Read what Jahaar <A href=http://eqcleric.gameglow.com/forums/showthread.php?s=27c8cafa9009fe9e1c73280b28bb7e6f&threadid=11173>posted</a> on the cleric boards. It does alot to ease my mind that they have a clue. Almost all of my concerns with druids (and shamans) getting better heals are gone after reading that post.

My favorite quote:

"All priests should offer a similar level of value in solo, group, and raid situations, and they won't be considered balanced until this is true."

I liked that one so much I made it part of my sig :D
\/
\/
\/
\/

This stuff is kind of getting nuts.

I don't know what happened but verant is actually going WAY OVERBOARD with what I would have considered good conservative balancing.

I thought his cleric post was so outlandishly sarcastic and unbelieveable sounding that I assumed it was a joke. There were utterly hilarious bits of it like saying they were doing things to make clerics more wanted by groups. Uhmm.. HELLO?

The direction they are going, with that priests comment by waters, is watering down all three to some extent. Yeah, in some ways its good to blur the lines a bit but in other ways I agree with what some clerics have been saying on their board:

They picked the class they play now because it was played the way they play it now. They don't want to be able to "solo the first mobs in cazic with another cleric." or use some crazy hammer that procs more to go toe to toe with a mob.

By the same token I like what I can do as a druid. I like my epic the way it is. I think this is a great class and I love it. I think in 56 levels I've figured out what my class is for and what it can do and it seems that some other people either haven't or want it to be something else. Well, if that is true than either this class is not for you or this game is not for you.

I MADE a cleric, now 39, for the other side of the fence. Its the side of the fence that some players and now evidently verant want to also let druids play on. That is not really what I wanted. I saw what clerics can do and thought "I'd like to do that to.. " so I did the logical thing, I MADE A FREAKING CLERIC. I'm not married to my druid.. I can play BOTH. I don't even really go for the terms "main" or "alt", they are both CHARACTERS that I play. I LIKE that they are very different and have different strengths. As the cleric leveled more I fully expected to be playing it more in groups, which are its home, and reaping the rewards of that inlcluding probably more rapid AA than my druid could get. I envisioned playing my druid the other half of the time for the things it is good at, such as very small groups perhaps or root/epic etc soloing, getting rare mob drops in the wild, etc.

I don't want to become a cleric with my druid, I made a cleric to be a cleric. I know a lot of clerics who greatly enjoy their clerics and also made a character like a druid or an sk for the rest of the time. The lines are blurring so much now its more like "why bother to have the fun of more than one character, they are all getting the SAME."

I understand that this sounds a bit like how priests will work in EQ2, where they are all the same type but with probable specilization making them sort of different (melee sounds kind of the same) The difference is you can DO THAT AT THE START, its harder to paste it in later. The problem is trying to make a class like the cleric do more what the druid can do while trying to make the druid do more like the cleric can do. In the end you'll end up with two VERY over powered classes which don't really fit as well in with what they USED to do. You also make HORRIBLE subsequent balance problems to get other classes to their level.

As they do more and more of this stuff, I'm starting to actually look back on Abashi's hardline "yeah, some classes can do more than other classes or might be more needed but that is just the way it is, go cry me a river and if you don't like your class than pick another and don't let the screendoor hit your hiney on the way out." with some FONDNESS. Well, he did not exactly say that but it was usually the jest of his answers, with rough paraphrasing ;)

God what is next? FD for warriors? I already read about the newest thing, shadowknights getting the enchanter like aggro control spells BETTER than the enchanters so they then made the enchanters better so they are like 9 minutes also. This makes both of them better but it kind of makes the SK have a pseudo enchanter power rather than improving the main thing of the sk which is kind of combat. For raids we end up with the sk being a hybrid of enchanter and necro rather than necro and warrior. It dillutes what they ARE and have always BEEN rather than really "improving them." Once again, like water's cleric post, I'd assume at first it was a JOKE.

For the last 3 and a half years, EQ has been the HARD uncompromising MMORPG. Yeah, in many places I've been one of the first to say that its outmoded with new competing products coming out. The thing is, that is what EQ IS. Its the hard one where your class can't do what other classes can but you all pretty much play a role. I could see giving some improvements here and there but this is a bit much.

Recently I saw only two classes as having problems with this, Shadowknights and Paladins. I could see giving the sks something more sk like, but this aggro thing which is NOT only increasing their own getting aggro but letting them increase the MASTER TANKS or whomevers. That is REALLY enchanter, its doing it to SOMEONE ELSE. I read that and was dumbfounded.

