Something I'd be curious about - clerics generally are NOT using Quiet Miracle on themselves ... and if they are regularly, they need to be taught better habits. Since clerics get Veturkika's AA which is self, we certainly don't need to use QM on ourselves as well. QM is, and even before Vets, was primarily given to other players. So I'm guessing some re-training could be done on your guild's clerics LS.
I may be doing something wrong...but I personally think calls are the worst thing to ever happen to EQ. I HATE calls...they are just terrible, and I will continue to think so until there is a /hidecorpse called feature. Negatives of a call: 1) If some corpses are called and others are laying around, there isn't a good way of knowing who has been rezzed and who has been called. If there are 10 corpses by you, 9 have been called, and 1 is a person waiting for a rez...good luck guessing which it is. Time spent shifting through those targets is time taken away from healing. I am CONSTANTLY cycling my closest corpses in between heals to rez...having left over corpses just removes one extra tactic to quickly get people back into the fight. 2) If someone is called, then dies again, you HAVE to rez the right corpse. If you try rezzing (or re-calling) the corpse that was already called while the user is in hover mode, they don't get a rez and are stuck left in hovering. Then people are complaining they aren't getting rezzes while others are complaining that people aren't taking their rezzes. To fix that everyone has to click return to bind and you waste time zoning twice. Negatives of a Cleric call: 3) The casting time is prohibitive. I love the aa rez because I can cast it in between spells without really missing a beat. I have a hard enough time casting DI without it going off because I missed a heal on the tank...take an extra 4.5 seconds away from actually healing the tank and he's probably dead. Tank transitions due to tank deaths usually result in an extra death or two where more people are going to need rezzes/calls. If we do the same for those people then you have lost 3 tanks and 1/2 your raid. As a cleric I specifically save quiet miracle for dead druids. Warriors and druids are also pretty much the only ones I'll give divine rez to as well. I also learned to make sure either a mod rod click or Vetur's is up at all times in case I die myself. Lastly...if your guild has enough bards, they can really help with mana regen. As raid leader on more than one occasion I have found myself swapping a bard into a healer group for reflexive aa (5k mana to everyone in the group instantly) as well as crescendo songs.
I save qm for myself but I'm in a low Dps guild, so running out of mana is an option, especially if warriors are using charge and I'm using renewals.
Rogue, one thing I'd ask you (on the off chance you don't have this) - do you have the aug "helping hand" + a weapon with beneficial mana return proc + your group UF shawl or the new 3.0 shawl aug + are you using yaulp spell? I find mana is much less of a problem with all 3 of those things (than when I only had 1 of them).
Well, I guess this was a bad idea. I had hoped I had found a way to help the druids in my guild, but the cleric spell is not worth casting and it seems that clerics would prefer that druids and shamans not use their own call. Our cleric class leader believes that QM is best reserved for recently resurrected clerics. So to quote the Talking Heads, "It is same as it ever was".
LS - what it sounds like more is your guild may be in the minority. Some showed why cleric call (for their guilds) isn't used, but that certainly doesn't mean your guild clerics can't use it if they want to. If I'm honest, it sounds a bit short sighted of your class leader to keep both Vet's AA and QM for themselves when we already have yaulp spell + DvA and epic shield click and burst of life and beacon of life as ways to heal momentarily while we're low on mana. But I don't walk in your guild's shoes so maybe there is some reason they feel they need 45,000 mana on call for their own use (rather than them having 15,000 mana and leaving 30,000 mana for others use). Kind of wish they'd post here or start a new thread/discussion so information could be shared and put out on the table.
