I also like the idea of giving the option to act more like battle clerics. Give them a new toggle AA that adds a very high dmg proc to their melee attacks, but each proc has a chance to partially reflect back onto the cleric ("your eyes are seared by the holy light") . This should allow them to contribute good damage if they are willing to spend more mana/time repeatedly healing themselves while in this "stance".
Okay, more thoughts on this. Redo the vow line of spells, or a new AA stance that basiclly gives us a buff that doubles the cost of our healing spell, but gives all of our spells an intervention type nuke that hits our target's target. This way we can heal on raids, while offering a bit of dps. If we need to not damage things we can click it off. If we start burning through mana, click it off and switch back to just healing. A "live" version of Turn Undead. Holy Smite etc... A group version of Divine Avatar (lower ranked than our personal buff). This gives us a little bit of adps for group situations. Give all priest the same level of pet, shaman/druid/cleric. Controlable, a little dps. OR A pet called Avatar that summons a pet version of our god. They do the same dps regardless of diety, but each diety has a different flavor or effect. I know this one is streaching it, but atleast it would be fun and you would see different things.
There are some valid points during this discussion, and I am sure many of us who actually main a cleric had some hope with Niente posting asking for suggestions that some of the concerns of the Cleric class community had about stagnation and it’s further declining state would have fallen on the ears of the EQ Team to give some serious thought how to improve things, but alas, it appears not as another expansion arrives and we have worked our way through it, nothing has changed. I do admire the optimism from some, that we are not one dimensional and our dps is not that bad, and hey, we are great against the undead…and others suggesting that it just takes some effort from the player to make things more interesting or get a group that pushes you further due to our excellent survival skills/utilities (which is undisputed) but I for one do not think that is the answer the core problem of the class. Our healing ability is great, there is no doubt about that fact, our ability to maintain/recoup mana is also great, our over healing is outstanding. The fact of the matter is we are by far and a huge chasm the worst class in terms of meaningful contribution to a game which the focus in on synergy, adps and dps to achieve, it has been pointed out so many times that we don’t bring anything really to the table or enhance anything group-wise to make our spot worth it – sure raid wise we are very much wanted and sometimes appreciated as we shine in that arena but that’s where it ends and although I am a raider, my will to carry on does wane somewhat due to our vast limitations and inability to meaningfully contribute and carry on mashing keys for hours on end in raids and /gasp cast a DI in a raid and re-apply shining. I doubt any main cleric, in the group or raid game, would suggest that we need to be on a par with either of our fellow Priest colleagues in terms of dps or adps or synergy but crikey just give us something else to do, yeh we can sometimes cc, root and off-tank (very badly for two seconds!). I would hope it would be an easy fix to make Divine Avatar & Battle Frenzy a group version, give us the amplification AA, give us some adps tools and for the love of Tunare triple our dps at least so we can come in within 50% of all other classes and contribute! Even against undead mobs, Shaman and Druids soundly smack us into the ground so the rhetoric that we are ok against undead is not that sound. Anything live mobs wise our little feather cleaner tickles them so they fall over laughing and may die after 20 mins if solo and 20 levels below us (slightly exaggerated I know!). I think Shaman and Druids are ace (Druids need some help also btw any Dev reading this especially mana regen!) and they deserve the everything they are able to do – no questions about that but to constantly overlook Cleric’s is now very tiring and I would urge devs to start reading these forums and start considering some of the excellent suggestions made by the community – group Vow, reduce cast times on splash and recast timings (get rid of the target ring may only be me but it does my head in!) – get rid of wasted spells that we never ever use as they are pants – increase our dps and adps ability a lot – Yeh come on I dare you! .
I'll disagree slightly with this, and it may have even been pointed out earlier in the thread, but, there is an instance where this is not true. You just have to pull a LOT of mobs. Let the cleric shine doing what they do best, and let the group DPS away. With DSs on the MT (and other defensive procs), all the mobs are taking damage, and if there are classes present with AoE damage (which tends to be very efficient with lots of targets), you can have a great group. But, it requires a group willing to switch things up a bit, and of course, camps which have fast enough respawns to make it workable. If you put a cleric in a group that keeps pulling like they were when they had a merc healer, or a druid, then, yes, it will be boring for the cleric, but even then, if you replaced a merc healer, you're still doing more DPS than the merc, so kills will still be faster
I'm sorry, but if the only way for a class to feel needed and "shine" is to play in the most insane, aggressive way you can think of, then that kinda proves something is wrong with the class and those issues need to be addressed. How many other classes are out there saying "Pull the zone...I need to feel loved"?
