Cleric Ideas

[Zoink]

Howdy,

I played a cleric for a number of years on Live and out of all the EQ classes it is still my favorite to play. One thing I've always found sad about the class is that on Live and on the Emus I've played on so far, a majority of clerics were botted and not played as mains. I've thought quite a bit about how to make the class more attractive and entertaining to play in hopes of it having "main" potential. Now with the emu servers there is actually some possibitly that some things could be tweeked with all the classes to make them more main-able.

One of the biggest roadblocks I run into when talking about it and making suggestions is that folks usually say that since clerics are the defacto best healers in the game, they should be left as is. I understand this is true, but being the best healer in the game doesn't seem to make the class desirable to play as a main, which in the end would be what I'd like to see happen. Having the best heals seems to be balanced around the most extreme content. Clerics tend to really shine in raids and really tough groups. Anything less and they become average nukers and poor melee dps. I would argue that on some level clerics=complete heal. I know this isn't totally true. Clerics do still have the best sustained healing potential, but without CH, they are a very different class.

To me, one the most interesting aspects of Clerics is the possibility of a meleeing healing class. I played Warhammer Online for a bit and played a disciple. It was an interesting idea to have a class that would heal based on their meleeing. There is already the basis for this with the battle cleric idea of summoned hammers + yalp. I think there could be potential for some really fun ideas in this.

I think it would be fun to have a whole series of summoned hammers that would have different procs depending on the situation. One that would be straight damage, like the current hammer (possibly upping the damage amount to make it worthwhile?). Maybe a hammer that does a group lifetap on the target. Maybe one that procs a group cure for certain fights. The possibilities are endless really: group HoT, group rune, slow, tash (obviously not being as good as shamans/chanters tash, slow).

The thing about tying the utility to the hammers would be the pushing the class to be played and not botted. I'd also say, leave cleric heals and nukes where they are so that folks could still bot if they wanted, but to have some added utility/incentive to play the class as a main. I think having different hammers with significantly better damage along with significant utility "only" available while the class is played (though I'm sure you could still find a way to bot the melee version, it would be somewhat harder to do) could achieve this.

Anyway............just some thoughts I suppose. Fire away!

[Seipher]

If i ever see a cleric meleeing in a raid, im not ever gonna group with him again, hes gonna die extremely fast from rampages. In a solo thing on normal mobs outside of raid zones, why give them a hammer when they can simply summon a warrior or rogue bot to do dps for them?

[ChaosSlayer]

If i ever see a cleric meleeing in a raid, im not ever gonna group with him again, hes gonna die extremely fast from rampages. In a solo thing on normal mobs outside of raid zones, why give them a hammer when they can simply summon a warrior or rogue bot to do dps for them?

technically they already have a hammer - a level 50 pet which comes off the ornate pants from CB which covers them well. The hammer not that powerful, so I would add few more tiers to it, give the very first one goes down a bit
I could see cleric meleing on a server with less difficulty scale that THF, but on THF - prabobly not really going to happen
Personally I blame verant for designing cleric for raid-only purpose. I like to see cleric something other than a heal casting clickbot not really sure how to best approach this.

[Seipher]

If you wanted, you could make a Battle Cleric line of spells, +200% 1HB, +80% Accuracy, maybe dodge or something, -60% healing efficiency or something, maybe more, just throwing something out there :p

[Arremis]

I play a cleric as a main. I have to disagree that the class in itself isn't attractive to play. I find it to be quite the opposite. It's also one of the hardest classes to play. I think the reason that you don't see a lot of cleric mains is because it takes a certain mentality to play a pure healer, and a LOT of patience, which most people don't have. They want to grind grind grind loot loot loot and you just can't do that with a cleric. You have to pace yourself, choose your fights carefully, strategize your way around a dangerous zone, and when you finally get the flow of what your doing, it becomes easy (being a cleric on THF is REALLY easy compared to Live). You just have to have the desire to be a supporting class in groups, and know how to handle your character when soloing. I do agree that the hammer pet could use a little beefing up. But other than that, I have no complaints about the class whatsoever

[Ydiss]

As much as the battle cleric idea is nice, we're sadly dealing with EQ here and there is absolutely no sane way to implement such a change to the cleric class without totally altering the face of the game.

