Hi, folks, I'm in a bit of a rut. I gave paladin a try, and found I liked tanking, but didn't LOVE it. I also enjoyed buffing. I played a bard up to 22, and found I enjoyed providing for the group and tinkering with /melody, but really didn't care for pulling at all, which I guess is pretty much all I'd be doing at upper levels. I'm thinking maybe I'll try a cleric? I love buffing, healing, and helping other folks, enjoy grouping, and I don't mind a more passive role. The thing that gives me pause is population - how is the cleric pop on the server? Do you lot find you always have a cleric in your group, or are you often relying on a druid or shammy for heals? One cleric is super useful, but no group ever really benefited from having two - class redundancy isn't great for clerics, and I don't fancy LFGing for hours. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Clerics have the best heals so you will be picked before other healing classes (most of the time). Might not find groups right away at low levels but at higher ones, groups will not let you leave.
At the baseline, Cleric is a very boring, sit and hit one or two buttons at the right time kind of class. If you're okay with that being your job most of the time, give Cleric a try. Cleric can be a lot of fun, though, especially on Mangler where a good chunk of the leveling path everyone wants to take is in zones with high undead populations (even through Kunark and Velious, Unrest and Guk are good leveling zones). Clerics can have a lot of fun with their undead nukes and other abilities in these zones.
I've never had difficulties finding a group as a cleric - even at low levels. In undead groups (think Unrest or Guk - Dead Side), clerics are excellent nukers and those groups are fine with 2 clerics. In the raid environment, clerics are in high demand. It is not unusual to have 2 clerics in tank groups in raiding situations (especially before clerics get the AA that lets one cleric maintain both of the cleric auras). Regarding game play - the "one or two button" approach can provide adequate performance - indeed this is usually the way box clerics are played. However, there is a reason that raid guilds prefer cleric mains to boxes. It takes more than 1 or 2 buttons to play a cleric well.
Yeah lets not get silly here, in early eq healing is the 2nd most interactive role, after puller. Blasting heals on incoming will agro adds. Spell range is checked after completion instead of beforehand eg for nukes, so you can oor a heal and be screwed by it. Once you get yaulp it's actually sensible to be puller in some situations too. Being undead nuker is about the most braindead simple aspect, there is a reason wizard has a rep as the afk class and a cleric acting like one is equally simple. That dude definitely doesn't play a good healer.
As a Cleric you're just going to be playing whack-a-mole with hp bars, and in raids you'll be staring at CH chain text for long periods of time. That means your entire game experience is mostly limited to a few square inches of your UI. There's a reason certain classes are almost all bots on raids, and there's a reason folks wrote programs to automate the Cleric class. I have a Cleric as my 2nd main in my guild, and I can't imagine how incredibly boring EQ would be if all I did was sit there waiting to push my ch key every 13 seconds. So yeah, since nobody wants to do that role full time, and all real content needs someone to fill that role, Clerics will be in high demand almost always. If you just want to be wanted, Cleric might be for you.
Clerics can be as exciting or as boring as you want them to be. Clerics are the most in demand class if you consider both grouping and raiding. You can do the sit and hit 1 or 2 buttons as described above and probably watch Netflix at the same time, or you can mix it up and be more active and do things like pulling or tanking if you get bored and have the gear/mana regen for it. A raid geared Cleric can easily tank group content in a pinch, basically you are a Pally with better heals but worse defense. In Luclin Clerics make excellent pullers for AoE groups. They also get their summoned proc hammers and Yaulp V for some melee fun, can even melee while main healing group if you want. By PoP CH chains are beginning to be phased out, in later expacs if you go the long haul it stops being used. DoN you get your damage shields and can start swarming, I understand it's been nerfed so you can't pull as much as previously but you should be able to have fun swarming trivial mobs for farming AA or TS mats etc. SoD if you've lasted this long you get to compete with mercs for the rest of the game. A good player Cleric will always be better than a merc but many people don't care and will use a merc because it doesn't take AFK breaks or roll on loot. Better be in a good guild with good friends by this point.
Clerics are certainly in a lot of demand once you catch up with the majority of the population. For the 1-40 game, right now on Mangler, almost every group will have an OOG L50+ Druid / Shaman / Cleric / Enchanter carrying everyone along. Hell, my ranger grouped with 4 rogues and a wizard yesterday in Mistmoore - but we had a L60 OOG Enchanter and Shaman. Once you get to Seb / Chardok - you will definitely be needed, but you're right - 1 per group. Basically, you just CHeal the charm pet and splash the puller and enchanter every once in a while. You can also play with some of your other tools like undead nukes and stuns. Come Velious typically, you'll be wanted for AOE groups - which are pretty fun. The only real tactic I would say is knowing how to keep aggro off yourself - and it's not that difficult. If you have a great enchanter in the group, your life will be easy.
If you like healing, buffing, and supporting a group, by all means play a cleric. Be prepared that if you ever had to solo anything, you'd be SoL 99.8% of the time. (much later in expansions they get some fun solo-ish spells)
