When do Clerics become wanted?

I started as a Mage on Ragefire since my main was a 100 Mage but wanted to try something different and rerolled when I hit 16. First I tried Shaman but didnt really like it. Finally I decided on Cleric since all my favorite classes in WoW, Rift, and FF14 were healers without much utility. Plus I figured it would be easy to find groups. I mean who doesnt want a healer? Nope its basically impossible. Cant get a group and soloing blues is just awful EXP. Spent almost an hour running around killing blues and got like 30% of a level. While thats probably great at higher levels Im fairly certain I should be getting better at level 7. If I try to solo yellows I get destroyed.

I have 5-6 hours a day to play and figured that would be enough to get ahead of the crowd. I know I wont out level people playing 10+ hours a day but 5 hours a day is still over 30 hours a week. I was hoping that would be enough time to at least get into my 30s during the first week. But Im falling behind because its impossible to get a group. Figured if I could just get into my 20s it would open up a lot better places to group like SolA, Unrest, MM, etc. However, at my current rate I will be lucky to hit 20 by July. Is every cleric over 30+ just running around with 4 Mages? Is everyone boxing? Im not anti Boxer by any means, I just dont want to do it myself.

Trouble is with all the changes to players stats, midigation tables, pets and such every class can solo to 50, some may take longer, but no group "needs" a cleric, or even a healer anymore.

It will speed things up to have one of course but it not necessary like it was back then.

I hope when Kunark opens and things start to hit harder healers will become more useful.

Clerics will always be needed for raids, but not like the old days, things just die to fast now to even get a C-heal or two off...

kunark in KC/seb,

Clerics are needed. Especially for buffs. Right now many are focused on leveling and many box. But give it time and don't give up!

wiz/mage... I pretty much accept anyone in my group that's of an appropriate level.

course it might be quite boring for the naked rogue that can't melee due to the pet...

Hang in there.

What you are seeing on the server now isn't representative of how it will be in a week or two. Or even tomorrow when the long weekend is over (both in good and bad ways). As others have said, at a point, especially when expansions roll out, every group will need a cleric.

Use your LFG tool and open channels and you will find some groups. And don't be shy about trying different areas.

Im going to stick with it. Been using LFG, switch instances every 5 mins, and have been moviing around. I even go up to small groups with 3 or 4 people that dont even have a healer and ask if they have room for a cleric. Most of the time they dont even respond. I see them pulling so they arent all AFK. Its just really frustrating to finally be back on a high population server yet still cant find a group. Maybe I need to find a guild but I dont even know who the good guilds are. Would eventually like to start raiding but I dont want to be too hardcore.

Yeah, it's really strange. I do not remember Fippy during classic era being as bad as Ragefire has been. But as others have stated, I have high hopes that as time progresses things will even out and become more hospitable to everyone.

I remember leveling my bard from 1-50 on Fippy over the course of April 2011 (a month and a half after Fippy launched), and it was ridiculously easy to get long-lasting, social groups. Super fast enjoyable leveling, too. Every now and then I'd make friends with a person who was 2-boxing or something, but it certainly wasn't a matter of entire groups being boxed by a single player. shunning the rest of the wider community to the point of not even responding to tells. And I remember leveling in a huge variety of places, and it was never so easy that we didn't need a solid healer and dedicated tank. Not sure where the idea that healers simply aren't needed in classic is coming from.

I'm having the same sort of issues you are. I think I'll probably step away from the game for a while until things settle down. A lot of things I've seen have been painfully discouraging, so I'm hoping things will get better. I think the "Maximum Nostalgia" progression timeline is very helpful for this, too. There's no pressure to "get to 50 for Kunark" anytime soon. There's the initial rush of wanting to get the "Firsts" and then those types of players fade into the background a bit on the 1-50 grind.

Healers are very much needed and welcomed in most groups. Let's not get all carried away with trying to decipher this problem. The truth of it is that healers (combining clerics, druids, and shamans together) represent a large chunk of the playerbase on Ragefire. Since you only need 1 healer in most groups, you can see where the problems lie. 1 spot out of 6 is used for a healer class, and for those soloing like necros and such, they don't need a healer tagged along.

So doing the math, you can see why you may have trouble getting into a group as a healer. If you can't get a group, do what you should be doing....don't ask for a group, create one. Just for fun I did /who lfg all ingame and saw that the list was cut short. This means there were over 100 players LFG, but that's how many people unwilling to take charge and form a group, everybody just wants to turn on LFG tag, say in chat channels every once in awhile that they're LFG, and expect and hope they'll get grouped by an existing group.

