Motivation To Play Clerics

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Karliv, Feb 15, 2021.

  1. Karliv Journeyman

    I'm curious what motivates you to play a cleric (those that do), or what a guild has tried to do to motivate/attract more clerics, and whether it was successful/had unintended side effects.
    PatCleric likes this.
  2. Metanis Bad Company

    I fix things IRL, it seemed natural to fix things in game. By the time you realize the ramifications of being an EQ cleric it's too late to back out.
    DeeL, Vumad, Lanffear and 6 others like this.
  3. Szilent Augur

    Skilled cle is a powerful addition to ambitious groups, meaning both to stacked groups trying to go nuts and to sketchy groups trying to get real stuff done. Too many groups choose to limit their ambitions. You want to encourage playing with cle? Just wade into waters too deep for shabby healers.
  4. Belkar_OotS Augur

    I love my cleric.

    Clerics shine best when things go to crap or conditions are the most difficult. We may hate that we are expected to "heal through it," but it's a thing because... Generally speaking a cleric CAN heal through whatever issues the group is experiencing within reason.

    Wizard tank... Okay. Having 15 mobs in camp with no crowd control... Okay. Tank that can't keep agro and constantly loses agro to other group members who are consistently taking damage... Okay. Tanking more mobs than the tank and still keeping it together... Okay. Need cures and heals all at once... Okay.

    Clerics are pretty beefy and can do amazing things in the healing and survival areas. A good cleric can replace the healing output of 2 druid or shaman within the group. That says a ton. Totally face stomps 3 cleric mercs.

    The problem with clerics is that their tool kit feels crappy in most general situations because limits aren't being pushed, and a cleric pushes limits further than most classes can do. When supreme healing isn't required they tend to feel more one note, since their other roles are so weak and unneeded.
  5. Cadira Augur

    I feel like the most loved person on raids.

    Other than that? Not much. Some groups that like to push me to my limits are fun like mentioned in posts above this but otherwise playing a cleric in group game kinda sucks.
    minimind, Kialya and Tallie like this.
  6. Karliv Journeyman

    Thank you for the responses folks.

    Does raiding current-content raids with just 2-3 clerics and 2/3 of a full instance count? :) Feels like we're very thin there, and trying to come up with some ideas to motivate some main changes/point out the value. As other posters mentioned, with mercs, clerics don't feel great in the group game (_definitely_ better, just doesn't feel necessary in most grouping scenarios, unless group is really cruising - which gets back to what you said about pushing, but sometimes people would rather relax?)
  7. Karliv Journeyman

  8. Belkar_OotS Augur

    Well, when I was in a mid/lower end guild we often had shortages of healers and most classes in general (except tanks we had like 17 tanks most of the time hah).

    The way we combated the low healing and number was by allowing boxes. Then all of our strats were build around expecting box fails (though honestly boxes still did better than many mains in hitting emotes).

    Another alternative we used was... Playing the healer... But still getting loot and dzadds when able in the main. Offline characters in 1 account owners would still benefit that way.
    Metanis and Karliv like this.
  9. Metanis Bad Company

    Long term they need to make cleric class fun to play again. That means vastly more solo/molo power and more automagic healing so the cleric can take bathroom breaks along with everyone else.

    Short term all those tanks are going to have to take their turn in the barrel by playing their cleric boxes in raids.

    We are beginning to wrestle with this problem too. I worry that once you open the Pandora's boxes issue how many more problems will that create?
  10. Biltene Kingslayer

    My main is a wizard, but I made a cleric alt specifically to use for groups when we wanted more healing than a merc, and also on the off chance that my guild would need healing help more than my DPS. During RoS I played my cleric on raids to help us beat content, and it was some of the most fun I've had raiding because there is so much to do, and I'm constantly busy trying to keep up with everything going on. I think at best I'm passable on raids, but I do enjoy trying to get better and keeping up with the pace of raids.

    When grouping, I echo what Szilent said. I want the tanks to push as hard as they can, to give me a challenge. I have a rule, no mercs. I don't want help healing, if I can't keep the group/tank up by myself then I'm doing something wrong. I don't mind assistance from additional priests in group if we're doing something challenging, like going for Max Echo, but for the most part I like the challenge of healing tough situations and I feel it makes me a better player.

    Also, being a wizard at heart, I have a healing setup where I try to do as much damage as I can, while still providing adequate heals. When things are rather mundane, I use this setup to try to add some spice to my fun and just see how much damage I can do. Gotta have fun one way or another.
    Stymie, Jordis, Tour and 1 other person like this.
  11. Karliv Journeyman

    Again, thank you for the thoughts and experiences.

    I'd like to ask something similar: have any of you been through a guild, or stage in a guild's life, where they tried to incentivize players to change mains to a different class - and that turned out badly?

    Examples of badly: didn't work at all, worked too well and everyone swapped, created division and backlash in the guild, etc.
  12. Karhar Dream Crusher

    I always tell people to play the class they want to play, if they dont want to play it, they tend to get bored quicker and want to either find someplace else to play or quit all together.
    Kialya, Annastasya and Karliv like this.
  13. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    The only content a cleric is even necessary anymore, for the most part, is raid level where mercs are disallowed.

    A returning player returning to live servers where most players have a 115 character with merc, a player will be basically inferior to a merc for 114+ levels. (AAs are a thing)

    I main a cleric on Ragefire. At least level 85 is attainable in a few days. 115 is a lonnng road to hoe when everyone has a merc better than you.

