Intervention wreaks havoc on CC. Making all heals on chanters, bards, non-damage off-tanks do damage to the mob is not good for the overall game.
yeah if every one of our heals had a nuke component we would have to build little canoes to stay afloat on the river of tears that would ensue from the chanters lol
I don't get mad. I stasis. You can fade once. I can do it twice. I have 4 ways to blur, and mez wont break anymore when you are dead. Aint no tears from me. My healer merc got your rez though, boo boo. /poke /hug
Playing a cleric is fun at time and at other it very mundane. Finding a way to solve the problem is not as simple as it sound because often what makes the class fun or mundane is the group your playing with. Example a great tank means your falling a sleep waiting to heal. A poor tank and your spamming your heals just to stay caught up. I played a cleric off and on over the years. One of my greatest memory's was kiting 30+ mobs to gather them up and then clicking my DS, Mark and DA to watch them all kill them self trying to hit me. The risk vs reward was great because miss judging my pull meant death but doing it right was very stratifying. I also pulled as a cleric a number of times and having different options and thinking outside the box I was able to find joy in the class. The issue was in groups many people would not let the healer do much other then heal and so group game came down to a coin flip. a good group I would fight to stay awake. A bad group I would often want to pound my head on the table wish people would not stand in S#!*&. When you found the right group it was very enjoyable. What I would like to see is more variety in play styles for the cleric. We have a few AA line and spells that turn us into a battle cleric and I feel these could use a revamp. Make the cool down less so we can use them more often and make the healing penalties greater so we have to pick DPS vs Heal. but at least in the groups when I not needing to heal much I can go into battle mode and contribute to the group. My other Idea would be to do more with Heal over time / Runes/ pre-emptive healing vs reactive heals. let cast healing wards or improve the heal proc buff so that when used it do the healing and I can then use other things to nuke (smite) or melee. often my mana bar at the end of a mission is 90% because I stood around waiting to heal. many of our nuke are so slow in casting that it not worth it to cast because then your lock up when you may need to cast a heal. Many cleric today are using the fast casting heals in time when healing is need the slow spells are just to slow and you can chain more of the fast casting ones to get a better effect and leave your self open to adapting or moving. I think a lot can be done to make cleric more then just a healing / buffing
I have played mostly on TLPs, and a long time ago when pop was new, so I may not have the live server experience. (I see people talking about raid tanks in groups pulling 10 mobs in group content, so I am guessing Live is WAY different than early TLP where pullers are always trying to grab singles.) As I see it, the clerics are the best healers in the game, but at the same time group content needs to be able to be healed by a druid or a shaman, which means that properly tuned group content does not require the full level of a clerics abilities. I see a lot of people asking for more DPS or aDPS, so I had some ideas that were trying to be at least a little more out of the box than just adding dps. Idea 1. Since clerics can way over heal, why not allow them to require more healing in exchange for aDPS. Example, make the Vow line of spells a buff, target player receives X% less healing, but gains a Y damage proc? This allows a cleric to increase group DPS, but rather than just adding to the groups DPS, the cleric has to chose who to buff, they obviously don't want this buff on the tank, but maybe the berserker who keeps grabbing aggro shouldn't have it either. Idea 2. Make the cleric try to be riskier with his heals. Example a Heal/damage spell with a longish recast, but for every damage healed, it does X damage to the targets target. This would reward the cleric for trying to time the heal to land at low health. Idea 3. Allow the cleric to use their groups health kind of like an extra resource. Example spell, Target players loses 40% of their current health, and for each health lost this way it does X damage to that player's target. Or, maybe a group version since that seems riskier, where you target a mob and sacrifice your groups health. Idea 4. Give the cleric some ability to crowd control. Example spell, target creature ignores all other targets but you, reduce all damage dealt by and to creature by 80% for X seconds. This gives the cleric a unique type of crowd control that takes advantage of the fact that the cleric wears plate and has a lot of healing.
hehe i didnt mean for it be a slight on chanters more of how insane it would be to have nuke components on all our heals, sorry reading my post back i see your side, my bad hehe
Hello, Just a couple of notes. This spell line already exist, is called Intervention and Contraventions but without the Heal Tab mechanic you are suggesting, just raw heal/damage ammounts. This already exist as a heal, it's called Divine Arbitration AA or epic 1.5/2.0 clickies, you want it to work as a nuke too? You are going to turn us into necros with so much Tabs!
