Can clerics please regain the title of top healers?

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Kialya, Oct 22, 2019.

  1. Zalamyr Augur


    Not to be crass, but yes, the healer assigned to a task is certainly most likely to be the top healer for that task. Let's not act like shamans couldn't keep a tank up. Reckless spam has tremendous throughput.

    And to be clear, I'm not advocating shaman nerfs. Rather, I think the days of "clerics should be totally one dimensional because they're the best healer" should be gone. Clerics need more diversity.
    Pano likes this.
  2. Bigstomp Augur

    Clerics want to be the best healer (which they currently are).
    If you remove the one dimensional thing, then we need to give them something else.
    What do you give them?
    My cleric signed up to play a cleric.
    Like my warrior signed up to play a warrior. I
    didn't sign up to play a hybrid.
    Both classes signed up to play the best at what they do.
    They intentionally chose to be not a hybrid and super specialized in one role.
    Rile, Lannin, Metanis and 1 other person like this.
  3. Metanis Bad Company

    I do not want to see shaman nerfs. I love what they bring to the table. I just want clerics to have bigger bombs entirely within the realm of possibility of the current game engine.

    What does that mean? Well, take mitigation, we have the beautiful Shining Bastion. Outstanding mitigation with heal procs. Except we have tanks that are already buffed locked. So they wouldn't be doing us any favors to hand out any more mitigation or special effects that take up slots. By the time I put Shining (takes 2 buff slots), VIE, Promised Remedy, Dissident, and 3rd Spire on a tank I'm taking up 6 slots. That's ridiculous! And if you say, well drop them on the song window, then I can't see them, just like Divine Guardian and both AA Celestial heals are now! So don't give me any more toys that won't land half the time on a raid-buffed tank!

    Quick heals? Well, I'm already spamming the heal bind key a few thousand times a night, so I'll take the oldest remedy out of the bind and add the newest. Excuse me as I yawn in total boredom! (Sure, I have 4 other spell binds I use that aren't all Remedy all the time, but they're situational. I can load up the triple remedy anytime and it's usually appropriate.) [Yes, I've got 70,000 AA so all my heal focuses are at max. And I glyph constantly.]

    Divine this and divine that? Sure, I love them and use them all but give me a break, it's a game not a Chinese sweat shop! It'd be nice to keep actually lower the required APM so I get a chance to read chat and actually enjoy an event!

    So what do I want? I want the strongest group MGB'able HOT by a large margin! I want it to overwrite every other classes HOT without asking permission or begging forgiveness.

    I want a new splash that centers on a targeted player, not the error-prone free target thing. Double the healing power and double the range too while we're at it. The existing splash is a joke compared to damage output like we see in Aalashai.

    I want Intervention cool-downs cut in half. And while we're at it I want the damage component to scale to the amount of heal performed so that a Big Heal = Big Nuke. And I want the Nuke focused exactly as high as the heal. If I'm going to invest thousands of AA to be the strongest healer that should also serve to focus my Intervention-based nukes!

    In other words, take my existing tools, chrome plate them, then buff them suckers until they gleam!
    Bigstomp likes this.
  4. Mehdisin Mahn Augur

    you sir, don't understand the full implications of what you're asking for.

    Clerics already have the biggest MGBable HoT…. in fact, I believe they have the only MGBable true HoT. You asking for it to overwrite shaman HoT is re-damn-diculous. the heal amounts on our HoTs were adjusted to be the same for a reason. obviously, in your selfishness you either don't understand or don't care about that reason.
    Metanis likes this.
  5. Zalamyr Augur


    I think the devs have made it pretty obvious that the days of one class being much better than everybody else at a task are over. I guess my point is the gap between cleric and shaman healing has DRASTICALLY decreased over the last decade, while the gap between cleric and shaman utility hasn't shrunk at all (and in fact, has probably increased).

    It seems unlikely the devs are rewinding the clock to the days where clerics were leaps and bounds better than other healers, so the next best thing is to ask for the utility gap to close slightly.
  6. Bigstomp Augur

    Maybe you're right. I have 2 toons I play (with any sort of competence. I play other toons very very badly).

    Cleric, and Warrior.

    Both are very specialized. (best tank, best healer).

    Maybe both can use some work as other tanks/healers have gotten better at normal healing (any healer/any tank for group should work)

    But the warriors and clerics haven't gained anything for the comparative loss of power in our main job.

