What some need to realise is that yes some of us have issues with the class. But also our goals are to improve the class. Whether you agree or not with how we want to improve the class is a matter of opinion. Throwing your arms up and saying just delete the class though does not help anyone. I know from personal experience it took me and others argueing with Aristo from house of thule to rain of fear to improve remedys spell cast but it eventually happened. We will continue to put forth our ideas and continue to try and improve where we see weaknesses in the cleric class. I know in the next few betas where I will be trying to focus on things from my perspective to try and convince Mr Elidroth and Aristo. Many range from buffs and improvements there to improveing damage plus offensive utility to preheals. Yes some of us come off rough but that is because we care about the class so apologies if I came off to strong .
I want to say as well, the cleric class is by far the best healer, hands down. Shaman or druid can't touch a cleric when A LOT of healing is need, and RIGHT NOW. The issue is, that's almost never the case... scratch that, that IS never the case in current group content, unless someone really screwed up. Sure, you can compare a super awesome cleric to a mediocre druid or shaman all day, and the cleric will be a better toon to group with and be better for the group, than a mediocre player of the other classes. However, if you compare a super uber cleric to a super uber druid or shaman, in group content... the other 2 classes win, hands down, for total improvement of that group. Not even a contest. I say again... in group content. Most everyone here is posting how awesome clerics are, and then talk about raid content. Yep, that's the truth. But when it comes to group content, clerics do not have the tools to be able to assist a group as well as a druid or shaman can, and either of them have plenty of healing to be able to handle all group content. I love my cleric. I very much enjoy playing her. And she makes all group content trivial, especially when, as someone posted, using a 6 heal weave, group content becomes a laughable joke. I can face tank current named with my mag (not the pet, the actual mag himself) with my cleric healing the magician. But playing the group geared, low AA, porting, tracking, dpsing, and plentiful healing druid is much easier, faster, higher dps, and more fun. There is no reason to choose a cleric over a different priest class, for group content only. Some suggested fixes to change this: Increase DD's to match enchanter type nukes as far as damage ratio. (would still be behind enchanters without MR & supporting AA). A nuke to match the chanter Mindcleave line, with 22k base damge and 9 sec recast, and bump up our castigation and chromacrush to match phantasmal assault and chromaclash. Beef up damage on intervention/contravention lines to about 3x what they are, and make them reasonable recasts, like half of what they are. Beef up pet dps by A LOT, and allow us to cast infinite number of swarm pets like pet classes can (but with lowish hp still, so they would still die quickly vs rampaging/AEing raid mobs) Beef up all reverse DS/Olsif's by A LOT. Increase the heal amount by about 3x, and the damage portion by about 10x of what they currently are. Add another strong stun with a relatively short recast (10-12 second), one that can stun mobs up to 3 levels over max, and increase the AA Recourse of Life to relevancy, about like a 10k base heal for the group, instead of the 850hp heal. Yep, implement a few of those, and I could become interested in playing the cleric in group content again, and possibly even argue how a cleric is again as good as other priests in group content.
I don't think anyone really disagrees with any of the basic points, more so a matter of degree and importance. Yes, clerics are going to out heal everyone. Yes, they can easily overheal most group content. Yes, they bring more to the group then just straight healing; and it is sometimes overlooked. Yes druids and shaman are going to bring enough healing but also more utility / DPS. Yes, clerics need a boost in their group DPS / utility (maybe not so much that we "waste" a chest clicky on it, but that is another topic...). In the end real healers of any class, especially if they are good, are not easy to find. No one in their right mind is going to turn down a cleric if they have a chance to get one. If the healing specialization and damage mitigation aspects of the class appeal to you - play it. If are less interesting in pure healing, or want more a mixture of roles, then play that. In the end that is all that matters. We could say such and such a class is the best min-max position for group content, but you'd end up with only a handful of classes. The overpulls, multimobs, weak tank / no tank, difficult named, unexpected adds, hard AoE's, squishy group member drawing aggro, things went wrong, etc still happen. When they do it's nice to have a cleric. Do they happen a lot? /shrug. Depends how you run your groups, who you group with, how careful you feel you need to be, how you pick your content, how much risk you are comfortable with, and so on. Again, in the end, play what you enjoy, any group will be glad to have you if you know what you're doing.
There are many suggestions on this boards saying what could be done to make this class more fun, but new "improvements" and nerfs are keeping clerics as healbots instad a "fun class to play".
A little surprised that no one has mentioned plate armor. Druids' leather armor is equal to the silk classes' mitigation, not equal to that of monks and beastlords. So it's a noticeable difference.
Why would they? Just ran a quick test on a trash tirun in WK. Max hit on my 8323AC magician... 12,656 Max hit on my 9408AC cleric... 12,656 Can't comment about long term, but for that mob, it hit for max against my cleric far more often than against my magician.
