You make an excellent case Brohg. I will admit I'm strongly biased from many years of raiding. For example it's totally alien for me to target a mob for much longer than to /assist it and see who to heal next. My current raid spell lineup doesn't include a single spell which cannot be cast on a player. But I will stick to my guns on the OP issue. A grouping cleric will find himself bored silly and eventually resentful that he/she can't even take a bio break without prior planning. And if for some reason he/she get's distracted for even 20 or 30 seconds then group tank dies and things get ugly. And that is what I was trying to point out in my original post. A real cleric is a slave to mashing those heal buttons at all times while the group is actively pulling or killing. It's a task much better suited to a merc. Yes, I'm aware that "real" dps is also very busy, I play a monk also and they mash more buttons than my cleric ever thought of, but I can FD my monk at any time, jump up and hit the fridge or the john and come back without missing a beat.
This is why there are so few clerics, even fewer well played ones. This is also why almost every time I group with new people they have absolutely no idea what I can do. I've had a blast on my cleric since day 1.......bored? Pfft, your doing it wrong.
This is actually the reverse of bored. And what decent group can allow the cleric to be distracted for 20 - 30 seconds? Seems more like 5 second distraction max. I would not consider myself a great cleric but I am surprised at how often I get comments about how much easier such and such a fight is than normal when I'm in the group. Clerics burst healing really open up a lot of content, and allow for much faster pulling than any other single healing class.
Metanis, I think folks are pointing out that a cleric does not need to sit on a horse and do direct healing anymore. So it really depends on the player and what they would consider boring. FYI in this game - you aren't supposed to be able to fight mobs without having an active healer. If you're overgeared or farming lower content you can do it .. but the healer is supposed to be an active participant throughout the entire fight. If someone has to take a break, they take a break- if it's the tank, you wait until they're back, if it's the puller sometimes someone else can pull, if it's the healer, you wait until they're back or someone else steps in, if it's DPS, you kill slower (which can catch you into respawns depending, but that's sometimes better waiting still). I pull for 100% of my groups generally. I often am the only crowd control person which includes anything from the old fashioned root/atone route to pacifying mobs as they start to get closer to us, to pre-healing the damage from a new add. This is with a tank merc and a second healer (cleric merc) as well. I don't do a full lineup of intra/contra's like Brohg does. My lineup looks more like a 3 way mix. Heals = the two remedies, one renewal, group heal and group elixir, one intervention. Utility = mark of ___ for pulling, pacify, shining bulwark Nukes = The two highest magic nukes And 1 spell slot left over for something else depending what makes the most sense (often it's our ward DS proc). ~~ With undead, the two magic nukes become eradicate lines and the intervention becomes a contravention spell.
It would be kind of nice if the OP posts an update in 6 months and lets us all know how his healer is doing.
Nah, not unequivocally. Shm have good CC tools and never oom, dru have Tracking and best dps. Each has buffs and ADPS tools (melee/caster respectively) that cle don't. The overall answer is just that there are three viable choices; cle isn't redundant due to mercs.
I suppose one way I look at this question. Best priest class for healing = cleric. No question about this. Best healer for the group = depends who is in the group and what you already have. e.g. if you have a bard or ranger, you don't need a druid for tracking (or snaring with the ranger). If you have a wizard you don't need a druid for porting. If you have a caster centric group you don't need a shaman's incredible melee buffs. If you have an enchanter, you don't need a shaman for slows. SO sometimes it comes based on what you don't need versus what you need since all 3 can perform the heal job, they just do it differently.
I think as Crystilla pointed out all are viable for a group. I think so many people jumped on why the Cleric was the best was the opening statement. If people feel their class is being dismissed they are going to bring up the many advantages.
I look at as each of the priests best supports a different archetype on top of providing a solid base line of healing. Clerics support tanks. Druids support casters. Shaman support melees.
A merc healer is just that, a healer who you have to pay for heals. No DPS, no debuffs, no short-term buffs, no nothing but the cheap dumb heals that you might expect given their low wages. I don't think a merc healer will be much good in some of the group TBM missions - issues with curing, group heals, and just low HP limits their effectiveness in the harder missions. A merc is just a simple healer. It's not a cleric, it's never called a cleric officially - it's just a healer. In other words, it sucks. It sucks less than the other types of mercs although it's strange how "not as bad as downright awful" is considered a selling point. Druids are good nowadays. A good group makes a healer look good and vice-versa but our new AA, and new ranks in existing AA, give us all kinds of options in dealing with different scenarios from singles to a room of yellows in Sul. A lot of my healing is done without casting heals per se. Debuffs lessen the amount of healing we have to do, as does our new spell and our improved DPS in general. Evac helps to move around some zones with NPCs in a random distant locations - not a healing thing but it's convenient. Shamans are probably good too. I don't really know the class. Clerics are the only class that isn't about healing so much as it is about survival. Every class can heal. Only one class has the option of bringing someone who died back from the dead without that person actually dying. They even have several ways of doing this. They have a lot of other abilities which reinforce the survival aspect of the class. I don't worry about the specifics because they're annoying. Survival is cool, but their abilities to open a can of whoop- on undead makes sense, but makes me green with class envy, given the nature of this expansion. In group content, I would take a cleric over another priest all else being equal especially in TBM. No reason why there can only be a single priest in a group. Any real player is better than a merc.
Group composition is important to your choice here. If you have a character that can cast IVU, then I would suggest druid or shaman. Clerics are great toons. They do have the best, fastest, most powerful heals in the game. But a lot of folks find them boring to play. I have a cleric, but she is my tinkerer, which is my main reason for having created her. She is okay to play. But not as much fun as my other toons. You will have to do the cleric epic. As epics go, not bad. I have a shaman who makes potions and plays in a group with my friends monk and bard. Mele groups and shamans play together well But you will have to get the shaman epic and it's a total PITA. My main is a druid. I love playing a druid in a group setting. But we have a box group of enchanter, mage, wizard, druid and mercs. My partner can duel invisible us and we get run speed from the dru. Then the mage COTHS us to fight locations. Between the dru and wiz, we can port close to most locations. It is a sweet set up. I usually play the wiz for DPS, but when she runs out of mana, I can switch to the dru and still kick mob butt. If the healer mere dies or cannot keep up, I heal on the dru. Drug can forage, which is overlooked, but handy. Tracking is great for group content too. Druids are better suited for caster groups because of the group spirit of the black wolf.
Sorry sideline, but I was totally with you till this. Like, wut? in a group with dru for Skin&Wolf, enc for double GoM procs and mag for modrods, wiz OOMs ever?
Double GOM procs?..............dafuq you just say? Ok, time for some cleric loving, seriously, we need some cool new toys. But Roxx, your Aura gives me 12k extra health! Dude, that mob hit you 75 million damage. Yea...but...12k more health!!!
Yeah, well, I save black wolf for bosses or large pulls. The wiz doesn't run out often, but occasionally happens, so then the druid steps up.
3m45s of group wolf, 3m45s of self wolf. Keep cycling as long as the group is active. Not rolling discs is a huge decrease in group dps and effectiveness.
You should not do this, Larksong. Two Black Wolf (or three or four) > Black Wolf "at the right time". With duration & cooldown, it can be on for half of all fight time. Significantly more if there are ever any breaks.
How valuable a druid can be as a group healer can vary pretty drastically if the druid in question does or doesn't hit their buttons