The best way to get groups ingame is by creating one, because Tunare knows there are more than enough people out there LFG throughout all levels. Too often I see 4-5 people call out LFG in /ooc, all within similar levels with a variety of classes from tanks, dps, to healers. Yet they'd rather just call out LFG over and over instead of someone taking charge and grouping all those LFG together.

There's no secret to when clerics become wanted. Most groups can use a healer, and best way to get groups is always to create one rather thane expect one handed to you. You'll have to be proactive and actively seek out tanks & dps that could use a healer friend. Make friends and join an active guild, it's MMO 101.

One thing you can do while LFG is kill undead. Your regular nukes are designed to be mana hogs but your undead nukes are more in line with a robed caster. Use lulls to get singles if you need to....Root...Nuke...reroot if it breaks....finish off with melee if you have to...Heal and med up. Repeat. Maybe keep a stun up to give yourself some breathing room for rerooting if one breaks (nukes have a chance of breaking root). Also a great way to get your defense skill up early...The only way to raise it is by taking hits and the longer you wait the harder it is to level it.

As mentioned make your own groups, not many people do this and there are a massive amount of people LFG and in the same general level ranges, just ask all the ones LFG within like +/- 2 levels of you (any melee can tank, or use pets to tank, so don't limit yourself to finding certain classes when pretty much any make-up will do). The hardest part is finding a place to kill, but if you're in the zones that are instanced like that you should be able to flip through and find decent camp spots.

I am running a cleric and the answer I found was to get a good guild. I haven't soloed or PUGed once since I started playing this time.

Here is my recommendation: Just do it. Stop overthinking it all or thinking about how optimal exp is or how difficult it is to level, just do it lol. Do your best to solo if you cant find a group, put your lfg tag on, use /who for your level and ask people if they want to group. Make your own groups and get creative on where you can hunt, don't expect everything to just happen.

So far the pickup groups I've been in as a cleric have been fine and fun; to the point that when I adv loot LD'd they waited 30 min for me to come back instead of taking someone else, even though my husband said they could if they didn't want to wait. (I'm not using the same name there as here, though close; so it's doubtful the PUGs know who I am.)

If its any morale boost, I play a bard, and have made a few cleric pals. Sure pet classes are op right now, but its fun getting into a melee group and not having to worry about not getting nearby so the pet can tank. I would suggest as a cleric, find a shaman / bard / enchanter friend(s), and try to get melee groups set up.

I'll group with you. Level 3 rogue! /flex

Someone roll a melee and play with this guy. I commend your switch from mage to cleric, the game actually becomes difficult. Keep it up because pretty soon everyone is going to want a Virtue from you and youll be sought after

I have not had any issues getting a group as a cleric or enchanter. Back in the day druids were the king of outdoors, but as soon as you got to LGuk and onward to Sebilis the cleric / chanter always had a group. I am sure it won't be as much as back in the day, but most boxers don't mind another real human to spend some time with and help. They want xp faster just like you do. There are people that don't but they are the minority. I have had conversations with more people in the last 3 days on this server than in the last 10 years of gaming in other MMOs. I am currently not in a guild and still looking for one, but as someone suggested a guild is a great place to find groups. I am still deciding if I want to push with my cleric or enchanter. I played both for 7 years on live from 1999-2006. I was a boxer when boxing wasn't a niche playing on 6 computers. I don't want to box this time and enjoy the flowers. I was lucky enough to have ISDN and SDSL early on. I have really enjoyed my time again in Norrath even if I am currently sitting in a login Q

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Perhaps you've outleveled the mass of middle players so much that they aren't there yet in enough numbers to provide decent grouping uptime?

I have a somewhat budding list of friends. I see clerics grouping a good amount. It isn't even as necessary in these lower levels, and find myself apologizing for the piddly size of my mana pool, but players seem mostly wanting to have fun and not mind.

Clerics will be comfortable on this server for some time. Later that changes, but certainly not in these first months during original. Maybe in a few more weeks you will have more people up where you are, and you'll have had time to spend helping other lowbies and adding to your friends list. Also: don't wait to be invited. Its ALWAYS better to make your own group. Buddy up with a few tankster types and start creating duo's, adding dps as you can. Best of Luck!

With the changes to mages you don't really need a cleric anymore.