What seems to be happening, is that commentary is being interpreted as a slight or a brushoff, and knowing myself, Tenlaienye, and Crystilla personally (for example), that's not what's happening. I was not saying that Call of the Herald is something I would not use, I was giving you a reason- which you were opining on- as to why the clerics *you* have been playing with, probably are not using it, that's not just resistance to change- it's considerably slower. I am not saying I personally wouldn't ever use Call, or that people "shouldn't," but rather why they most likely aren't. As with anything that has an opportunity cost in time, it's a tradeoff- if they're not stable enough with the tanks to do nothing for six seconds, they can get you up, which is better than leaving you on the ground, without sacrificing a heal, but it will leave you with no mana. Despite all the ranger corpse jokes over the years, it's actually *not* more efficient to just let people die and rez them instead of healing. If it's a rough patch and they can't afford the time, too, a simple reply of "sec" is reasonable (not too much typing), and hopefully you too would be patient, knowing that sometimes it's a matter of timing (like when your group is low health and someone else wants skin *right now*). As Tenlaienye mentioned, there is one instant AA rez- Divine Resurrection. It is usable once every 7 hours 12 minutes if you have maxed the hasten AAs for it, or once every 18 hours without hastening. It is most commonly used for battle rezzing someone else who needs to get up and going immediately, but there's an extremely limited number of them available, even on a raid. That's it, unless someone camps Plane of Sky for quest pieces to get a rare weapon with three charges (and it's not rechargeable) of 90% rez- I have one. Otherwise, clerics are relying upon Blessing of Resurrection, which is a 3.0 second base cast time, quickening to 1.5 seconds with max AAs in that line. In fact, the Staff of Forbidden Rites from Old Man McKenzie (which is druid-usable) casts faster and has a longer range than the cleric AA rez- I have one of those too, and it's rather handy on something like Zalikor for rezzing further across the floating stones, without having to leave an aura. Not having a form of personal burst mana recovery is a problem- hell, I argued for both clerics and druids to get some kind of mana tool on the old forums prior to the advent of Quiet Miracle, as they were the only pure casting classes to be lacking one, and all pure melee had gained the Respite line; it's not much fun coming back and being mostly useless for a while after a death. The problem is, your efficiency is being held against you. I'm aware of the costs on druid heals- they are cheapest of all the priests, and you have the ability to run with a constant higher level of mana preservation with alternating wolf forms; once you have mana, you can make it last, very well, particularly with heals (DPS for all classes except necromancer is designed to deplete you so it's not infinite duration). For some reason, this seems to have encouraged the dev team to put off giving you a mana recovery tool, and that I don't agree with, much as rangers are the only other mana-using class now with you to lack a mana recovery tool, and it still goes back to: It's not much fun waiting around relatively useless. I also disagree with balancing classes with an expectation of LoN items in mind, like a Kiss of Erollisi, or mana potions, and said as much a couple of years ago. As change doesn't come overnight, there are some things that you and those you play with *can* do, that are not purely waiting for Call to cast faster, or getting another druid or a shaman to cast it on you (since it's the same deal). One rez and two spell heals in the time that could be taken to call you can include hitting you with a group HoT after you are rezzed to give your group a buffer (which is what I used to do with all rezzes of a primary healer, back before clerics got the next spell...), and/or a splash (with a tank heal in there, or hitting you with unity buffing), that heals their own group, yours, and anyone else's. On an event with AEs (which is when your caster group is most likely to be at risk if you have no mana) this is just good practice to make sure that a group doesn't die when their primary healer goes down. You have an enchanter in your group; kick them in the rear if they're making you have to send a tell for a second spire or a robe click (or both). They can see you died, they can see your mana pool, and they have tools to help with that- it shouldn't have to take prompting- you keep them alive, they can and should help do the same. It's also a good idea if they hit spell guards, glyph spray if it's up, and a group rune to help buy your whole group time. Channels. I don't know if you use a collective priest channel in your guild, but it's a good idea. Not a spam channel (blergh, your messages would get lost there), but one where spires, DIs, Wild Growth assignments, MGBs and tactics et cetera are discussed. Getting beastlords and possibly enchanters to join it is a good idea too- it's like the old days of having necros join channel for twitches. If the person who rezzed you did not or cannot give you a Miracle, ask in that channel instead of tells- you're asking every class (that's out of group) who can help you at once, which is a lot faster, and you may have to