What I was hoping to get across was we might make clerics more fun if they are rewarded for being risky with their groups health, or alternatively since they heal too much, they could damage their own group in exchange for more damage to the mobs, which allows them to benefit from their greater healing ability.
That is not how either of those abilities work... Intervention/contravention are fixed damaged amount with normal damage modifiers like wizards. Heals with nukes. The person you quoted was suggesting that the amount of damage is based upon the amount healed. The suggestion would mean an 80% heal would do a lot more damage than a 20% heal. Intervention/contravention give no consideration to the amount healed when calculating the nuke. That is also not how divine arb works either. The poster was suggesting that the cleric has damage shield buff that scaled based upon the amount of health the player has. A tank with 100% health would have basically no damage shield and a tank with 20% health would have a significant damage shield. Divine arb balances health and in no way functions like a damage shield. Also it wasn't a nuke that was suggested. Edit: and the second half of the suggestion was more like a mana burn, but with HP. So to summarize... Suggestion 1... Intervention/contravention type spell that scales based on tank HP. Suggestion 2... Damage shield that scales based on tank HP Edit: or Manaburn but with HP. This would inject a lot of risk, so like charm, it needs to have a significant reward or the group wont accept the risk. Edit: Not saying how I feel about it. Just clarifying a break down in some communication there.
Hello, On both my replies I mentioned the Tab mechanic. On both his suggestions, he proposed doing X damage based on Y Health change. On a kinda of Reverse Tab mechanic. A Tab mechanic does Heal based on damage done. His proposed Reverse Tab mechanic does Damage based on heal done. I feel sorry that myself failing to communicate properly the concept of Reverse Tab lead to miscommunication. So, to summarize... Suggestion 1: Do damage based on health done= Life Tab. Interventions and Contraventions do exactly the same but without damage and heal based on damage done. They do it based on raw values. Suggestion 2: Do damage based on life drained= Life Burn. Divine Arb drains health from other party members to heal the one with the lowest HP bringing all party members to same health percentage + innate heal on the AA and the epic. So instead of draining to do a Heal, he suggests an ability to drain to do damage. Both of those are Necromantic skills that already exist, and our dear friend suggested incorporating them in a cleric way, which is perfectly fine. The point of my post was to make a joke about turning us into necros. I never tried to criticize his input. Hope this reply further clarify the break down in some communication there!
I love my cleric and the amazing things he can do. I don't feel like clerics are in a bad spot really, just a narrow spot that doesn't foster diversity in play. I agree that cleric solo capability needs a solid step up, and that their secondary group roles can use more fleshing out or more accurately, a bit better scaling up. The number one issue in my opinion is cleric personal DPS is really subpar to being functionally useful. As a cleric soloing, I do not expect to quickly slaughter anything. I do expect to be able to go toe to toe with light blue content and get it dead in somewhat reasonable time without pulling out every trick I know. However, to be entirely honest I haven't spent much time trying to solo since about level 95 since I found it so unproductive. Some items that I feel have been left to the wayside for too long and are on my wish list of improvements. 1. Our stuns are too long in refresh. Both single target and PBAE. I think keeping a mob 50% or more stun locked should be in our bag of tricks. 2 Min recast on our PBAE is just super crazy lame. That should be 20s max especially since it's a short stun. It bothered me when our max level stuns were nerfed and we didn't match up to paladin and enchanter anymore (maybe I am misremembering but I am pretty sure our used to be equal to theirs). Anyway, they can essentially perma-lock mobs and at higher levels. I think our recasts on stuns should be dropped to the 18-20 second range on our main stuns. I wish ours were the same levels as the other classes but I can live with it as-is. I don't really feel that the stuns NEED damage on them, but it would be nice if they did considerably more than they do now. Really it seems like 5k and 10k damage on them is more just assurance that I break mezzes rather than provide any utility. 2. Vow and Ward buff need some pretty significant increases to help with our damage output and survival. I love the concept of these spells. I want to reiterate a personal bias of mine but.... I don't like to have negative healing effects or negative stuff in general. I want the flexibility to do extra damage and utility if I can weasel in the time, I don't want a bunch of super niche spells that interfere with doing my main job because I was trying to be a busy body. I want to be able to incorporate this stuff by being a good player. 