Suggested Cleric Changes

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Zachton Soulstriker, Sep 18, 2022.

  1. Zachton Soulstriker Augur

    There needs to be some balancing done. Looking at parses it is obvious clerics bring very little to the dps part of the game, but can do wounders on the healing side. Or, we did. I can out parse a shaman on heals, but often shaman are out healing us and out dpsing a number of others. A well played druid can do the same. Or, they can focus on heals or dps and do even better in that field. I've seen druids top the entire parse while keeping their group alive. They do so at the cost of burning through mana, true, but that is something we wouldn't mind using a bit of mana on too.

    Clerics can continue to heal. We can mitigate some damage with marks or other spells, but we aren't contributing a lot beyond that. In the group game I can rotate between two nuke/heal Contraventions and keep a tank or pet up fine, anyone can heal in the group game. But we offer little to the group beyond that.

    I run a lot of dungeons and dragons games over the decades, and I've played a number of clerics in different editions and games. Many of them can actually do damage.

    Make our hammer pets stick around and be controlable, atleast comperable to shaman pets, give them procs. They don't have to be tankworthy pets, but give them damage.

    Our Contravention line works in groups, but in raids people need heals far more rapidly. Give us options for a bit of DPS burn during burn calls during raids.

    A Holy Smite - could be patterned off of a low yield Harm Touch or something. It can't be used every 30 seconds or so, but, it does give us something to contibute during burns, or during namers. Or it could be a lower damage version of Turn Undead that works on live creatures. Maybe it lowers enemy AC or avoidance if that doesn't cause stacking issues.

    Give Divine Avatar a huge heal target's target component, so we can do some damage while continuing to heal. Or give us a group version that increases group dps.

    These would be easy changes that wouldn't really cause a lot of development time.
    Aenvar likes this.
  2. Metanis Bad Company

    I noted in your signature you also play an alt. I think all us cleric mains play one or more alts in order to actually enjoy the game. So there's our problem, they'd lose too much revenue if they actually made clerics fun to play.
    Tallie likes this.
  3. lordbob New Member

    As someone who either groups or runs around with a rogue merc on my cleric simply reducing the recast timer on contravention and intervention line of spells would help a lot. Oh and more targets to stun please. I know the devs are afraid of stuns maybe they should buff the mobs with stun immune after a stun lands to get around stun locking mobs. This could allow players to stun any mob in the game and it would be up to the devs discretion to how long they can go without being stunned again.
  4. Thraine Augur

    so and so has been partially stunned ... why not work it like slows, they can do partial slows, maybe a partial stun could be 40% of the total stun duration or soemthing.

    Also OP with the controllable hammer pet would be an amazing QOL upgrade for us clerics, infact this could have the potential to actually put clerics back on the map! id be happy with a shaman lvl pet, the thing we got now is a joke, outside of using the AA hammer pet from time to time mainly just to yell "cleric pets in!!" as a joke, its worthless.
  5. Tucoh Augur

    My recommendation to DPG:

    My recommendation to clerics: If you don't want to be the only class without DPS options, change mains to dru/sha/pal or spend your time on an alt. The class probably won't change.
  6. Petalonyx Augur

    I would like to hear from the developers what is planned to address the cleric issues. They solicited feedback like a year ago. Right now, we have no idea what sort of feedback is helpful, other than bug reports (e.g., why is cleric aura radius so small that it literally jumps on and off my cleric as she runs across TOL zones, causing HP bar to jump around?)
    Dre. and Kaenneth like this.
  7. Szilent Augur

    Your phrasing has grandiose connotation to it.

    Eight months ago, one dev who themself has played a cle for ages & ages poked at the community to get conversation more on a specific "wishing" track out of its general complaining rut.
  8. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    Using "like" in a sentence is grandiose?

    Really?

    Geez, I learn new stuff from this game like every day.
  9. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    To me at least, the only viable fun on a cleric is at raids because there are no mercs. Maining a cleric for solo or group content is relatively futile. Players even have to farm rank II spells the mercs get by default.

