Cleric Mains? Do you exist? How do you play?

Greetings! I've asked about Bard mains recently, and now I would like to hear from Cleric mains, if they still exist? I happen to have a Cleric that I worked up to level 85 years ago, completed to 1.0 and the 1.5 and as of now she is a bazaar trader. I've considered getting re-antiquated with the class and working her up to 110. I have a 110 BST on my other account, I'm thinking I could take her to FM and get her up to speed fairly quickly.

Do any of you play a cleric as your main? How do you go about it? Do you box something so that you have a way of exp when there are no groups? Do you find getting groups with guild and ect.. fairly easy?

What does your style look like?
What AA are you using each fight if any?
What Macros do you have set up for these fights, ect..?

Love to hear from you.

I "Mained" Cadira for awhile up until recently. In quotes because, outside of raids, that's all he was really used for. In group content you just hit your multibind on repeat and watch tv.

95% of the time a shaman out classes a cleric in group content and is far more engaging to play. There's really no reason to play a cleric if all you're gonna do is group content.

The devs appear to not care, as per usual, and won't do anything about the boredom a group cleric faces. All the gotta do is give them decent melee/spell damage (not great) and minor adps to both melee and casters, received through some engaging means (casting a certain spell or having to melee to proc it etc) to make them more advantageous in any group.

Another good question is, "Cleric mains, why don't you main change to a druid, shaman and paladin?" or "What do you wish that DPG would do with clerics that doesn't just make them more like a druid, shaman and paladin?"

From the other thread, I still feel pretty good about my response a year later.

Not everyone wants to play a druid, shaman, or paladin instead Tucoh; I know I don't. I've played my cleric as a main for 16 years, and largely don't box.

While I did finally break down and make an alt to box with this year, I still prefer not to personally. It's just not my cup of tea. I'm lucky to have good guildmates that I regularly group with.

Unfortunately, our solo ability is trash, as is our ability to add meaningful DPS or anything other than healing in groups. There really needs to be some kind of dev attention to help fix some of the issues with the class so it's enticing for people to play outside raids.

As for my style, it depends who I'm grouped with; certain people like to just chill and bring in a couple mobs at a time to the group. In those groups, I do break out my pitiful DPS tools for something different.

Some groups want to push the tank and cleric to the limits and mass pull. This has been quite popular this year with the evolving cloak to grind. These groups I tend to play similarly to how I raid.

Cadira makes excellent points though in that most cleric mains are still playing cleric because they raid; most of what we excel at (healing and mitigation) isn't necessary for most things outside of raids. A shaman, paladin, or druid has much more to offer in the group game.

I 3 box a cleric/ranger/SK, and I consider my "main" to be the cleric (created in May 2000).

When I'm farming for collectibles, burning a lesson for AA, and, now, gaining xp on the cloak, my cleric just stands there. I literally only click over to him to re-apply Shining/DI and to hit the forage hotkey...I don't even cast a single heal. My SK self-heals enough and my ranger can dual wield heal proc weapons if necessary, which is more than enough patch healing for groups.

Outside of missions and maybe some named, my cleric is just a bot in a group situation. I would never encourage anyone to play a cleric main in modern EQ.

Not gonna happen in EQ, but in the little RPG I'm making I'm tracking damage types, not just remaining HP, and different heals will get a bonus for healing the 'right' kind of damage. trying to make healing more interesting.

Maybe add percent rune effects to heals; like word heals adds a spell guard effect vs poison/disease, syllable vs fire/cold, Elixir vs magic/curse. Single target fast heal adds a 10% melee up to a total; slow heal a 50% for hits over a threshold, emergency fast heal a chance at 100% block for a single hit. Splash heal a chance to apply one of those effects randomly.

Add via AAs so mercs don't get them.

You can find my more detailed answer (very long answer I admit) on the similar thread that's in the priest forum, but I have mained a cleric for 21 years and while I dabble with other characters from time to time, I've never enjoyed the play style as much as a cleric as I do play my cleric as a jack of all trades (heal, dps, tank, crowd control, pull) though only one of those I'm the best at.

I am 100% a group cleric now (have been for a few years) so happy to chat separately about what specifically I do/use in terms of abilities, spell lineups, etc.

I'm on Mangler so still at level 100 cap. Been maining my cleric for the majority of this server's life with no boxes, just a cleric!

I think the idea of clerics contributing nothing in group settings is pretty exaggerated (at least up to level 100, I can't comment on 101-120 yet). With intervention/contravention heals we can nuke while we heal, and we also have a few decent DPS burn abilities like Divine Avatar, Battle Frenzy, Improved Twincast, Celestial Rapidity. We're still not really competing with actual DPSers of course when it comes to damage, although if there's undead in the mix we can come pretty close.

Having a cleric in group also allows bigger pulls imo. I think a lot of the people saying things like "my cleric just stands there!" are probably just casually single pulling mobs into camp, which is totally fine if that's their play style. But with a devoted cleric in group, you have the healing power to pull a lot more a lot faster.