3. Direct damage spells in general haven't kept pace very well in my opinion with the content. Cleric nukes are sort of the shining example of being stagnated. Our undead portion of the nukes should be really sexy too. For clerics I really feel that base spell damage is where this is best addressed. We don't have all the extra AA's etc to support it other options and really, as it is a secondary role I don't want it to be too convoluted. The intraventions and contraventions are a great concept too, but I really want to see their damage considerably increased. I use these mostly to do incidental extra damage while doing what I do (which is to try to dominate all healing output). Outside of the damage increase needed to really make these worth the extra risks of broken mezzes etc I really want these to have short recasts so I don't have to devote 5 spells slots to this and all the older versions to just ilk out some tiny damage. I should be able to spam 2 of these spells for passable damage and incidental healing. My opinion is healing should be a secondary feature of these spells and become standard in a more relaxed group situation but not really for raiding. Pure heals> heal/nukes>nuke/heals/stuns>DDs/full melee battle cleric. The costs on our nukes are low. I am fine with massively increased spell costs to make them more meaningful in battle, so that when I do decide I have time to nuke, it was worth doing. 4. Would love to see our AE nukes also improved like the direct damage spells. I loved swarming my low level mobs and feeling powerful against them hah. 5. I feel that having more charges on the interposition heal on promised would be awesome, along with a significantly stronger HOT and maybe our ward of persistence line. I feel like we have a ton of strong short duration buffs and not enough spell slots to properly utilize things. Anyway, point here being more power in fewer spells so we can use more of the flavor spells. Maybe a unity type spell that casts more of these buffs. 6. I am a little hesitant to suggest anything adps since while its not necessarily outside our realm, it's also more clearly something other classes should excel at. I would love to see an ability that allows us to "burn" while we are in full healing mode. Its not often that as I a cleric participate in burns since I am usually healing harder to cover all the shaman/druid etc. that are doing their burns. If we had an AA that made all of our heals reflect 2x damage on the targets target would be plain awesome! Since it would allow for us to participate in the burn without having to change up spells sets or do tons of outside preparation. I think most players like the thrill of doing a good burn. 7. I thought it was weird that warriors got a version of our celestial rapidity in their imperators command, and that bards got spell haste too since it was original to clerics! I do think giving clerics a group version of spell haste with some extra melee/casting stuff would be appropriate. Of the routine classes found in tank groups, and the usual complete lack of support abilities in those groups I think giving clerics something could be good extra but not good enough to displace the other classes. 8. Proc hammer and pet hammer! Yes please and potent! I would love to hash out particulars if the developers are actually considering making adjustments as I am sure most players would be happy to do!
On modern raids, the damage from our interventions, even crit, even landing several times is still not enough to move the raid mob's (boss or add, doesnt matter which) hitpoint bar into summon mode.
I haven't really had issues with intervention breaking mezzes, and I play an Enchanter along side my Cleric, so I'd know. It really depends on the targeting diligence of your group, which may vary, if relying on mercs or players with less experience. Sometimes I manually mez, other times I use a social to single-target mez the first mob on the extended target list that isn't the tank's target. Or just aoe mez, and tell them to fight whatever keeps hitting them. There is definitely potential for the intervention nukes to break a mez, but I think it's reasonably easy to control for. Plus I keep a few non-intervention heals up just in case.
This entire mez talk started about someone suggesting that all heals do damage. You wouldn't be able to select the right heal for the job because everything would be intervention. Maybe it would work on a AA, like Spell Casing Subtlety, but the issue remains. I think safe to move on from the conversation about mezes. I am confident that the devs wouldn't make more heals than the intervention line nuke the mob. Not much need for debate here.
taP, with a P. Necros life taP. Like tapping a Keg, to siphon from a supply. Not trying to be a wise , but when you are talking about taB, it sounds like you are talking about the default toggle last target from using TAB on the keyboard. I use TAB a lot. I have been confused because I though you meant that you were using TAB to cycle between the tank you are healing and the mob you are nuking. I understand what you are saying now though.