    Clerics in Everquest live are in a sorry state.
  10. lordbob New Member

    I used make groups with my cleric where I was the only healer and even though we had an easy time NOBODY knows to control aggro anymore. Everyone just dives in full burn and then get mad if they don't get healed. I'm not sure I even want to go back to the old days of healing groups as a cleric. Just give clerics dps equal to other priest classes and call it a day.
    Joules_Bianchi likes this.
  11. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    At least vs undead. Paladins defeat undead via holiness....given by....priests.

    those ARE cleric spells the pally gets right?

    A cleric should be much more spell capable vs undeads than a paladin, a footsoldier of holinesss.
  12. Szilent Augur

    no, generalizing from one person interested in nudging an ongoing discussion in a less negative direction to "developers solicited feedback" is grandiose. Literally everything except the word "like"
  13. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]

    Making cleric aura huge like Shaman aura would be great. just remove the lag-increasing range check from most auras and have them work zonewide if in group.

    I was thinking it would be fun for a cleric AA to have a (disableable) chance to proc a hammer pet on nukes; or a combo nuke that casts nuke+hammer so it costs no cast time. But have them be the static/singleton pet, not swarm pets so they can't stack up and make lag worse.
  14. Dre. Altoholic

    Not really caught up on all things_Cleric but tossing out some ideas:
    • Magic nukes on par with other classes' Magic nukes.
    • Chromatic version of each of these nukes +20% mana and an off-timer to alternate.
    • Some sort of Havoc/Wildmagic type spell?
    • Instacast DoTs. Bonus if it's on an AA button to weave between spells. HoT's target if friendly.
    • Passive AA to make CLR undead nukes at a certain level unresistible.
    • Random chance for any nonmelee damage vs an undead target to proc undead mega-nuke (like one-shot blue trash)
    Aenvar and Metanis like this.
  15. Gnomeland Augur


    Changing the game in such a way that clerics are "ideal" healers in every group again neglects the reason why that ceased to be the case, in the first place: very few people wanted or benefited from clerics being the only practical choice for both raid and group healing, because the class is generally not fun to play, and even if it were fun to play, no other class wants to drag around a cleric for everything.

    The main problem with clerics is that: 1. they are not fun to play and 2. they don't have a niche outside of raiding. Lacking a niche is not the same as lacking an advantage. Clerics do have an advantage in healing, but the game cannot be tuned so that only clerics are comfortable healing progression content, for reasons already stated above. So the more appropriate word is "niche" - clerics need tools beyond healing, which make them ideal for certain groups, while leaving other groups for other priests.

    What should those tools be? Well, why don't we look at what's present among other priest classes?

    Shaman: physical ADPS
    Druid: magic ADPS

    See anything missing? You should. Hybrid ADPS. No other priest has it. Shaman can only slightly enhance magic via lowering resistance. Druids can only slightly enhance physical via lowering armor. Neither class can perform to their optimal in a mixed group - they're only at their best in a dedicated physical or magic group.

    And there's the opportunity: make clerics the best performing ADPS priest for hybrid groups. Want a wizard AND a rogue? Cleric is your best choice. Ranger? Cleric. Shadow Knight? Cleric. Now the class has a niche and a way to play the game when vast amounts of healing isn't needed.

    How about fun to play? Well that's a harder one, but in my experience, fun to play for most people goes along the lines of "I can do damage" or "I can molo". Either is fine as a design choice. Giving clerics more options to do damage both through spells and physical would go well with a hybrid ADPS role. On the other hand, giving them better molo tools would encourage more cleric play when no group is around.

    Here's a throw away idea: give clerics a way to make mercenary tanks viable as an end game option. Like a single target, no pet, large damage reduction + ADPS ability that doesn't stack with any player defensive or other ADPS or tank stance, and which lasts 3 minutes and leaves a 10 minute cool down in which no other defensive ability can be applied, but which can be used to make mercenary tanks or poor man tanks a beast for those 3 minutes. I can almost guarantee you clerics will be a very popular choice then.
    MacDubh, Crystilla and Metanis like this.
  16. Windance Augur

    Maybe give clerics something like:

    #1 - Respectable DPS while healing. Make their spells that damage the target of target proc, critical, whatever about 10-50x more damage. Make it so they can actually solo non trivial mobs and on raids parse something like 30-60% of a DPS class.

