Double cleric nerf - deserves its own thread

I'm sure every class has something to complain about in this last patch, so let's discuss what was done to clerics here.

1) Quiet Miracle/Veturika's Perseverance.

Old: each on a separate 10 min timer. Can cast one per 5 minutes.
New: shared 20 min timer. Can cast one per 20 minutes.

New: QM doesn't grant heavenly provided mana/hp, it siphons hp/mana from the cleric and passes it on.

Umm.. were these broken in some way that we didn't understand? The new effectiveness is less than 25% of the old (can cast 1/4 as often, and QM now steals your own hp/mana).

2) Turn/Smite Undead

Old: each a separate ability. TU has a casting time, SU is instant cast. SU was variable damage, TU was fixed (each could crit).

New: one combined ability, with the same casting time as the old TU. Fixed damage for both (which can still crit).

* * *
Here's the questions that I'm (and all the clerics I know are) asking: why? I mean... I know that clerics get complete heal and all, but is that still a reason to nerf us?

Was there some exploit with QM/VP? Was it overpowered some way? Why would you nerf them years later? They've both been around, in their old forms, for a very long time.

On the bright side, at least clerics gained something in the patch as well. Oh wait, no we didn't, we have complete heal, so we can't possibly get anything new.

Give us fixed duration invis and I'll forgive you for anything!

Why is this a problem (other than the small loss in potential damage for SU)?

Agroooooooooooo!

SU has almost no aggro, at least compared to what main tanks are putting out on raid mobs. A cleric can smite undead just about any boss (as long as you let the tank establish aggro first) with few worries of stealing aggro and getting smushed.

TU generates insane aggro. Period. You probably won't steal aggro from the MT, but if the MT should die (or if you're fighting one of the many bosses that aggro wipes), you're going to be very high on the aggro list and may very well get smashed.

Of course, as a combined ability, we can't split our dps on multiple targets. A minor issue, but still annoying.

*sarchasm warning*

There were some scattered reports of a cleric having fun.......this is not allowed. You are to punch the time clock and push the heal button, that's it, and if you don't like it there are a million other clerics waiting in line for your job.

There were several other nerfs to mana return AA. The long overdue nerf to the critable SK mana return from OOM to FM was the only one that made much sense.
One can infer that the upcoming raids may have something that checks for mana like on Atrebes vault, and they want to make that more of an issue. Indeed the new issues for Atrebes vault are going to be pretty serious right now. Basically anyone that dies on the entire raid that uses mana is going to be limited to a mod rod and any self mana return abilities they may have. Rangers are totally boned on this raid, hope you dont die.

The cleric nerfs are horrible.
One could almost understand leaving the 2 abilities QM and VP separate but perhaps adjusting the recast timer, or the amount of mana restored, but the refresh timers are now shared and absurdly long, adding the "mana siphon" as you call it to the clerics own mana is just kicking a dead horse.

We need all the real clerics we can get and this doesn't help. There was absolutely nothing overpowered, nothing that needed a gigantic nerf. Do they want to drive off real clerics to some other class? That hurts us all in raids and group situations to have less clerics because of what I believe is an incredibly stupid nerf.

I dunno. the QM nerf is real, but it's not so much a nerf to clerics. That one's a nerf aimed at rangers, basically. The undead-damaging-AA "nerf" ... doesn't seem like much of a nerf to me? It's just supposed to make one less button in the burn. If it's dealing less actual damage then that's a thing, but no one's said that's the case...

I think this is a case of Clerics not getting nerfed much, so they don't know what it looks like. What nerfs actually are.

I updated the wording of my wizards /t QM hotkeys to be a little more provocative.

I dared Furro to QM me in the middle of a 1380s Prince raid, and he hit me with it, bless his soul.

The smite nerf is just a nerf to bringing fun to my class. You could do an instant 1 million dmg nuke and fade off quickly, can't fade Turn Undead. I use it to snag rotting corpses in Xelious since I can take the hits. QM I almost never used in current expansion raids, usually saving it for an emergency. I did however use it ALOT in the older expansion raids where there's only 2-3 clerics for an entire raid force. They take a long time since it's usually all new people every Friday, and I use ALOT of mana. I've finished all the EoK raids, months ago. I find clericing in the current expansions painfully boring. There's too few of us, and I don't see people rolling new clerics anymore......havnt for a long time.