Hello my fellow Clerics, it's been a long while! I've certainly missed our community. My post might be a bit of a wall of text as I write my thoughts as they come to me. This thread's been pretty interesting to catch up on. Many of the same problems that we had with Cleric motivation 13+ years ago are still felt now, perhaps more so as the player base has shrunk dramatically. Back when I originally worked on the VoV line with Prathun, I liked to think it had been well received as the relative damage that it dealt vs content at the time kept up the pace. (Why is it no longer VoV in ToL? That makes The Valorous one sad). Now I wouldn't say things have been kept in line given the sheer HP bloat for both players and mobs. By extension, the same applies to the Ward line which was pretty decent for Dragons of Norrath era, but didn't really keep up. Fantastic tools for old content, but falling further and further behind. We can also extend this again to the damage on nukes in general, and even the summoned pet line. That said I am thankful there are some fast cast nukes (which pair better with our proc based damage), and I do really like the Intervention and Contravention lines. One main source of why this is the case is on the % scaling increases expansion to expansion, rather than absolute increases in line with how expansions were scaling. When I came back recently, I couldn't help but notice how meagre certain spell lines felt, even with all the bells and whistles from Frenzy, latest Divine Avatar, Spire, Twincasts. In fact the things that I felt really had pretty significant growth were Turn Undead, which had a huge increase in later ranks, and the return of the summoned Proc Hammer lines. Those were the only things that felt particularly good. Now returning back to the premise of VoV - this was to provide a decent source of offensive proc-based damage to the Cleric without their having to rely on a boomstick or spam hammer (the latter which had become raid only at the time, and summoned hammers hadn't been updated in years). It's changed now with 1hb and 2hb weapons in both group and raid, as well as there being new summoned hammers that deal even more proc dps than their raid counterparts (without the recourses). Our melee hits have always been weak and even with Cleave, Ferocity and Double Attack maxed with full buffs and Divine Avatar, it's still night and day vs what others are able to achieve with physical damage, and that's fine. All the more for why I enjoyed seeing procs used more effectively by us. That's why Yaulp and Divine Avatar were eventually granted the extra procmod % buff lines. Did it make us overpowered? No, our damage was still pants compared to everyone else, but it was a more unique approach for a damage profile than what Druids and Shamans did themselves, and as one of the clerics that embraced the whole package, I loved it. Clerics have never needed to be DPS machines, we are already healing gods in what we can achieve, far more so than how I knew it before my retirement 13 years ago. But could we see some tweaks to freshen things up again? Absolutely. That's what gave us Wards. That's what gave us VoV, and even Contravention/Intervention. Having spent a good amount of time in ToL in both group content, soloing Tier1 trash and raiding, the main thing that sticks out is how bloated mobs all feel vs our damage potential, almost reminiscent of old Luclin itself. Further to that, is how absurd our mana economy is these days, especially with all the free healing from AAs, without any real way to convert the excess mana into damage. Other than Netherbians and using our bane DoT, the only thing that really uses any semblance of mana, we're stuck at high MP to the point even with chain nukes (with non-raid mana pres) that it's always more group DPS efficient to use Quiet Prayer on a Druid, Shaman, or any class better able to convert their mana into something more than what we can. Content outside of raids doesn't demand enough of us, that is something that has been true for a very long time (unless we consider healing undergeared/aa'd tanks), and being stuck at nigh full mana in missions, named farming for hunter or just doing lesson burn, despite using all of my damage continously while using a merc tank for all of this ToL content, even with VoV's now 25% heal penalty, feels wrong. I should add, there are some tools that have been added which I'm still blown away by their existence given what the devs used to say about them. AoE Res spells, Holy Step (blink), an AA root with low recast, even things like Repel the Wicked. Those are all incredibly fun and/or powerful. In terms of utility personal and for the group, that's great to see. But at the end of the day EQ is still primarily governed by damage potential and that's where we've fallen flat. We need to feel like we're able to contribute enough, especially when our full healing potential is never required. There's still so much about Cleric that I love as a main who doesn't have a box and has had to do the solo account experience since coming back and finding groups with people. However, there are plenty of things I could immediately identify on my path from Lv. 86 to 120 as content vastly started to outscale my spells. The underlying motivations haven't changed in all these years, all that has changed is how EQ's content has shaped up with an ever shrinking player base.
The hugest of hugs for you Crystilla hope you and the family have been doing well! I tried sending you a tell a while back when I first logged on, for some reason even though I joined serverwide.cleric the channel doesn't show up on my list and I can't say anything. It's strange!
