All they have to do to the cleric is make Vow awesome and let clerics Slay. Let clerics Vow to play as paladins as well as a paladin can play as a cleric. Done. Edit: Honestly, clerics shouldn't need to Vow to play as bad paladins. Vow should just make them tank/DPS a little better in exchange for less healing. There is really no reason a cleric is so horrifically bad at DPS. The other 2 priests are good DPS. Clerics are worse DPS against undead than DRU/SHM are against anything. Whaaattt??
Highly unlikely. All they'd have to do is boost vow by a lot. I'd recommend any clerics that are disatisfied with their DPS to roll an alt or main switch to druid, shaman or paladin.
Would be a lot simpler class balance to just give paladins the clerics abilities and just drop support for clerics. Most clerics seem to want to be battle clerics anyways.
Improving balance really wouldn't be so difficult to do. The math and methods for modelling worked over a decade before and still would be viable now. The notion of wanting to be battle clerics is more embracing one's toolkit as a whole. We've always had more than just heals since '99. It's just that said toolkit is really lagging behind in the scope of the current game, and simply touching Vow up alone wouldn't be the magic cure. Suggesting that Clerics should just "roll another class" in wanting numbers to be better than what they are is such a dated thing to say in an era where the playerbase is a tiny shadow of its former self, and is honestly quite a narrow-minded stance to have. It was never the solution before and were it not for contesting the status quo we would never have had Vow of Valor in the first place. (You're welcome btw!)
What era did clerics have the best dps, and about how much dps could they produce relative to shamans/druids? I haven't played in all the eras but their dps has been low in all the eras I know of.
I only remember two times in 23 years it was fun to DPS as a cleric. Not productive, but fun anyway... In the original Cazic Thule when the lizards were light blue I would pull huge trains and use Ward and Vow procs to burn 'em down. I died a lot though. Another time years later, I found someplace I could use a wizzie merc on Burn and ping pong aggro back and forth enough to stay alive while the wiz melted the mobs. Again, I think the mobs were only light blue and probably undead.
Unfortunately I can't give an accurate response as I would like due to the large gap between when I was last active vs when I returned. Emlari suggested it was back in Rain of Fear (2012). Personally, the last things I recall are differences back during Solteris and MMM/Crystallos for raids and the respective group zones for TBS and SoF. For me it probably was TSS-TBS being "peak". I won't cite times where AAs and things were bugged to the point of being ridiculously overpowered that warranted immediate nerfs, as such was not expected nor typical. What I do have more of now are numbers from ToL. My retirement from EQ for university was before Seeds of Destruction went live (I still have my CC/beta docs!) and I returned in CoV prior to ToL release. That leaves a lot of years and data points where I don't have context of, but what I can look to is some data points in the years up until my retirement and how drastically it has dropped since (I mentioned an example in this thread before of a short burn, which iirc was Ur-Floxis Lochmaul in Aprosis, but also how we hold up in modern times). I do have many of my old log files somewhere but combing through that is perhaps more time than I want to spend when I have more irl responsibilities to be concerned about now. There were also some parses and threads of how Clerics had done in e.g. Zlandi and other encounters in CoV and ToV that I had observed here and there, but not knowing their casting and sequencing I can't say how good or bad things were being done. Relative to other classes depends on many variables and "when" because spell lines were not all introduced at the same time. If we're extending it consider relative to melees and hybrids, then what discs and weaponry also matter, as well as the introduction of heroic stats and new AA lines along with new SPA/buff support that pushes things further (like Twincast). Very little ends up being a fair apples to apples comparison and that's part of the problem. For example, take NSW for Druids. That line was a breath of fresh air in design and was a major boon for them in the damage dealing department and still very much remains what allows them to dish it out. It also pinches on one of their sore points - that of mana economy. From what I recall it was introduced in TSS, the same expansion where Prathun and I worked on VoV. It'd be remiss to suggest that those lines are comparable in net gain when they serve different purposes, so while we did get an appreciable damage boost (for us) with VoV, Druids gained a much higher and needed boost with theirs. Clerics have always been "low" but the question that matters is "how low" and what is acceptable given the circumstances we find ourselves in. That is what we should always be mindful of. The argument is that we're too low, both against undead and otherwise, even when we're given ADPS through a Bard, Enchanter and Shaman, etc, and also when considering doing minimal healing in an encounter vs ones with moderate to high healing requirements. Encounter duration also very much matters - a Cleric experiencing kill times like RoI have (which are crazy fast during peak attendance) could have a much stronger potential than a Cleric in a guild that takes 2-3x longer to finish the same encounter. # of uses of abilities matters with this in mind, like Avatar, Frenzy, Twincast, AA hammer etc. As an aside to what Metanis mentioned, while Ward matters for soloing, swarming is less significant of a factor for us given how much defensive procs were gutted with level difference and proc count in mind where now Tectonic & Silent is more of a damaging factor vs lower level swarms. Throw in how much longer it takes to kill them (especially with runners that don't hit back) and it really is more efficient to just do it with any class with riposte and some semblance of damage &/or healing (I look at you, SKs). Now soloing 1 on 1, or moloing is so painfully slow that it's not worth wasting the time on it to the point I box some alts to make things go faster and smoother where I barely even need to heal my SK as is. That sadly makes Llu more dead weight in the group vs alternatives.
It's a bit tongue in cheek, but I replaced the cleric in my box setup with a paladin to try something different. Clerics are so heavily balanced towards healing, and all of that healing just isn't needed on a regular basis. Basically clerics are 5lbs sugar when the recipe only needed 1 tablespoon. I would honestly love to see clerics become the most OP class.
