Motivation To Play Clerics

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

  1. Cadman Elder

    Seems to be a lot of folk not enjoying the "sitting LFG for hours on end" which, incidentally isn't a Cleric problem, it's an everyone problem.

    That's not your only option though, is it?

    Make groups yourself, instead of waiting to join one that's already rolling... it's a far more effective use of your time ;)
    Jordis, Szilent and yepmetoo like this.
  2. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    What's funny is, even when there were almost 10x as many paid accounts as now (and WAY more actual players considering boxing nowadays), people whined about LFG. Make a group or accept the reality that you may not magically find people to invite you to one at the moment you wish it. I've done missions with 4 tanks or 3 healers, people just look for anyone mostly as long as they can tank it or heal it enough to get the job done.
  3. Shredd Augur

    I found that if you help others on their game goals , they will help you. . and then you have built a fellowship.
    Jordis likes this.
  4. Shushabye_Baby Romance Novel Writer

    That's such a generic answer. Do you even play a cleric main? Is a cleric your only toon and you don't have another toon to play. I wonder because I tried to create my own group on a cleric for years. It didn't work. Often when I tried to make my own group the person who wanted to join my group was another main cleric or 2 or 3. I ask in guild. I go into the LFG and invite people there LFG and shortly after they see it's just a cleric or two making the group they leave.

    Raid time. Different story. They'd send me raid invites before the general call to raid went out.

    I wish they'd give clerics a means to effectively solo. Beef up the hammer pet.
    Marton and Metanis like this.
  5. Metanis Bad Company

    They did! It's an ability called "Roll a shaman instead!"
    Annastasya likes this.
  6. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    On the subject of solo/molo. Is this spell line any good: Vow of Vituperation

    Like if I used that and some of our other tools, could I tank with a healer merc, and would there be any point to doing that over just using a tank merc? So far I've done pretty well boxing with my Enchanter, and using a Tank merc and Caster DPS merc, but it's nice to know all the options that are out there.
  7. Kiaro Augur

    This response is horribly obtuse, legit every TLP since Phinigel by the time PoP rolls around people have all created box healers and the majority of people in LFG are clerics, last time I tried to main a cleric on Mangler, my options for forming a group was 4 clerics and a beastlord (or insert another non tank class).
  8. Celestian Elder

    I dunno, chanters seem to be locked in the seat as well. The instant you turn your head mez or charm breaks ;(
    Jordis likes this.
  9. Laronk Augur

    Anyone who sits there with the lfg flag on will usually wait a long time, it's all about making the group and having the plan.
    Dre. likes this.
  10. Chorus Augur

    I'll pick up strays all the time in my group whenever I see one in zone that needs someone to help out; however, more and more often those people will join and then insist on being afk and just sitting on auto-follow on the warrior in the group. I give them the boot pretty quick, but it has a side effect of me not wanting to add non-guild or non-friends to my groups later on. I only started boxing due to that type of behavior in the first place. If people looking for a free ride weren't still the the process of ruining it for everyone else, it'd be a better scene I imagine. The only real option is to find a family guild that's active and join them for groups these days.
  11. KaldaryeRZ Greon's better half

    This is why I play on Zek server. You can find a group on Zek as a main cleric. Usually when I want to group I can find one pretty quickly. There's a raid guild and a separate raid alliance of 2 other guilds on Zek that are raiding current content. Either one will give a main cleric groupage. If you really feel stuck as a healer maybe you should go "red" and server hop - its a free transfer to Zek. Yes there's pvp, but if that isn't what you enjoy there are ways to minimize if it you're smart, and in my opinion it's better to deal with a little pvp than to go LFG for days and days on a blue server.

    Kaldarye Ka'Duceus
    High Priestess
    Ascending Dawn
    Zek
  12. Annastasya Augur

    You can tank with a healer merc and all of our self tanking tools. Good prep before each fight is key, and single pulls. The problem is our maximum dps potential is light years behind every other class in the game. It takes forever to kill anything, and forget burning down something that runs away.

    Maybe about 8 expansions ago, or for a particular zone or mob every now and then i will do this. But these days if i bother to molo at all on my cleric for actual exp giving content (and it's super rare) i break out the Caster dps merc who is fairly well AA'd and geared with tank merc gear, and set it to burn and heal it like a tank.
    Niskin likes this.
  13. Crystilla Augur

    While I'm in a raiding guild, I haven't been able to raid much in the last 1+ years and some of the "advancements" made in raids + technology used by raiders has surpassed my personal interests and time availability so I'm a 100% grouper/tradeskiller now.