I will say that I never, ever solo with my goal being to gain xp. Ever. I play a lot of EQ, and I'm fortunate to be in an active guild that is active during my main play hours. I end up maxing out my AA's in each expansion era easily just doing group content/progression, farming augs, etc. without ever just grinding for the sake of grinding.

That said, I do solo a lot! With a merc we can solo pretty difficult content that a lot of classes cannot. It's just slow going (unless vs. undead). I can molo most named mobs in current content up to level 100, unless they have nasty anti-healer mechanics like silence, or spawn a ton of adds, etc. (which to be fair a decent number of named DO have those kind of mechanics). If I spawn a named I can't handle on my own, I can usually call in one guildmate of any class and we can handle it from there.

Sounds more like one class needs to be toned down a bit so that the other class can feel more valued...

Career crazy Cleric here!

I retired just prior to Seeds of Destruction launch and returned towards the end of CoV, so there's around 13 years of contemporary content I missed out on. Otherwise, I've been playing a Cleric since release and for some of that time was a Cleric Class Correspondent.

Others have mentioned this thread in the Priest section which features discussions including talking points to do with your questions.

I've always been an oddball when it comes to the class. The majority playstyle for years at the start was a much more conservative healing purist approach, whereas I always sought to use our toolkit to its fullest. As the years went by and we received more additions to our repertoire, more Clerics became vested in battling it out, but we still had the purists who wanted the status quo to return back to the dark ages of Complete Heal dominating everything.

I became known for my soloing antics and my time as a HC raider, where I did try to embrace as much of the game as I could.

These days I raid in a more casual MC guild and I box an SK and Bard alongside my buddy's Beast, dps Druid and Mage. In that aspect, I echo what Velisaris says and it's at the point where literally any other class could contribute more to our group to speed things up.

In part it is because SKs are incredibly strong, but it's also largely in part due to how little a Cleric can contribute to the benefit of a group given the finite requirements of healing, even with continuous big pulls and committing fully to DPS, vs being able to contribute good ADPS and DPS. I'd rather the fastest rate of kills. Pulling big with the Cleric does allow for some AoE, but the Cleric isn't really essential to achieving that. Llu can be AFK and I'll still do it. That said there's always a finite number of mobs you can pull before they start to eat your tank especially given that strikethrough/riposte strikethrough can be nasty. It's funny when Quick Time from a Bard suddenly adds a slight risk factor to inc melee DPS.

For AAs, it depends on what kind of fight is being talked about. Some you won't really use outside of raids, some you'll want to save for emergency recovery, or you could use some more for a dps burn. Depends on what context you're considering.

I don't use too many macros outside of ones for communicating with a heal team, activating burn AAs and various assist socials.

To be brutally honest, there just isn't much need for clerics in groups beyond the first month or two of an expansion (and maybe not even then). My main is cleric and I love playing her but in our usual group, which includes a healing merc and two alts, I can just read email on the cleric's screen and concentrate on the dps alt. If it weren't for the cloak, I probably would have already quit playing my cleric outside of raids. As I told another player once, I could try to dps, but if I did the real dps classes would die laughing; then I would just have to rez and rebuff them, so it wouldn't be worth it.

Why does your regular group have a healer merc, if you play a cleric?

Clerics may have bad DPS, but healer mercs do absolutely, positively no DPS at all. Ditch the healer merc for a melee merc, and you are doing much more DPS as a group.

And the truth is it's been that way for years, and Daybreak appears to have zero interest in doing anything about it.

Think clerics died when mercs came out. Only good on raids but hey wizards are a dead class too. Maybe stuff will change with class balance thats suppose to happen.

Clerics died with Complete Heal. Tab, cast CHeal, tab back, and continue playing. Mercs just face cleric players a chance at freedom to enjoy the game and not feel trapped.

So I can still get experience on the cleric for my cloak, and get her nameds done and still focus on playing the ranger for added dps and versatility. Otherwise I would have dropped the cleric from group by now.

They don't like to admit it but my group would miss either my ranger or rogue far more than they would miss the cleric.

That totally didn't answer my question. You said your group uses a healer merc. "My main is cleric and I love playing her but in our usual group, which includes a healing merc and two alts".

I'm not suggesting you drop the ranger, the rogue, or the cleric (you). Drop the healer merc, and replace with a rogue merc. The cleric main (you) should be able to handle the heals while still adding some DPS, which the healer merc would never do.

The question is does the ranger played half time do more or less damage than the dps merc. Well sort of. Really, is a ranger played more or less full time + a cleric merc better or worse than a cleric played more or less full time and a ranger played half time or less. I am not giving up my ranger

We must speak two different native languages, because we are just not communicating here.

Your statement sounded like you said your group has you (a cleric PC) and a healer merc. Why?

Ditch the healer merc, since you can heal, and replace the HEALER merc with a MELEE merc. The ranger has nothing to do with it.

I am playing both the ranger and the cleric. Does that help? I am not good enough to be 100% on both (and without software help I am not sure most people are).