tell them to stop piling it on so they don't waste too many! While you're kicking the enchanter in the rear, kick the necro in your group in the rear too, for not wracking for his group after you have died. Mind Strip recourse doesn't stack with enchanter robe click, but you have 12 seconds of robe click, which gives Mind Strip time to refresh if they don't have forceful rejuvenation up- one dot (or nuke) out of their lineup to get the group re-stabilized is worth it, and smart necros know this. Clerics. The class leader may be opposed to clerics using Quiet Miracle for anyone but themselves (I personally feel being "closed off" to the idea is wasting the full potential of the AA), but see if there's someone who disagrees. One of the things I've said for a long time about being a cleric (which applies for support classes in general), is that I like playing a class where you have to listen to 100% of raid instructions... and then ignore about 95% of them. Using one's better judgement is a rewarding part of the class for me, rather than just /assist main on everything. Ignoring direction that doesn't fit the situation is part of the deal, as is taking responsibility if you erred in judgement. Find someone who is willing to try to do without Miracle, or at least willing to see how far their mana can go with just mod rods and Veturika's Perseverance. If they can make it a full cycle of Veturika's- that is, get to the point that the AA is refreshed and their mana is still stable, maybe they will give it a try. If one clerics is splashing more than another, talk to them, hell, make a hotkey that /t Cleric_that_is_my_new_best_friend I just died, so that they know your group may be a bit more fragile than usual, and maybe you can try getting that person to give you a Call when they can, too. Items and bonus stuff. All those things that I said weren't fair to count for balancing classes? Get your hands on as many as possible. If you play Legends of Norrath, do the tutorial, build some decks, make some avatars and you can get to level 8-10 that way, then XP in LoN before you open your booster packs- I've gotten a Kiss of Erollisi on two accounts from it already, because now they're one of the bonus loots. If you don't play LoN, or hate it with every fibre of your being, talk to someone who knows more about it to help you with those steps to increase your chances (believe me, LoN for some reason made my eyes glaze over just thinking about it for years, and I still can't believe I'm actually playing it now). Claim any packs that have mana potions in them. I know you are a GM artisan and have your shawl, but if you hate tradeskills and only did them for that reason, we're on the same server- I can make you some Fear Jewels of Mana. I carry some around. Clicky heals, enough AAs to use a Glyph of Lost Secrets once you have the barest amount of mana to make it last... I hate being left with no options in a situation, so I camp and collect all manner of weird things. Understanding. This is the toughest one. Acknowledging that excrement occurs, that even classes with harvests or miracles get killed right after using one, that sometimes mod rod mana seems to bug, that hitting staunch seems to increase your likelihood of getting aggro, that timers are there to be waited upon, that even with all the tools everyone has collectively on a raid combined, sometimes what you want can't happen right away. That it sucks, and that it sucks even more that you don't have one of those tools for your class at the moment.
Adding one last thing here since I just linked this over to the external cleric forums and set up a post with all the details in case others have this same debate. Here's a quick summary of these 3 abilities (cleric rez, cleric call, druid/shaman call). Something really stood out to me as another reason why clerics may not be the ones using their call a lot ... Blessing of Ressurection works like any rez spell. The person is brought back to their corpse, the corpse disappears, some experience is returned to the rezzed player and the player ends up with full health but no mana and no endurance. - Initially has a 3 second cast and 12 second recast. - 1.5 second cast (with max quickened AA) - 9 second recast (with max hastened AA) Call of the Herald works like the druid/shaman versions. The player is brought back to their corpse, the corpse remains and no experience is returned to the rezzed player and they are allowed to get a rez for the experience later. The player does return with 4,000 mana. - Initially has a 6 second cast and a 5 minute reuse timer. - There are currently NO AA's which shorten either the cast time or the recast time for this ability. For comparative purposes, let's look at Call of the Wild which both Shaman and Druids get. Call of the Wild brings the player back to their corpse, leaves the corpse so a rez can be obtained later and no experience is given to the player. The player does return with 4,000 mana. - Initially has a 6 second cast and a 10 minute reuse timer. - 3 second cast (with max quickened AA's) - 2 minute reuse (with max hastened AA's) Based on this information (both cast and reuse) - if a druid needs a call, druids should be called by other druids and shaman and NOT clerics under "normal" circumstances. Druids/Shaman Call provides the quickest option to get back into the game while having the least side effects. Just another piece of info/food for thought.