I don't. I just want to see my class be able to contribute to the group in a *meaningful* way when massive healing isn't required. Right now, the only other option is to equip a proc'ing weapon (summoned hammer for instance), hit yourself with Vow, and constantly lie to yourself that you're contributing meaningful DPS. Yeah, maybe sometimes you crowd control, but that never really happens often enough to say that's a "role" in a group. Unless you're fighting undead, cleric nukes are a joke...and even if you ARE killing undead, nuking is still laughable compared the worst nukes of other classes. The devs have decided that clerics heal...and that's all they'll ever do. Until that that crappy, lazy, "Vision"-era attitude is purged, nothing discussed or suggested in thread matters. When was the last time a dev chimed in on this thread and talked about the feedback we've given? Kinda proves my point.
It's super easy to fix clerics. Just give them the ability to do actual damage. Bards got it, and they were regarded as a "pure" support class, why not clerics? This would necessitate fixing druids probably. I recommend making druids better at crowd control.
I did the same thing and am glad I did. Paladins and shaman are eating cleric's healing lunch while providing much more to groups, raids and can solo/molo. If clerics can provide 5lbs of healing, shaman can provide 3 and paladins 2.
The corollary to the cleric overpowered healing is that if their healing becomes needed and required in group, then making progress without them might be impossible. It's a design imbalance that has favored the many classes at the expense of the one for at least a decade now.
So I've been a cleric main since I can't even remember when but that had 100% to do with their need and effectiveness in the raid game, so THAT is the motivation *I* have and why I am a cleric. I DO think the best way to motivate more folks to play clerics is to fix their dps, I too, share many of the opinions in this thread in that I simply don't know why this has never happened? You should be able to have both things: 1. Effective healing meaning super high effectiveness in raid game 2. more DPS meaning more effectiveness in group game I think a potential fix for clerics dps is to simply adjust VoV. If you were to roll in most of the current buffs we get from some of our other AA sources into that one buff. Throw Divine Avatar (crit damage +50%, Base wep damage +600%, reduction in wep delay 33%), and Battle Frenzy (100% spell crit rate and more 145% spell damage). Then it would be a viable alternative and the more you buff the more you should buff the counter to healing for it.
Daybreak should take a page from EQ2 on this issue and let clerics play a tad more like EQ2 Inqys/Templars with either more melee damage and/or more casting damage and a tad more utility/debuffs imo (without surpassing Shamans in this area). I don't play end game though so any argument against at that lvl take with a grain of that salt. I'm more of a TLPer.
I don't know if I'd say that nothing in this thread matters unless/until a Dev responds, but I'll concede I'm not up to date on the current iteration of the Community Resource council. The team wouldn't typically comment publicly on class balance and if feedback did happen, it'd be in closed circles where certain feedback was permitted to be liased back to the playerbase through those appointed (as we did as CCs/CLs in the day). What would really matter in that regard is whether we have our base covered with a player, or players, that care enough. Crystilla suggested that I apply and get myself involved again but I'm too involved in non-EQ things to justify the time and consideration I'd want to put in. So I hope we are in good enough hands, lest the disappointing status quo remain as it has for a long time. It's interesting to consider this. I remember tuning base pop (zone trash) in various zones during TSS, but most specifically Ashengate. The dev I was with wanted it to be a challenge for raiding healers, and I asked if he really meant that. So I insisted on trash and nameds to hurt enough to push me sufficiently. This went live and was later deemed a big mistake, one which I agree it was, by Rashere, and so Ashengate was nerfed considerably. It needed to be because the zone was hard and painful for people to do their tasks, grind exp and camp nameds. Pre-nerf it was a dead zone on many servers. No group content in particular should be tuned to require the bulk of a Cleric's healing potential, and no group content does, but as with the analogies others have said, when others can readily cover that healing and bring more of other things to the table, why bring the Cleric? I don't bring Llu along to most non-raid things anymore when my SK can pretty much cover his required healing by himself, even when pulling multiples. In raids, ToL adds are the main exception as they do hurt. He can self-heal for most AoEs just from active taps and epic in tandem with all the passive recovery. It really is a sad time when as a career main I'm finding fewer reasons to play my Cleric outside of raids now that she's essentially max AA. At least in the past more fun could be had farming nameds and items as the chasm in our potential contributions wasn't as wide as it is now.
The game just had 2 previous expansions with mostly undead enemies and the problems were still pronounced. Adding more to ToL/NoS where we already have shades, vampires and Netherbians isn't going to magically fix things.
wow two whole expansions!?.... as far as i can tell, the complaints here so far seem centered around the fact that its just too easy/boring for clerics to heal when groups are single pulling to a static camp. maybe those groups should instead be pulling multiples and/or moving around an entire dungeon instead of playing it so safely.
Consider rereading the entire thread when your perception is far removed from the actual core complaints. You could easily look back further to the expansions that had an undead bias vs not. The issues have been prevalent for the past decade and even further back when I was still active as Cleric CC/CL. The various people saying "just buff VoV" - my contributing that spell concept breathed some life back into class when we were in a poorer state prior to VoV's inception. That there has been such stagnation for so long since is entirely the crux of the matter. It's also remiss to think the complaints solely about grouping with single pulls (when typically we already are pulling multiples in whatever content we're doing). The facets that are affected are across the board - including solo/molo and raids.