EQ long ago committed the cleric class to support only and no amount of customisation will alter that without ruining the game balance overall (or at best require a huge level of work from the THF devs).

I box and bot clerics and won't play it as a main class - nothing sensible done to the class would change that because whatever sensible upgrade the cleric is given I will still prefer to do with the class designed to do it in the first place.

Is this a design flaw of EQ? Yes, I think it is. Is it a critical flaw? No, I don't think so... Not on THF anyway, where it's no big deal if people don't play clerics as their mains as we do have the alternative options available to us and they're actually not as required as they are on live (at least not as required in groupable content).

[Koeril]

nothing sensible done to the class would change that because whatever sensible upgrade the cleric is given I will still prefer to do with the class designed to do it in the first place.

Sorry, but refusing change won't do any good. Changes can be made, but just because they don't affect you, please don't condemn others for trying to come up with good ideas. No one is intending to remove a cleric from being a primary healer.

That said, Cleric was also my main. I was elated in PoFire to get Staff of Eternal Flames and my DPS jumped up to 400dps (from procs). It is true that in a raid that a cleric should not be meleeing as it is necessary to avoid AoE's and be healing, but the game isn't about raiding only and it'd be nice to have some solo power without taking forever to accomplish such goals.

I have completed both the headhunter and giantslayer quests on both of my toons, but I only completed it for Jerant because of Hans. Without Hans' DPS this would have been much too annoying. I've killed 2-3 giants at one time solo on Jerant so survivability wasn't the issue - it just took a few minutes to do. Multiply that by 1000 and you just want to cry at how long it takes!

What about adding some other weapons along the lines of Staff of Eternal Flames (aka DPS around 20% of a warrior of appropriate gear) to alleviate some of the solo troubles? Even at that DPS we'd still not touch the DPS of other priests and none complained ever about Jerant meleeing in Kael while healing.

[Arremis]

Battle Cleric = Druid? HA HA

[ChaosSlayer]

nothing wrong with caster combat weapons. It just I think discussion started ore along the line of giving clerics something else to do other than healing via its spells or natural abilities.

I have been thinking about it, but so far I don't see a way to really add anything without breaking the class structure. If this would be eq2, where all healer equally good (no CH for you =P) then each priest could have a 2ndary specialization edge. But here, without remaking all 3 priests classes from the scratch that won't be possible.

[Zoink]

I'd like to start out saying that my original post was never an attempt to make clerics a dps class. I prefer healing. That is why I played a cleric on live and a Shaman healer in WoW.

I can't imagine a cleric dpsing much in a raid due to the heavy healing demands. But then again each class is pushed to it's class defining role during raids. I'm more thinking of some soloability which I recognize is part of the Emu community and not something from Live. I agree that bots are a nice step towards this. I have an SK bot for my cleric and it's fine, but this still doesn't address the issue of whether or not clercs tend to be botted or mained.

One thing that I think could be done initially would be to bring hammer proc dps even with nuking, though I do understand the inherent imbalance in nukes having mana and hammer proc being manaless, with the gather mana orb, mana has not been a concern thus far into the game (though I do readily admit that all of my experience so far has been leveling zones). Would upping the damage on the summoned proc hammers be game breaking? It doesn't seem like it to me off the top of my head. We aren't talking high dps numbers. If my proc dps was even with my nuking dps, I'd be pretty happy. Maybe even a different hammer that was even better dps against undead =)

As another note about druids and shaman. I know this might be a somewhat radical stance, but I would love to see both of those classes be able to heal on par with clerics. I know back in Live there was a big debate about whether or not to give druids and shamans a cleric level rez. I was all for it. I used to hate to run out to the middle of nowhere to rez some one. Healing is always a difficult subject and healers quite often are the missing link. I know this maybe moves too far into homogenization, but giving druids, clerics and shamans similar healing and dpsing ability would probably up the main potential and balance out any healer issues (though I'm not asserting that there are any healer issues on this server, I genuinely don't know).

I'd say put cleric (both nuke and hammer), druid, and shaman dps around the same level and also bring all 3 on par healing-wise =)

/ducks =)