Crystilla, Thank you for explaining things and providing some alternatives. I honestly do not know if I will ever post on this forum again because I felt that people where knee jerk saying no and not engaging in actual discussion. I see that a lot on EQ forums, so I suppose I should not be surprised. Every guild has their issues. Our cleric channel is also the spam channel. Druids and shaman are required to post in there when we call someone. But the clerics still then try to rez the people who were called. I have been told just ignore it. But several of our clerics would prefer that we not use Call of the Wild on raids because the corpses are difficult for them to work around; for example knowing which corpse is the most recent. I have tried LoN and frankly cannot figure out how to play it. I have opened 5 packs of Oathbound loot cards every month faithfully since it came out. I have spent money on packs too just hoping for the Kiss card on two accounts, and so far I haven't seen them. The enchanter that is often in my group is very quick to help me; no kicking required. I don't have Staff of Forbidden Rites from Old Man McKenzie but would be willing to go after it with a vengeance. I do carry Fear Jewels of Mana and use them. I also carry clarity and heal over time potions. (Every time I click a mana rod, I use a heal over time potion; so I can heal someone else instead of myself.) Basically, except for Staff of Forbidden Rites, I have everything that I know of and I use every trick in the book to reduce my mana cost and stay in the game healing and DPSing when I have time and mana. (And, no, I am not dying to agro from DPSing. My death is often the last death before a wipe.) The raid that I find the most frustrating is Chapterhouse. I die to getting rooted and burning bones at the same time or an animated skeleton makes me its dinner. We cannot use Call of the Wild on that event, so if a druid dies, he or she is out of mana and watching the DPS core die. You are so right that some times there is nothing that can prevent a death. I do not care about my own death, at least it gives me a reason to play a maxed out AA level 100 toon in the group game. But having to watch my group die because I haven't any mana, is awful. I know even if I had a mana draw ability, I would still face the situation because the cool down timer is still going, but it would give me another fighting chance that is available to the other healing and almost every other caster class. Let's just close this discussion unless someone has a new point because I am pretty sure the horse is dead. Larksong
There's always a bit of both on any message forum. Those that I tend to call one minded (some say elitist, some say min/max depending on the topic) and those who as you say try to engage and think of alternatives. Chapterhouse was the bane of my existence for a while. Once the clerics get their positioning and tricks figured out, no animated corpse should really ever spawn. I use a ton of hotkey banks and /corpsedrag and /corpsedrop are two hotkeys right next to the rez message and rez AA. I often will drag or ask someone who doesn't want their corpse rezzed to drag it out of line of sight and away from the main raid so there's no confusion and it doesn't take more than a split second to do so. (So there's an option to try on regular raids) Our guild has 2 heal channels - one for main heal spam, the other for discussions, rotation orders and any spells we wouldn't want overwritten (like your growth, etc.). Most don't need to look at the spam channel at all and drop that in a tiny/closed chat window and instead only focus on the other.
My last guild had a policy of dragging your own corpse if you got called, cause hiding is a pain during a raid and whoever finds hidden corpses thinks they need to be res'd because that person died in such an out of the way place and must still be waiting on a res. I always use my res stick before call during raids, except for bards and our other druid. But I'll use it on anyone if they need to get back and my staff is on cooldown. This isn't really related to our mana issues, but being able to easily res during gem refresh is a game changer for a druid. The Vox raid to unlock it from the vendor is pretty easy with 2 groups of pet classes. Then the group missions are pretty quick and easy if you have another 1-2 people, but 3 boxing them daily was the most soul crushing thing I've done in EQ. For post-res mana I've stopped using mod rods during raids completely, no fight takes long enough for me to oom while healing. Then I have Rod of Dark Rites to buy one free group heal, begging in vent for a QM or paragon, and LoN mana potions. Technically I also have Staunch, but I forget that exists most of the time. Tons of packs opened across two accounts and no Kisses yet. The first two of those are luxuries that most guilds and druids won't have, so they're not really advice. And the rest have been mentioned in the thread.