    Live player clerics need an overhaul to add more killing capability or to hold some things back from mercs or some sort of reward for actually paying to play a borderline useless class outside of raids.
    Rooksmirk and Annastasya like this.
  14. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    Metanis gets it.
    Metanis likes this.
  15. Ninelder Augur

    The group game sucks for priests, clerics most of all. EQ repeated a D&D mistake with the cleric class. They made paladins, which are battle-clerics. Unfortunately the reason that D&D clerics and EQ clerics wear armour and carry weapons is because they are battle-clerics. If they weren't they would probably be wearing robes and carrying a holy book.

    This causes both classes to pigeon-hole each other. The nature of all classes that can heal, is that if they were balanced them by virtue of their other abilities(Tanking, DPS, Pet, Utility like track and snare) then their heals would be so inadequate as to never be useful. So every class that can heal, can heal well enough. Furthermore paladin are considered melee, so their heals are instant, almost instant and immune to fizzling, immune to interruption, can be cast while running. Literally 99pct of every reason other priests fail to keep a tank alive, the paladin doesn't have to worry about. They can out-heal every other class, often while off-tanking; the only drawback is their ability to keep it up. I have been saying for years the most powerful gem of a raiding class might be a paladin that gears and utilizes everything for healing.

    Thus the only difference is stamina to heal, this only matters on long raid events, as out of combat regen and the fact that 10 minute mob fights are so... ...1999. When they happen today in group content, its just plain boring. The Devs know this so groups are made to excel by excelling at DPS, Mobs don't live long enough to DoT, much less debuff, or heaven-forbid require a healing strategy.

    Mercenaries. Every tank can and has been able to do all group progression as well as everything else in an expansion just fine using cleric mercs since SoD with the occasional mission that requires a real healer. Most melee and pet classes can do this as well, even if they aren't geared well; cleric mercs are stackable, half your group can be cleric mercs. The opposite is a risible mockery of their experience. During SoD, while every tank, melee, and pet class raced to Korafax, the priest classes trying to use a tank merc were being murdered in droves in Oceangreen. They have put in a tiny amount of effort to make tank mercs better, but the disparity is still a nightmarish joke.

    Almost every priest that has finished progression while it was current are the ones who box, and generally those that box a tank(which over time has become more and more their main toon.) As tanks actually can see an improvement from every step of gearing-up; they are able to do much more in the group game than they could before. No amount of gear, even raid gear will help you keep that tank merc alive, or make it less of a spastic, chaotic, imbecile. Your raid geared clerics are much better off just tanking when they solo for meager experience, and some of them use a healer merc when they do it.

    The only reason I can see for any class to play a priest, especially a cleric, is to fill those oh-so-important raid roles. It doesn't matter how much you love the role you play, or how attached you are to the toon you may have been playing for decades. Maining a cleric in today's game means you are severely crippling your options on what you can do when you log in. It means you will probably be begging for help to do the 90pct of the progression that everyone else merced in their own time at their own leisure. How many years of that do you think you can take before you are spending all your time on an alt that can get stuff done, or enticed by another, more sensible game?
    Koveras, Stymie, Jordis and 4 others like this.
  16. Ninelder Augur

    Don't "incentivize." Allow your better players to play or box the alt-healers, have your good players teach people with healing alts how to do it. Have them take turns if they will. If they care about your guild, they would already be wanting to do this. But forcing anyone to main-switch is a horrible idea which will probably kill your guild fast. Boxing most raid events is a big no-no, no matter how skilled the person is at playing the toons, everyone is always worse boxing. I have done it many times, and have pulled it off, but i am sweating from stress when I do it.

    Being a raid healer is, imo, still just as fun as it ever was. If they have the priest alts, they probably have some version of the healing bug and can get into it enough to still have fun. I raid on my chanter alt more than I do my druid main, cause that class is nearly extinct too. Winning on an alt is still much more fun than losing on a main, anyone with a lick of sense will see that. Good Luck!
  17. Herf Augur

    I started boxing a cleric because I have a warrior. But as I've played it more I've learned to appreciate all that they do. Heals: budgeting heals and which type of heals to conserve mana. Debuffing: putting mark of kings on longer lived mobs so tanks and melee get self-healed a bit. Buffing: of course. But not just Virtue. Also spell haste and Bulwark to conserve heal mana. Decurse: RGC and the Gunthak quest spell for decurse and de-poison. And finally: taking part in complete heal chains.

    Everyone should have a cleric on a seperate account from their melees :)
    Joules_Bianchi likes this.
  18. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    Everyone has one and a merc one also.

    Not an inspiring sales pitch for the class.

    DEAR EQ DEVS

    FREE THE GROUP CLERIC!

    Nobody needs them in groups.

    Lame, treatment of class is lame.

    (Wizards need love too, used to be kings of nukes, now middling DPS on parses. I wouldn't even roll one anymore except I have evil race boxes who can't druid ring.)
  19. Szilent Augur

    Strongly disagree with this
    Yukaan the Bear likes this.
  20. Qimble Augur

    Anyone who thinks that cleric mercs are remotely a replacement for a player cleric (Even an undergear/AA'd one) must not have played with a good cleric anytime recently. If I go AFK while tanking 2 blue con mobs in ToV 50% odds my cleric merc lets me die. A well played cleric can easily keep me alive again 5+ without me doing anything.

    Pallies make better healers than cleric mercs.
    Herf likes this.