I think you Cleric types need a laugh. I hope you enjoy:

out of the 3 priest classes ... only 1 stands out as massively over powered (but received no nerfs), and it sure as heck wasn't clerics.

good job devs, you guys are going to make the transition to pantheon a lot easier than i thought =)

Well yes.
Other mana-users are suffering much more from this than the cleric himself, because QM has been used to "feed" them too.
But before the nerf, a dead cleric had two tools to get himself back into the fight quick, now he has only one - and it's the worse of the two.
That is VERY noticeable on the cleric himself.

Before the nerf, my cleric could keep the BST i regularly group with halfways at acceptable mana-levels.
Now i can't, which means my group's sustained DPS is reduced bigtime.
On a raid i can only imagine the impact,
because i was only called a few times to play him on a raid - and in those instances i needed both abilities for myself.

Yes i think the "1 button less" was the idea behind it.
But it's bad still.
I can't really speak on this one for raids at all,
but in groups i'd use one on one mob and the other on the next.
Now the reuse only allows me to use it on every other mob, and i make the tank work harder on agro (when multiples are in camp).
Not "as bad" perhaps as the QM nerf and in some zones one can perhaps "pull around this" (pull one live, one undead...).
But these were, from what i see (and yes that is quite limited) "the" two DPS abilities of the clerics.
So again: Limiting the cleric in his choice of tools is just causing me to ask "why"?

Its because Innoruuk is behind it.


Innoruuk: Paladins and cleric must suffer!

He hates everything about you, he hates your sister because he thinks sex is overrated too.

*His pet theme song band:


All good classes. Hes secretly a Dev, or Dev's adviser, I suspect.

* Ugly kid Joe, the band, its members, associates current and former, is not associated with daybreak games, Sony online entertainment, or its subsidiaries to the best of my knowledge. The above is included for the purpose of parody.

The turn/smite undead is a nerf in the group game. Can only use it on the current mob instead of current and next mob. Also, because group mobs die fast, the turn-undead portion never runs it's full course (nevermind the huge amount of agro produced).

Yes, clerics haven't seen many nerfs like others, but that's because the class is pretty much in stagnation for a long time. I don't even play my cleric in the group game anymore because it's so damn boring now. Shamans and druids have so much more utility now along with their healing tools (in some ways they heal as good as clerics and can out dps necros....wth).

Also, clerics...burns... come on....

I can understand the desire to reduce the number of button to presses, however it's definitely better to be able to cast Turn Undead and Smite the Wicked separately. One issue is the aggro, but the other is that the abilities do less damage when used on a single mob. The smite causes the mob to die faster, so Turn Undead does fewer ticks of damage. I'm only speaking for my group game, which typically doesn't have very high dps.

The issue with QM now taking mana from the cleric is very odd. Maybe granting mana to another doesn't make sense for the cleric class in the first place. But it make far less sense for a cleric to transfer his/her own mana. That seems more like a necromancer. I'm not suggesting that necromancer's should become mana batteries for other classes; I'm only pointing out that they've had that ability since The Ruins of Kunark.

Am I correct these AAs were nerfed because clerics were feeding wizards/dps mana during events? Why should all clerics have to suffer because some high end clerics have the mana to actually do that? It's the casual guild clerics that raid two or three times a week that are going to suffer the most from this.

-double post.

Nobody knows. devs work in mysterious ways

It's not a fair change and makes no sense. I think the community deserves an explanation. What happened to the class leader program btw? Were changes like this supposed to be discussed with them first?

On the flipside, when it occasionally occurs, mana conservation is kind of a fun spanner in the mix.

So is gambling: to qm, or not to qm? Stakes raised a bit.

A good compromise would be put back on 2 timers. VP 7 min reuse. QM 20 min.

This is if reason for nerf is feeding dps classes.

Yes, healing this expansion was dull. The only fun I had was during Queen with her Warcasters. Now they retuned it and now I just shrug it off... T3 was fun before we got the debuff blockers.

I kinda miss doom-on-cure debuffs or hard hitting bosses (expected so much more from Garssilor or Ancient Dragon...).

The cleric class didn't need these nerfs. If anything, we could use improvements on our heal-nukes or baby version of pally slay undead or something... Guess these notes would be good during Beta but always falls on deaf ears.