Do any other clerics besides me actually extended target previously dead druids? By this let me explain. I tend to be extremely free with my group elixirs, tossing them out to multiple groups all the time. (Yes, I'm aware I might knock off someone else's sometimes; I'm working on that lol.) If a druid dies in a raid I'm in, I usually tend to quickly add them to ext target so I can toss an elixir or two over the next few min and I shadow who they're targeting sometimes as well. This way I see their mana level, if anyone else in their group needs a heal (hence who they're targeting) and can help out for a bit. Some raids in the past I even told them to send me a tell if someone needs healing and just keep them on target for me. Basically I try to work as part of a heal team, filling in wherever is needed - versus each group is responsible for themselves and only druids pull double duty and are also responsible for other groups (aka tanks) also. Nothing is beneath me to cast if it's helpful.
The *single* most frustrating thing in all of EQ when on a raid is being put in a position where there is nothing you can do but sit and watch the raid fail, KNOWING that there is SOMETHING you could be doing to stop it if only X would happen. The most common form is not being rezzed. Being stuck in hover mode with the hopes that someone might actually rez you wondering if you should say screw it and zone 3 times to banner back is really frustrating...ESPECIALLY as a leader as you can no longer give commands to try and help prevent a collapse. Because of this I am ALWAYS doing everything I can to make sure that everyone is rezzed, and the easiest way to do that is to rez all corpses in sight (which is why I hate call). Equally as frustrating is being alive, but not being able to do diddly squat to help your group. Being stuck there watching them die is REALLY frustrating...and something I haven't had to experience in a good while as a cleric due to all the instant mana granting utilities that we have been provided. That said...I'm not sure my guild takes enough efforts to make sure that druids are accounted for after death. Personally I try to save DR and QM for them, but its definitely worth making a point of this to all of the clerics in my guild. Further, its worth extending an invitation to BL's to join our healer channel for targeted paragons. Those should be saved for dead druids too. Whether or not others found the discussion helpful, I'll do my best to make sure my guild helps druids out of this situation going forward (granted it will likely not involve the use of call over ressurection)...so take that for what its worth. ~MrGPAC
LS I honestly was not trying to be inflammatory, simply explaining the flip side of the equation as to why call is likely to be less used in its current form. If call were more in line with druid/shaman version then it would make more sense as the loss in cast time would be minimalized. As you said you are frequently one of the last people down the majority of the time, and my assumption here is the majority of the time you do go down its due to unlucky happenings (e.g.double large aes, animated corpse wanting to have some fun, double CH aes, etc) or something going wrong on raids and being borderline wipe phase. I truly sympathize with you on this, as rangers are in the same boat with you and is the main I play. Even when I don't go down, the mana drain of sustaining dps will wipe out a full bar on longer events, a death can basically write off me having a chance of dpsing much.
I did not consider what you wrote inflammatory. I am thankful for the discussion this topic caused because I learned a lot of interesting things from the clerics' perspective. I wish I could retitle this topic "Raising your Dead Druids: Ideas for Priestly Cooperation". However, the clerics that I talked in game either did not know about the Call of the Herald AA or saw it as unimportant because they saw no benefit. I still think the ultimate answer is for a Druid AA that is similar to your self mana draw that gives us just enough mana to help our group. Because druid's have low cost heals and superior region, we can do a lot with a little bit of mana. However, starting with zero and needing other classes to give us mana is awful. If clerics could rez and toss a druid QM, we could continue healing and it could make all the difference in an encounter.
You have dealt with no insta manaregen other than mod rods for 14 years. What has changed now, other than clerics have it?
