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Disappointed in cleric
deahamlet
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 191 Bounty Hunter
Let me preface this by saying that I love playing healer classes. I never thought I would, always been a sorcerer girl really, but DDO's Favoured Soul and Tera's Priest classes converted me 100%.
I played cleric for the last two betas. I am used to old fashioned click to target healing in DDO and great DPS power of FvS class in DDO (while lower levels were painful, at cap FvS is a solo-ing machine depending on how you build). I am also used to healing that requires targeting and/or placing AOEs at a set distance from me or using cleanse within a radius of me etc (very skill based mobile action-y healing) from Tera together with very weak slow DPS from Tera (pretty much you level solo but no point in you trying to DPS anything at level in dungeons, you're there to buff and heal).
I do NOT mind weaker DPS in a healing class.
But what I DO mind is the huge difference between the last two weekends. It makes me not want to play cleric. She was not as powerful as a wizard or a melee DPS class and she was suddenly potting like mad. She could keep my companion wizard alive like crazy with the healing DOT but herself? Hells no. I went through all my pots while the weekend before it was just reserved for when I made a mistake and pulled more than I could handle. Before I could use a combination of positioning and different heals (healing word, the burst, casting the leech curse on enemies) to bring myself back up. This weekend it was simply impossible without downing pots. Using healing word on myself was almost a waste of time I couldn't even get myself back up to max between fights while a 1000 potion could.
It's ridiculous. I spent most of the time between level 1 and 25 solo. ALONE. In dungeons last weekend I had no issues, this weekend I simply did not want to go into dungeons. And that was before I read other people's experiences. If I run through potions like mad simply on solo mobs (albeit a level above me usually), what would dungeons be like?
Using the TAB key and trying to use the right button mouse to heal myself was also an exercise in wasted resources. I'd have to have another cleric healing me (though wonder if their heals on me would be just as bad).
I do not care if I take longer to kill stuff. If I want to kill harder, I should pick the harder daily abilities and paragon tree and still probably kill slower than all others. That is fine. A healer might have to take longer to kill, that is okay because they can LAST in the battle longer before resource consumption makes it inadvisable. I am in some ways quite tanky on my healing classes in other games from being smart with my resources and having very powerful self-heals. In Tera my strongest two heals are my own heal AND an AOE heal cast right in front of me (very high risk being that close to boss in that game, high risk high reward).
If a cleric cannot keep themselves alive and use resources just as everyone else while having worse killing ability... they will be frustrating to everyone else during all those levels BETWEEN dungeons.
If a cleric cannot keep themselves alive while in a dungeon, the party is doomed. Critters should not have to be perma-CC-ed for completion... and aggro is less of a problem when a healer can keep themselves alive as they kite back or wait for tank to retake. NOBODY benefits from a healer running around in circles like a maniac keeping critters at bay cause their self-heal cannot do anything.
I simply do not see the point of the class right now as it is.
It does not give me smoother but slower solo-ing ability while leveling (which a healer class SHOULD considering your game does not force and should not force perma-parties for everything).
It does not give the ability to keep your party alive by being alive yourself and protecting them from danger.
I have often turned the tide from a huge mistake in a dungeon by simply staying alive and bringing my tank and my DPS back to life.
Cleric SHOULD be the last one standing if all else fails cause if your cleric is dead... you're toast.
A dead healer is a bad healer, but a game that does not give you the tools to stay alive is simply a bad game.
I played cleric for the last two betas. I am used to old fashioned click to target healing in DDO and great DPS power of FvS class in DDO (while lower levels were painful, at cap FvS is a solo-ing machine depending on how you build). I am also used to healing that requires targeting and/or placing AOEs at a set distance from me or using cleanse within a radius of me etc (very skill based mobile action-y healing) from Tera together with very weak slow DPS from Tera (pretty much you level solo but no point in you trying to DPS anything at level in dungeons, you're there to buff and heal).
I do NOT mind weaker DPS in a healing class.
But what I DO mind is the huge difference between the last two weekends. It makes me not want to play cleric. She was not as powerful as a wizard or a melee DPS class and she was suddenly potting like mad. She could keep my companion wizard alive like crazy with the healing DOT but herself? Hells no. I went through all my pots while the weekend before it was just reserved for when I made a mistake and pulled more than I could handle. Before I could use a combination of positioning and different heals (healing word, the burst, casting the leech curse on enemies) to bring myself back up. This weekend it was simply impossible without downing pots. Using healing word on myself was almost a waste of time I couldn't even get myself back up to max between fights while a 1000 potion could.