    Coming from that perspective, I've been playing my cleric since 2001 (so 20 years this August) and have had the chance to dabble with other characters of course during that time. The cleric (which was a class picked for me by the way-I had no choice back in 2001) is still the class I choose today. Druid comes second closest (just because I positively am addicted to Tracking) but none of my druids are higher than lvl 85 heroics.

    Quite often, clerics are either clerics because of the 'god' factor or because 'they like to help'. I definitely fall into the latter. That said, the thing I love about my cleric is I have done anything I wanted to throughout the years including now. I am often the puller, act as crowd control, have been the tank, DPS'd, kited and more. Am I the best at most of those? No, but guess what, a lot of us non 'god' clerics don't care if we're the best. We recognize there can only be 1 'best' but that doesn't mean we're not good enough.

    So to the OP - motivation to play a cleric? Clerics who are true clerics (and I mean 'true' that the person likes the class, not playing it because they need a healer) play because they love the variety of helping keep someone alive. Not because we're the 'best' at something.
    Treage_Imminent, Stymie and Aiona like this.
  14. Tucoh Augur

    Szilent is right, for better or worse a newbie cleric outpaces a healer merc very quickly. I was astonished at how few AA / gear I needed before my cleric was battle-ready.

    To (kind of) answer the OP: I generally play two box groups, when I'm new at the content I'll roll with a group that includes my cleric and shaman. This allows me to wade into fights I don't understand and overwhelm them with immutable survivability. The kind of ridiculously bad pulls and misbehavior a group with a cleric can get away with is astonishing. After I get through an expansion I'll swap up the group, dropping the cleric for a berserker and dramatically decrease my group's survivability while moderately increasing its DPS potential.

    For whatever reason I get more reactions by random people around me after I've just ground down multiple groups of mobs I've screwed up the pull for with my bloody and battered cleric blowing my entire group up with overhealing for five minutes straight than I get with my hyper-lethal 3berserker group that cuts through a single group at a time with precise execution.


    To answer the OP's question in a different way: I'd recommend any cleric main to get a warrior box to group with. Most groups aren't looking to get into enough trouble to make you useful and would be better off taking a druid or shaman. You don't need them to do you a favor, do yourself a favor and be the core of any group you want to be.
  15. Nylrem Augur

    There is ZERO motivation to play a cleric in the group game.

    Their superior healing is unnecessary, and their DPS is woeful.

    I have said it several times though, it really is a fairly simple fix.

    Increase the damage of BOTH Intravention and Contravention lines by about 500%, and you immediately, and easily fix a lot of the issues, while creating none. Even at 500% increase, cleric still won't be on parity with shaman or druid for DPS (cleric nuke boosts are a joke) but will help a ton.
  16. Nylrem Augur

    Every cleric I know generally gets accepted into guild groups to finish progression, then only logs the cleric in to raid, boxes the cleric with some sort of 'viable' toon(s), or plays alts in the group environment.

    I don't personally know of a single cleric that consistently 'mains' a solo cleric in this day and age (meaning logs in and plays more that a couple hours per week outside of raids)... not a single one. It is not viable.
    Metanis and menown like this.
  17. Metanis Bad Company


    I agree. I think it's a plot to force every cleric main to pay for multiple accounts. I'm paying for 6 now...
    Kialya likes this.
  18. Kialya Keeping your butt alive since 2002

    You may be on to something: I pay for 7 others (lol).
  19. Baradorn Lorekeeper

    I know many clerics in my raiding guild that are playing in a guild group with mains outside raid hours , and progressing their toon beyond "progression", like farming group currencies of missions to buy their 20 type 5 augs, progressing through hunter and collectibles, get help farming the aug they need from these named, and farming boring lame raid instances for so rare luck augs drops.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  20. Fenthen aka Rath

    I am whole-heartedly burned out on playing the class that I made 22 years ago. Back in CotF I could top20 a DPS parse on some events. Now I make mid-40s even with burning a destruction glyph on Zlandicar.

    The healing spells are all really vanilla. We're using current + last tier of our quick casting remedy (some are using the tier below that as well) since it's obvious that fast heals are superior to anything else with the game speed as fast as it is. Raids are literally 3.5 hours of mashing 1 primary direct heal key and then occasionally a different key for group healing. There's no real moving around unless there's an emote, the winner of the healing parse is either someone from Group 1 or the guy who could mash their poor singular keyboard key the most amount of times.

    We have a problem getting clerics to log in with any guild I'm in. Maybe if the class were made a little bit more fun again?
    Metanis likes this.