Rogue, I asked for this before QM ever existed in the game. Just because something has been missing for 14 years does not mean that it should stay missing. Lark
Classes that use Endurance and can burst restore it: ALL! Thanks Reprieve. Classes that use Mana and can burst restore it: Wizard Necromancer Magician Enchanter Paladin Shadowknight Beastlord Shaman Cleric Classes that use mana and can not burst restore it: Bards Druids Rangers Having a burst power recovery option is a base part of the game now, much like Fades. Content and player expectations are based on this being true. I can't speak for what bards and rangers, but for druids the times when we are mostly likely to die to factors outside our control are also times when our group and raid will be depending on us. Loose adds, large overlapping AEs and other random deaths mechanics that are likely to kill us also require extra healer attention. Imagine being stuck in hover mode if you ever died during an event, except also being able to watch your group die, that's what its like for us. Not being able to do anything is incredibility frustrating in games. It's not fun, good gameplay, or good design to be one of the last classes that has to deal with that.
Before I go on I will say the following. First I do not think any Cleric has said that Druids should not get a version of vp or qm because they do need it. At least while sober. Second as many will tell I detest call of Hareld. In my view it is a useless fluff piece that should never of been done. Adding more to it merely takes more time away from where the cleric class needs help. Third Druid development time is the place to get Druids the abilities they need. Using Cleric development time to improve Druids or any class besides the Cleric class is in my view 100% wrong. Where Clerics need help in my view in no specific order. Damage ability - ATM we could double our damage out put and still be last place. Seriously clerics should NOT be this far behind. Last place? Yes but not so far behind we can not see the next person in front of us. Offensive utility - our reverse DMG shield was nice years past. How ever with hps and mob damage ect we have fallen way behind in this area as well. Frankly that was our big one and we need more now instead of fluff like atone upgrades or call of herald fluff which addresses none of the clerics needs. Utility healing - not meaning heal over time or anything. Things like the heal on hit spell that we get have majorly fallen behind the times. 2 k vs 60 k a round is not keeping up to step. Speed on healing - we have made some progress in this area with Aristo listening to clerics on remedy but we are not where we should be. Our main heal is still slower then it should be since it has a hard cap on it and spell haste past that point does not effect it. Buffing - currently when a new expansion comes out a merc npc is a better buffer is better then we are out the door. We are the only class that has this area of neglect. Serious secondary stats are needed to help clerics in this area. Twitch healing - we have made progress in this area as well thanks to Aristo ward of cert. that said a lot more can be done in this area and more needs to be done. AoE healing - agian some progress made with splash but more can be done. That is just some of the areas that are important in my view of clerics needing to be addressed. I know you all are asking what that has anything to do with this topic I am using this short list as an object lesson. When things like call of herald are developed areas that the cleric class is in need of work on are not being addressed. They spend only x amount of time per class to get things done. Speed and block out duration on things those who play clerics do not need such as call of herald in the end hurt the cleric class. Do druids need a qm or vp? YES they do need it. How ever please stop using the cleric time to get the stuff you need for your class.
To be fair, I think Call was asked for as something that Druids/Shaman could do that clerics couldn't and to even out the res'ing abilities of the priests or given for the same reason. All priests can now 96% res (stricter conditions for dru/shm) and call to corpse.. Since all the dev time in making that effect happened back when it first came out many years ago, giving it to clerics was a low effort copy & paste. Classes don't really get a set number of AA per an expansion, more like an amount of dev time based on the amount of help they need. Getting these low effort, low power AAs don't block out better AA, they're just quick to add things that give your class something new. You'll probably be getting hasten and quicken support AAs for your Call next expansion because they will take about 5 minutes to copy over and just need to tested for typos. And once the cast time gets down closer to gem refresh time, the value of the ability will go up. Losing 1s of cast time to slot in a Call to a bard or druid is a lot easier than 4s You haven't had to deal with Rogue in our other threads about this Lark's point in this thread wasn't to use cleric dev time to help druids, but to educate players about problems druids have after being res'd and suggest a way to help deal with them. A harvest AA was literally the first thing we asked for during AA chats, and none of the priests really interrupted the other's chats except to clarify their own class's abilities.
