. Perhaps even add in group healing via a % of the clerics DPS if you up their spell damage.

[Heo]

Ultimately it comes down to this:

Clerics should be the best healing option for groups, currently they are not.

1)  Heavy damage on single tank - this generally is either a stoneskin solution or regenerate solution.  Regen and stoneskin can be cast Fair-Perfect, heal has to wait until Bad/V bad - so you will always get a stoneskin or regen before a heal.

2)  Group damage - Ameliorate is nice but healing wave and healing cloud seem superior.  And obviously as everyone has pointed out, healing mist is a complete joke.

Additionally, there's buffing/debuffing, but as Reed notes, is anyone really memming holy auras or prayers?  It's basically cloak of bravery and that's it.

Cure blind is fine, as is legend free action. 

But just off the top of my head, some other options are:

1)  Make healing mist superior healing to healing cloud and healing wave, potentially adding the ability to remove some negative debuffs, for instance, would be really useful for high priest in istar, etc.

2)  Create a heal over time that is better than regen and healing cloud for clerics so it makes sense for clerics to cast before shamans or druids, maybe keep it divine so you can choose between that and heals or something.  Perhaps even a mix of steelskin and regen or something. 


Bottom line is this - the reason people don't play clerics is because if there's a shaman or a druid in the group, they pretty much have zero to do except maybe toss a heal or two at end of zone.  I used to joke about being so excited to cast a heal or 2 last wipe during a zone, but it was true, I was basically afk and just around as an insurance policy which is boring as hell and obviously not what is intended from primary healing class.

Personally I would nerf shaman and druid heals, cut regen and healing cloud heal hps in half.  But I'm a dick and I'm sure the rabble would revolt, so maybe keep the arctic inflation going and buff up cleric healing so the are the PRIMARY option for healing.  And they cast first - with regards to buffing party, but especially for healing high single damage or high area damage.

Otherwise nobody will play them past early wipe except for a few people. 

[Kam]

Code: [Select]

Level 1
aid                    bless                  cause light           
create food            create water           cure light             
know alignment         restore strength       spiritual hammer       
Level 2
blindness              cure blindness         curse                 
detect evil            detect good            detect magic           
light                  remove curse           silence               
Level 3
cause serious          cure serious           fear                   
gust of wind           holy armor             poison                 
protection from evil   remove fear            remove poison         
Level 4
cloak of bravery       cure disease           dispel magic           
flamestrike            free action            heroism               
hold person            prayer                 sacred ward           
sanctuary             
Level 5
atonement              cause critical         cure critical         
dispel evil            dispel good            fortify self           
holy aura              word of recall         
Level 6
animate dead           darkness               harm                   
heal                   restoration            summon                 
Level 7
ancient curse          negative plane protectisoul leech             
strength of one        summoning circle       sunbolt               
Level 8
gate                   healing mist           holy word             
steelskin              sunray                 wave of terror         

For reference, the complete cleric prayerbook.

[Heo]

And to add to that, I remember the good old days before shamans / healing cloud:

As a cleric, you had to be on your game.  You're healing, shooting cure blinds out, free actions, dispelling enemy fireshields, rem poisoning groupmates, dealing out cures to the most vulnerable after a nasty area.  You're not some mage spamming frags or basher spamming bash, you're out there doing something different every round, parsing all the text to review group status and do the most productive thing each round to keep your group alive and attacking well.

Cleric is stunned?  Oh shit, better rescue off, it got hairy. 

With these heal over time spells, there's so much less risk.  And shaman can cure blind, everyone can do the job the cleric was really needed for.  So it's no longer exciting, and the best players no longer gravitate towards healers.

[Willoe]

I agree a lot with Reed on this...
I think in reality, Clerics only became obsolete when Shamans were introduced and Druids got buffed...To truly solve this is to look at what about these two classes has done this?
1. Healing Mist-Is a piece of shit, as far as area cures go healing wave/cultivate/healing cloud are all WAY better...Not to mention they don't get dispelled with gust of wind. In my opinion, junk this piece of shit spell and replace it with Healing Wave.
2. I think a great addition perhaps to Clerics would be the heal boost spell...They are healers after all...That being said, casting heal boost on every person in the group is annoying as bapt. Perhaps make this a group spell?
3. Animate Dead - If you would be able to summon your corpses like spirits, that would take away a lot of the gripe. At legend, this spell makes healers the one of the most powerful damagers in a group(usually), so put that along with better healing abilities, you have a strong class.

Anyway, just my two cents.

Ilya

[Mick]

Would love to see a system that brings the gods of Dragonlance into action...

'Pray' Skill.

Cleric can pray to one of three gods of its alignment three? times a day.

eg: Neutral Clerics

Pray Reorx : Cleric's learning abilities are greatly increased for a short period of time.


Good Cleric

Pray Mishakal: Cleric's healing done is increased significantly for the next x number of rounds.

Pray Kiri-Jolith - Cleric's damage done and number of clerics is greatly increased for next x rounds.

Evil Cleric

Pray Morgion : Something undeadish

Anyway just some ideas ot make clerics more fun and interesting. Maybe some alignment specific spells?

[Gnua]

A few ideas on cleric:
 - leave them alone, this is still a great game. we're allowed to play two characters. if no one plays clerics after legendary shammies and druids come online, no harm done.  it feels very "dragonlance" to treat clerics the way Raistlin treated Crysania
 - give healing wave to clerics and take it away from shammies
 - make healing mist in a different circle than gate steelskin holy word
 - improve (legendary?) gate charmies: locate object, detect/disable traps, cleanse, read magic, moc
 - spell/skill to let clerics "teleport/relo" from guildmaster to guildmaster
 - spell/skill to summon all group members (including corpses) that are not in combat to the cleric
 - replace animate dead legend requirement with healing mist
 - delayed healing spell (you can cast it before a fight and then 20 seconds later or if the target does some keyword it heals the target)
 - legendary spell/skill to make a group member stand
 - legendary spell/skill to make the group nocharm
 - legendary spell to remove silence
 - spell/skill to become imm_blindness
 - spell/skill to remove charm from a former groupmate and put them back into your group
 - legendary gust of wind also does mass remove poison
 - spell/skill make group imm_poison
 - legendary cure blindness affects entire group and makes caster imm_blindness
 - ask reed and ilya their opinion.  anything those two agree on is probably a good idea.