Face it people, the best thing they could do for clerics at this late stage is to invoke the Rapture and have us all go to heaven. And then reincarnate as a real class.
You're being hyperbolic. So, I will, too. You don't have to play in the "most insane, aggressive way possible". Just more aggressive and insane than normal. And it's not my idea, there have been posts from clerics talking about this. They seem to love it. But it needs a group willing to play along. And as with most things in life, it's not an A/B choice. Instead of pulling X mobs/hour, you try pulling X+20%. If that goes well, then you try a bit more. Find where the sweet spot is, without being "the most insane, aggressive way you can think of". And, again, if you're replacing a merc healer in a group, you ARE adding more DPS than before, because healer mercs do >0< DPS. No faster pulling required. I box, using a healer merc. I'll take a cleric joining me any time. Not just because it's more DPS, either.
I've seen plenty of tanks and mages that enjoy that. And as a cleric, it was the most fun I've had in a group setting.
This is literally how my groups operate, as a Tank single or double pulls would bore me to death too. Bring many and have fun.
A cleric with good mana regen, AA, and raid buffs would still probably take an hour or two of constant healing casting to run oom in a group setting even with constantly large pulls. (unless they are using our laughable damage, non mana efficient damage spells)
Yup, but you got the point though. If you're doing it right you shouldn't be back at 100% before the next pull
Respect would be nice. I never felt appreciated on raids. Groups love pulling lots of mobs but try and take a 30 second break and you'll come back to a dead group because pullers never read group messages.
I came looking for other clerics complaining about the shaman rain spell line, and maybe there are some but i didnt read 14 pages.... But I do see I am not alone in wishing for something more. Our raid a couple days ago the raid leader said something about how the shaman rain spell would heal the raid np, as we had a few more on that night than normal. I and other clerics were immediately wtf, and guess i'm logging because not needed. Yes we splash a LOT as clerics, before some smarta$$ says something. If all we do is heal we should have the absolute BEST heals in the game. I recognize the need for other classes that can heal, i.e., shaman and druid...but over the years druids have been someone neutered into more dps mode (don't get your panties in a bunch here...when I first started raiding we would include druids in the aoe HoT rotation). I think druids like being dps, btw! But the mana costs for them! At this point I have a few characters I play, one is a druid, not well. I have melee and caster ones. I have a shaman. I read some of the comments about our dps sucking(amen!). Soloing cleric is simply not viable and efficient in more current content. Can I take a merc out and go kill something ? Sure, 10 minutes later...and what a sense of accomplishment!! I don't want to lose our healing, but when you get excited over that 100k nuke and everyone in voice chat starts laughing...come on. I melee in groups and use nuke heals (keeping remedies and group heals up of course) and nuke mobs. I feel like everything adds up and helps...but some other classes are like just don't. Just heal. I don't find healing boring. Try healing a Rawrior....that will wake you up. Basically clerics are 5lbs sugar when the recipe only needed 1 tablespoon. Someone said that and I thought that was a neat idea. That is true sometimes. But how many times does someone die on a raid when every cleric is pushing everything they can ? Splashes overheal a lot if the people are not down in health(yes i previously said cleric should have rain splash heck you can cast it and it heals 3 times and you can single heal someone while splash is still raining ! So maybe it is more like, you only need a tablespoon of sugar, but you have to buy a 5 lb bag, and you hang on to it for future use.
A cleric is night and day. When my brother plays his, we can drop both cleric mercs and still be safer. Clerics not only make more content doable with group gear, but they significantly increase group dps/speed, because you can give more slots to dps instead of healer mercs.
The problem is, all of that is true for a shaman, too. Outside of very, very few situations. And then....the shaman can do way, way more than the cleric outside of healing. So the question is, why ever bring a cleric when you can bring a shaman? Or even a druid in some cases?
I've often thought that instead of trying so hard to get more dps, more utility (and fail), clerics should turn into the skid and demand better healing. Shaman rain heal should be less powerful than at least 3 cleric heals with a full raid. I'll admit I'm not sure exactly how to pull it off/what to propose, but you should be able to keep a pretty straight forward raid (like Bristlebane) healed with 3-4 clerics period and then the shaman can dps and the druids can do what they were already doing some more. Edit - Played a cleric in my main group for 20 years. Not very well, but he's always been in the group.
I mean... you can say this about any dps replacing another. No, there isn't much group content where a cleric must be grabbed over a shaman. Just like there isn't any group content where you MUST have a necro instead of a berzerker. the idea that a single class should gate content is bad design.
Totally agree that content shouldn't gate on a class necessity. But the point was, that there's little reason to be motivated to play a cleric since a shaman is equal in healing dept and better everywhere else.