    I've already accepted knights are better group tanks and better on easier raid content.
    I am not quite ready to say clerics are weaker than druids or shaman's on healing in group content.
    But that utility.
    Tucoh likes this.
  7. Metanis Bad Company

    Reason has nothing at all to do with it!
  8. Pano Augur

    The existing splash already crit are around 100k which isn't that bad considering it hits the whole raid in Aalishai.

    [Sun Oct 06 19:40:01 2019] Ranger glows with holy light. You healed Ranger for 108919 hit points by Mending Splash Rk. III. (Critical)

    Personally, I see nothing wrong with free targeting and I'd rather have them work on fixing it in places like Empyr et wherever I have a red target ring for no reason.

    As for the rest, clerics are better at single target healing and when s... hits the fan. Shaman are better at AE healing but the gap isn't that big. If you are decent with splash and AE HoT, clerics can parse rather high in AE healing. It's just more efforts.

    What I'd like to see is bringing back the battle cleric. We have the utilities, but they haven't been scaled properly so are pretty useless.
  9. Metanis Bad Company

    So here's the deal, DBG has zero interest and zero resources they can invest in working on the old battle cleric concept. Besides, If people want to play a battle cleric they can simply roll a pally.

    So as a 20 year cleric I want things that they CAN in fact give me by simply rounding up some numbers in the database/spreadsheet and/or by simple modifications. BECAUSE they aren't going to do anything else to make the cleric class any more desirable.

    Make my cleric more fun to play by simply making it more powerful and easy to play. Easy peezy lemon squeezie!
    Tucoh likes this.
  10. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    Could be worse. Could be a druid.
  11. Tappin Augur

    The OP has a point. My shaman typically tops the charts even without the rains.
  12. Mehdisin Mahn Augur

    if you're topping w/o splashes then your clerics are horribad.
    Pano and Szilent like this.
  13. Szilent Augur

    Mehdisin "sometimes" a jerk about these things, but he is very much not wrong in this case. The clerics you're playing beside are super duper bad if your direct heal multibind is beating theirs.
  14. Tappin Augur

    In terms of actual heals, it makes perfect sense in some raid scenarios that a shaman can out heal clerics overall without using rain spell. I am not talking about going head to toe healing a single MT, but rather an entire group.
  15. Szilent Augur

    Yeah you're gonna have to walk us all through that claim. Cleric heals cast faster, have lower cooldowns, proc additional group heals at no additional cost, are backed up by faster & more frequently available rescue tools, are reinforced by more powerful & more frequently available healing discs...


    Just as a side benchmarking exercise, could you look at your raid records for overall casts? The good clerics I've gotten to play beside jam out at 20-25 casts per minute. Heals casts, that is; spells, not AAs or Yaulps or clickies or procs, just spells. Even the best shm I've played with rarely pass 15/minute on raids. If that's not what you've seen also, then we likely have to address that difference of perspective before talking class capability.

    Your claim does beg the question, too, of when you'd have gotten to see shm healing without Squall? Whatever, I guess
  16. Tappin Augur

    The proof is in the pudding - shamans are perfectly capable of topping the charts, even without squall (and are currently doing so).

    I am not going to explain the logic, go take a look at the parses.
  17. Szilent Augur

    I have seen and dissected many, many, many parses. What I see is :

    Shaman use squall.

    Subtracting Squall leaves clerics ahead by a mile.
  18. Mehdisin Mahn Augur

    even with the few heal burns we get, shamans wont' top the parse. clerics should be ahead by a good margin when it comes to actual heals if the shaman isn't splashing. as szilent said, it's all in the tools available. shaman group heal cooldowns alone leave us at a disadvantage if we're not using splash.

    The only time I can MAYBE see an exception to this is in an event where you're getting hit with frequent AOEs... maybe alashai or stratos? and for some reason shamans are still not splashing? in which case, your shamans are terribad, not your clerics, because your shamans aren't using the right tools for the job.

    most likely cause of shamans topping the parse this late in an expansion: everyone's slacking because they can....
  19. Tappin Augur

    over heals does not count - players do not have imaginary hps).
  20. Szilent Augur

    So the additional base heal size of shm Recklesses compared to cle Remedies isn't much (if any) advantage? Especially since Remedies get matching base heal size when the target is low hp so has room for the full amount, anyhow? good point!