If they do what they have mentioned, just for the sk and cleric alone, it seems they'll have to go back and start with warriors and rangers again. Where does it end? Its getting to be like a sculpter who was making a statue and made a mistake breaking off too much so now he has to make it into something else, but then breaks off more trying that. In the end he ends up with something very diffferent from what he started by just messing with it too much. This is kind of like that but in reverse.

Clerics had a role and knew it, we had a role and knew it. Some people were kind of in a vocal MINORITY and complained, but really I'm not even that sure those changes came from there. They are just doing the nuttiest changes across the board. In the end maybe you get a better game for someone to start playing TODAY, but its not the game I"VE been playing. Some change is good but too much at this point just makes it hard to switch gears.

My epic wasn't broken to me, I thought having only one dot of a type stick to a mob was fair and balanced. I could see doing some other stuff but changing those is weird. They kind of went from the initial balance they did with giving melee types something NEW that no one else had, as in disciplines, to tweaking existing things to work in a totally different way when people were used to how they worked now.

Once again, as I'm seeing now, this just doesn't work that well on an existing game. Too much is being changed. Balance is not only what a cleric and druid can do in THIS group, its what the druid can also do off on his own while the cleric works better in that group. Its being good, but different. They seemed to know that once. Now its becoming being the same. Its becoming,

"Get any healer type we can because after all some guy must be in this dungeon with a click stick and we can just drag a corpse to his groups camp."

I'd actually applaud if the clerics who had the click sticks in such dungeons started saying, "No, get your own. I'm the cleric for this group." It would resoundingly make the point, "no you can't, even with that 2900 point heal."

I thought his cleric post was so outlandishly sarcastic and unbelieveable sounding that I assumed it was a joke. There were utterly hilarious bits of it like saying they were doing things to make clerics more wanted by groups. Uhmm.. HELLO?
Sarcastic? Not really. Unbelievable-sounding? Yes. And you can't envy the position they're in at all.

They have some very lofty goals indeed.

But honestly, yes, let's not sit here and waste our time on who is more wanted in groups when the answer is clearly shamans.

Both clerics and druids could use a bit of group desirability.


The direction they are going, with that priests comment by waters, is watering down all three to some extent. Yeah, in some ways its good to blur the lines a bit but in other ways I agree with what some clerics have been saying on their board:
Objectively speaking, how can you balance three without spreading out abilities? Shamans and druids have utility spells. Clerics have what? Invis against undead and nothing to good to solo with. Fear...haha. OK without some type of movement reduction, fear-kiting is not exactly an option. You can do it, but it's messy.



They picked the class they play now because it was played the way they play it now. They don't want to be able to "solo the first mobs in cazic with another cleric." or use some crazy hammer that procs more to go toe to toe with a mob.
Islington said it. They don't know what they want. They're all over the place with ideas and when I asked if they had a CONCENSUS, some obnoxious poster tells me they don't want to petition like "us" or whatever. Mind you, I never said clerics should petition although some have done so over Ragefire.

Aandie, I get the definite feeling you don't like druids. Despite being one. Maybe it's hair-shirt syndrome, which appears with alarming frequency among druids. I suspect some folks still feel guilty for being a druid, or feel that druids must be punished for something. And, apparently, that punishment is lack of desirability and effectiveness for high level raids.

By the same token I like what I can do as a druid. I like my epic the way it is. I think this is a great class and I love it. I think in 56 levels I've figured out what my class is for and what it can do and it seems that some other people either haven't or want it to be something else.

Lass, now you're being insulting. I think that in 60 levels I have figured out what my class is for and how it works, and unlike you, apparently, I can see the problems and weaknesses that druids face at the highest levels. I know Sobe, Trevize, and a whole host of other level 60 druids can. Are you saying we have not figured out what our class is for? Or that we do not love it? Why the hell do you think we put so much time and effort into advocating for improvements?

Is it possible that playing as a level 60 druid is different from what you've experienced as a level 56 druid? Just consider the possibility, and please cease from telling druids who HAVE experienced playing as a level 60 druid that they don't know what they're talking about.


Well, if that is true than either this class is not for you or this game is not for you.

To the contrary, it appears to be you who are out of step. I suggest you take your own advice to heart.

At the very least, take off the hair shirt. It's making you grouchy....

Is it possible that playing as a level 60 druid is different from what you've experienced as a level 56 druid?

To add to something Scirocco was saying...