Ofcourse the max hit would be the same, with the same buffs, since only warriors get DI -1. The higher ac should in theory give you a kinder dmgspread but i suspect that cleric softcap is so close to the silkies it makes no difference. Maybe a change in that cap would help non botted clerics getting played more. Personally I think silk casters are far too well protected in todays game. Glass cannons my tooting behind...
Cleric softcap return is actually 1 step below knights/monks. 1) warrior at .5 2) knights/monks at .45 3) bard/cleric (i think ranger) and something else .33 4) A bunch of classes i am not sure of .24 5) silkies .17 Disclaimer: ***** This is based entirely on memory*****, might be abit off Atleast thats what they said when they rolled out the softcap changes at the beginning of SOF
Unless changed since, the most recent data from like SoD (or SoF? whenever armor of wisdom was added) the post soft cap return ranks are actually: 1) Warrior 2) Paladin, Shadow Knight 3) Cleric, Ranger, Monk, Bard 4) Rogue, Shaman, Beastlord, Berserker 5) Druid, Necromancer, Wizard, Enchanter, Mage I don't think there has been a modern post softcap % (or Nodyin at the time goofed on it and rounded wrong ) post SoF change
Post softcap AC returns: (source) AC Softcap (in rAC) by class: Clerics are right behind tanks in terms of mitigation (primarily due to shields), followed by bards.
I think the problem clerics have is that pretty much all our power is concentrated in healing, but once you have enough healing to keep a tank alive, the rest is wasted. It would be nice if we could trade out some of our healing power (i.e. Vow of Valor, CotF BP) in exchange for something else in situations where so much healing power is unnecessary. The problem is, the trades we have made (VoV proc and BP nuke focus) don't get us very far. The Vow line has stagnated pretty badly - Level 71 Vow of Valor proc (200% mod): 1: Decrease Current HP by 1000 Level 96 Vow of Vitality proc (200% mod): 1: Decrease Current HP by 3263 A 3k damage proc at level 100 is not very good. Most of our damage comes from nukes, which, even with the BP clicky do not do very much damage (their base damage is too low for ~32% to be that helpful). Going full burn on my cleric (Divine Avatar, Battle Frenzy, BP, twincasting 3 interventions & contraventions) nets me barely more than 30k DPS, which is sustainable for only 35 seconds. Without discs, my cleric can barely net 10k DPS. Honestly, I don't even want to do DPS on my cleric. as a support class I'd much rather contribute to others. Maybe a targetable version of Ward or Vow would help, though I'm sure these things have been asked for in the past. Improvements on our reverse DS, Retort, and Intervention/Contravention lines would be helpful as well. Clerics' secondary abilities are really a mixed bag (a pet, a reverse DS, and some self procs and heal procs). We have some pretty good defensive abilities (DI, Vie/SB) but these stack well in raid situations - not groups, where we already outdo the healing requirements by a landslide. I must admit clerics are a lot more fun to play now than they were when I quit in SoD. I enjoy playing my cleric a lot, but the fun I have playing this class doesn't have a logical argument to entice new players. All classes are fun to play, depending on the person. All classes should also bring value to their group. Clerics do, but their value happens to have a rather low ceiling in this expansion.
1. Warrior 2. Paladin, Shadow Knight 3. Cleric, Bard 4. Ranger, Shaman, Rogue, Berzerker 5. Monk, Beastlord 6. Necromancer, Wizard, Enchanter, Mage 7. enchanter and shaman pets! 8. Tank mercs!(LOL) 9. Druid. My double-max raid geared druid still takes much more damage than my maxed group geared chanter(sans runes, and with 2000 more stat AC.) Druid AC was broken in Luclin. I do not think Monk and Beastlord actually take damage like the chain classes do, I just know they tank much better than silkies. Shaman and Clerics make much better tanks than you would think(if they can hold agro,) they usually don't go for AC gear though. This leads me to think that their armor-type is the only thing that determines soft-cap, aside from the warrior exception.
That class list was taken from the AA Dev Nodyin around SoF or SoD, there hasn't been a note of being changed since though afaik
Clerics are the best healers hands down. Whether you need the best healers for group content is a different story. Modern group EQ is built around DPS burns deciding a fight within seconds. When two wizards are putting out 150k DPS EACH in burns, even rare mobs with 15 million hps die in under a minute. Mobs barely have time to put out 2 AoEs in that time. Hell, tanks are able to deflect 30% of the duration, and both paladins and SKs have I-win-buttons that make them require next to no healing. You just don't make use of healing when the game is designed this way. In short: healing used to matter, but with the abilities SoE introduced to DPS and tanking classes, it matters less and less. Druids and shamans do not heal at the level of clerics, but their heals are enough - in the same way that mercs' no crit, no twincast heals are enough - in today's game.
Good point. A large amount of the game, for better or worse, is a DPS check. Unless the game puts a mechanic or barrier that limits DPS (ex: DH 2), being able to pick and choose the most difficult or most annoying portion of an event, or just the named itself if we're talking group content, and being able to burn it down quickly makes tanking and healing much easier.