    #2 - Give them more 'stuff' that synergies with tanks role. Give them 'discs' they can use on a tank like shielding, or invulnerable that lets the tank keep the agro and stay alive for 6s-12s during the oh moments. Needs to be something other than more spells because their spell bar is already full.
    MacDubh and Metanis like this.
  17. Crystilla Augur

    On the merc rank thing - I have always said, mercenaries should only get rank 1. They should never be above a player at any point.
    Annastasya likes this.
  18. Szilent Augur

    they are never above a player at any point
    Cicelee and Sancus like this.
  19. Cicelee Augur

    If my bard pulls one mob to my mage, I feel confident my merc healer will do an adequate job of keeping all of us alive.

    If my bard pulls 8 mobs to my mage, I am going to wish I had invited a competent cleric into my group. Only then would we live.

    Mercs are fine for one mob, maybe two. A group of mobs? You wish you had that real cleric
  20. MacDubh TABLES!!!

    Reading this thread made me realize I haven't even tried DPS on a Cleric since 2001 back in Velks when I couldn't find a group...

    I just ran some parses in GH in a variety of configurations including full DPS burn and have a few comments (keep in mind my Cleric is my 3rd toon and although fully group geared and max AA I don't have an in depth understanding of their DPS abilities).

    Hammer Pets:
    • The spell is practically useless, a tiny 6.34k dps and only lasts a few ticks. IMO the damage on this should be at least 5x to make it worth using
    • The AA lasts quite a bit longer and has the nice proc but still only about 20k dps. This should be closer to 100kdps for the 10 minute ability timer
    Contravention Line:
    • Recast is too long, it could be halved
    • Damage is too low to be worth using. I didn't do any EQ math on this but based on parse reads it seems like Clerics have a much lower chance at spell crits, and even with a crit these spells do about 1/3 the damage of Enchanter's Mindreap. Damage should be higher, could even go double and it shouldn't offend anyone as it would still be some of the weakest DPS in the game. (for reference my highest hit with Divine Contravention Strike going full burn was just over 700k which is my Enchanter's average Mindreap cast)
    Melee:
    • Full burn Melee DPS using summoned hammer with Enchanter Haste was around 33kdps. Considering the amount of AA's and Spells that go in to buffing up the Cleric's melee this is still pretty low IMO. My Enchanter's Pet does 50-60kdps for reference.
    • There should be some Bash enhancing abilities. Maybe add on to the Yaulp line the ability to proc a big stun from the bash and increase bash damage by 10-20x (it doesn't go off often enough for this to be a scary amount of damage, we're talking like 40k-80k damage every ~6 seconds) - My argument for this is the Cleric's epic 2.0 is a shield and their bash ability is as basic as a Troll/Ogre innate ability.
    Procs:
    • I don't think there is much to complain about here if the melee above is addressed. Procs ended up being about 44kdps going full burn.
    Damage Spells:
    • Essentially the same comments as above on the Contravention line, but if Contravention was fixed as I mentioned above the Damage spells wouldn't be needed in most situations.
    • If you are going to be a functional Cleric your spell bar is already full of healing spells and short duration buffs, I don't really see a situation where a Cleric is going to be casting damage spells other than Soloing in which case I would think Undead targets would be the way to go.
    I also liked the ideas above for Disc style abilities to cast on tanks, and hybrid (or any) ADPS.
    Regarding the Vow line, I disagree with it reducing healing further (imo it shouldn't reduce healing at all).
    To give a sense of where Clerics are for DPS, I got 136kdps in 102s going full sicko mode on the combat dummy (no adps).
    For comparison I did 200k on my Enchanter without any burns, ADPS, etc.
    The main thing to consider with Clerics IMO is they still need to heal first, it's no good to give them a ton of abilities that take away from their ability to heal. I think the above comments are all in that vain to keep the heals as the main priority with DPS coming from melee, pets, and Contravention.