The mana cost. It hurts. As for the Nature's line of DoTs in pvp, it is true that they hurt A LOT. I usually laugh manically when I land it on someone.
Sorry, hard to read your statement without being snarky. Its literally begging me to make fun it; forgive me if this sounds a little insulting. You do realize that most people pay to play games that everyone can enjoy? It is the devs job to make "balanced" content for everyone to enjoy... Right??? Has there ever been a game where one third of the players were forced to have a bad time against their will? Only thing I can think of that even remotely compares to your statement are those 12th century Incans who played a form of basketball where the winners got their heads cut off. I can read your statement or I can run head first into a wall. Same amount of brain cell death occurs.
Bit of jerk response to someone that was agreeing with you and reiterating a point that seemed to be understated in your post. Were you thinking I was advocating bad game design?
Being a raid cleric is one of the most stressful situations in this game. You are blamed when people die, and given no credit when people live. I can understand players wanting to play a non cleric to alleviate some in game stress that they obtain in EQ...
It is arguable, and still pretty much not true, that healer mercs displace actual clerics today. When SoD launched, mercs were largely useless and basically a poor option of last resort at best. I mained a cleric at the time. If you stopped playing a cleric because of mercs in SoD, I am very confused as to the reason.
Try playing a shaman. You are responsible for five squishy DPS players and have a ton to do since all the clerics are grouped with the warriors. Can't be easy for druids, either. They usually get paired with casters for Wolf illusion.
I tell my casters to stay out of trouble or I will let them die. /shrug All jokes aside, druids still probably have it easier than shamans (in terms of healing our group members) because our casters usually aren't being subjected to wild ramp or other dangers associated with being close to a boss. Of course, when the casters DO get into trouble druids are woefully under-powered to deal with it (hello slow casts and long recasts).
My wizard eats wild ramps all the time. They need to fix your Alliance. It is utterly worthless and I can't remember ever hearing druid Alliance discussed on a raid. Wizard, Cleric, and Shaman? You bet. Druid? Nada. But no, they gotta raise levels and rummage through a thesaurus to find new synonyms for Voice of Perspicacity, etc
Eh, I wouldn't say worthless. We use druid alliance when our raid hugs up around a boss because while our alliance has the smallest range to our rain, it also heals for the most. So in cases where the range factor is negated the druid alliance is better.
Since they've refused to give druids a splash, I also use it by casting it on myself and clicking it off, aka ghetto splash. Druids definitely need a healing boost this expansion, un-link their heal spell lines, give them a bone...choose to either give them a HoT or a splash...
Healing became visible to everyone sometime last year.. but I've never seen a heal parse posted on the forums (maybe I missed it). Let's see some evidence.
I don't take it personally, but I was relieved of my cleric duties in SoD... I made a bard because I didn't think they could ever make a bard mercenary.
In all fairness 9 times out of 10 this leads to nerfs not boosts if someone were to post comparisons lol.
A bard merc singing the same songs over and over...would be 10,000 times better than spam Promised...light...word...elixir.
I can out heal (heal amount) a single tank vs a cleric under burn on my Druid. But the tanks hit points are only 450k...anything extra is wasted. The Druid is by far the worst of the 3 healers due to utility, no splash, no HoT, limited direct healing to a max of 3 spells?!? Get creative with a healing revamp, (stored over healing as a rune).
I would say SK, I rarely see any about in the game. Ok, let's be serious...the one with the least amount die-off is probably the one Milliana's playing.
The Cleric class is fine. Powerful and well balanced. Its players (as in Humans that Devs have no control over) being rude, spiteful and inconsiderate that ruined playing a cleric main in raids and even group. Stress is for working hours, not down time! Plus expecting a healer to never afk is unreasonable. Its OK for the rogue to step off to take a dump but its WWIII if the cleric afks!