Right now, and this comes from personal experience, shamans are the MODEL of priest balance. Great solo, great grouping, and good for raids (not great, but very, very good.) Problems include spell drops and alchemy, but they're a class that shows that a class *can* be balanced for different areas of play. You can disagree with me, but I'd ask ya if you played a shaman. Shamans don't stack perfectly on raids, but any dotting class has that problem, which is supposed to get "fixed" soon. I do suspect that shamans will stack better when same-dot stacking goes live. ;)

Druids have a legitimate complaint about raiding. Clerics are so one-dimensional it's sad. Why wouldn't we be supporting more roundedness or diversity for such a one-dimensional class? Why do you think it's impossible to balance the three? I have some hope that they will be more balanced, but I don't expect any perfection -- it would be unrealistic to think that.

The bottom line is, clerics need something to help them if shamans and druids change further.

Speaking as a druid, a new 75% heal has the potential to dramatically alter my gameplay. Shamans, on the other hand, just get more solidified in their strengths, and many of the shaman players on Crucible don't quite see the need for some 75% spell but do mention something of a direct heal better than Chloro.

I don't think they are really watering the priest classes down that much. If you look at the abilities that they are testing currently, all priests would have similiar roles, but very different tools for fulfilling that role. There is a very different flavor for each class, and the proposed cleric changes definitely fit the flavor that most D&D players expect for clerics.

Clerics would do damage by getting up and going toe to toe with mobs using their hammer. That is very different than how druids or shaman do damage.

I think the ideas they have are pretty creative.

Clerics had a role and knew it

You know, of all the stuff that was tossed out in the first post this is the bulk of what I agree with. I have highlighted those words because they point to the sum total of the cleric class problems... they are past tense.

Our role was to keep groups alive. We did that and we did that well. There was talk of soloing and such but we shooed it away. We were balanced and life was good.

Where did it go wrong? Well, not everyone was balanced. So you had to tune here. Then here. Then here. The problem is that as other classes went up we stayed the same. It's like starting Kindergarten at 5' tall. You revel in your surperiority. But as time goes on the other kids grow and grow but you don't. By the time you get to High School your once superior 5' is now subpar to the 6' people. And when you mention your shortness, all the tall people have no sympathy for you because you were once taller than them.

It's not just clerics that have this problem. Warriors suffer as well now. They are considered 100% and in a world of 160% rogues and 200% monks plus paladins and SKs who can come virtually up to 100% now where are warriors? Their taunt is no better, their damage is no better and their only shining point is Defensive.

Really, I think Verant overdid it with a CH spell when a 2k heal for clerics and druids would have probably done just as well. But what's done is done. And druids may be the only viable healers in PoP with normal CH turned off.

But where are clerics now? We are CH machines. I noticed that druid's cleric is 39. Try playing a 60 cleric on a raid. Then try finding a group every day for a week. Last but not least, try soloing as a cleric.

We're so divided on changes because each server is different. You have the 2/3 of clerics who find themselves groupless on a regular basis and the 1/3 who thinks the 2/3 should just try harder or make friends with melee. They don't understand that most of the high end melee own their own clerics who don't demand loot or exp and don't complain about their role as a CH machine. As it stands right now, unless you are fighting over your heads big time (ie deep in Ssra) you don't NEED a cleric. And when a cleric is not needed for exp we have nothing to fall back on. But hey, i'm sure those druids and shamen will look us up when their groups need a res.

The bottom line is this: we had a role once. We don't have a role now. We are just CH machines without exp.

"I thought his cleric post was so outlandishly sarcastic and unbelieveable sounding that I assumed it was a joke. There were utterly hilarious bits of it like saying they were doing things to make clerics more wanted by groups. Uhmm.. HELLO?"

Yeah, I see a lot of guild groups not happening because no/not enough guild clerics on. But I do see clerics having problems getting groups, / cleric shows 6 or 8 of them in velkators or sebilis is it any wonder they have trouble getting groups? / druid shows 1 or 2.

Making clerics more desirable to have multiples in the same group is great! More desireable in general though does sound sorta silly, but there are a lot of higher level zones that don't really need healing in. Most of them don't have an xp bonus like dungeons do and longer pull times so groups XPing in them is somewhat silly to begin with but people want to do it.

Making clerics more effective soloers at high level is interesting and not a problem I'd want to wrap my mind around. =) The pet sounds like a good idea, not so sure about the hammer.

Boa,


It's not a CH, it's a 3k heal with restrictions.


As for the claim that the changes are bad.....



OMG OMG I KNOW HOW TO DO MY JOB!!! DON'T CHANGE IT, I DON"T WANT TO ADAPT!!!!!!

TO HECK WITH EVERYONE ELSE, TELL THEM TO GO AWAY IF THEY DON'T LIKE THE WAY THINGS ARE!!!!



That is exactly what you sound like.


Buggy whips are no longer in fashion, and you might have to learn how to do something besides push a hotkey. Sheesh.