It's ridiculous. I spent most of the time between level 1 and 25 solo. ALONE. In dungeons last weekend I had no issues, this weekend I simply did not want to go into dungeons. And that was before I read other people's experiences. If I run through potions like mad simply on solo mobs (albeit a level above me usually), what would dungeons be like?
Using the TAB key and trying to use the right button mouse to heal myself was also an exercise in wasted resources. I'd have to have another cleric healing me (though wonder if their heals on me would be just as bad).
I do not care if I take longer to kill stuff. If I want to kill harder, I should pick the harder daily abilities and paragon tree and still probably kill slower than all others. That is fine. A healer might have to take longer to kill, that is okay because they can LAST in the battle longer before resource consumption makes it inadvisable. I am in some ways quite tanky on my healing classes in other games from being smart with my resources and having very powerful self-heals. In Tera my strongest two heals are my own heal AND an AOE heal cast right in front of me (very high risk being that close to boss in that game, high risk high reward).
If a cleric cannot keep themselves alive and use resources just as everyone else while having worse killing ability... they will be frustrating to everyone else during all those levels BETWEEN dungeons.
If a cleric cannot keep themselves alive while in a dungeon, the party is doomed. Critters should not have to be perma-CC-ed for completion... and aggro is less of a problem when a healer can keep themselves alive as they kite back or wait for tank to retake. NOBODY benefits from a healer running around in circles like a maniac keeping critters at bay cause their self-heal cannot do anything.
I simply do not see the point of the class right now as it is.
It does not give me smoother but slower solo-ing ability while leveling (which a healer class SHOULD considering your game does not force and should not force perma-parties for everything).
It does not give the ability to keep your party alive by being alive yourself and protecting them from danger.
I have often turned the tide from a huge mistake in a dungeon by simply staying alive and bringing my tank and my DPS back to life.
Cleric SHOULD be the last one standing if all else fails cause if your cleric is dead... you're toast.
A dead healer is a bad healer, but a game that does not give you the tools to stay alive is simply a bad game.
Post edited by deahamlet on
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It was just stupid how strong the self heals were in beta weekend 2 while having very good dps to go with it.
I would not use beta 3 as an example of what to expect from being a cleric, expect reduced healing however bug at a much lower rate than what we have seen lately more on the lines of 50% or 25% will likely be the end result once they finished testing it. much more detailed information can be found on these forums hope that helps!
In my opinion they need to take the whole class back to the drawing board and make a proper D&D Cleric...
Regards
They have plans to release a battle cleric. They needed to fill the ranged healer archetype first.
HAHA I thought I was going insane seeing the 1200 HP ticks but my bar barely moving, thank you for letting me know the display was lying to me.
I don't mind SOME nerf but this weekend was just... ridiculous.
Not true. It has nothing to do with PvP. They stated it had to do with clerics never having to using potions thus building up more gold than other classes.
I'm not understanding how healing 75% of what I heal other people is not a problem?!?!
I can drink stupid 1000 pots yet three rounds of healing word ticking away at me and crit-ing are unable to bring me to 100% between battles, let alone help me during the battle.
I have regeneration and leech and defense and what was that thing called... reflect or something?
I'm sorry but it's not like this game was very much made about going in groups onto those battlefields and in most dungeons. Solo-ing is not a sacrilege. A guardian gets lower DPS but higher defenses... everyone else gets much higher DPS or CC ability... what do I get? Weak sauce self-healing and lower DPS than everyone else... Ahmmm... what? I guess I get the privilege of keeping people alive. Weee! *rolls eyes*
And drats, PVP strikes again ruining PVE for balance... ARG. I never learn to stay away from games with PVP, they always mess up the PVE.
So what do we get in return though? If we have to drink pots like every other class AND kill slower AND have everyone's life as our responsability... what exactly is the upside?!?! What do we get as a perk?
Guardians get higher survivability.
Wizards get to control mobs to root them down and DPS.
Everyone else gets faster killing.
If we have to down pots just the same, what is the upside of cleric?!?!
The idea is to promote active combat and the ability to solo or make due without a Cleric if you have to. Even with a Cleric in the party, nobody can just stand still and click buttons. I love that.
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I did mention I play Tera, right?
We leveled to 60 without a healer other than dungeons, fighting ALL bams (which are kind of like dungeon bosses, but missing a couple of special dungeon only attacks the bosses have). We que-ed to get a healer as a 5th for dungeons just to make it go faster.
My priest runs around like a maniac in dungeons, she started from the first dungeon and has never stopped. I am down with action-y healing and not depending on a healer and whatnots... but again... what is exactly that the CLERIC gets? Not why do others need the cleric or don't need, but what do they get?!
I have no issues keeping OTHERS alive (even stupid AI really), my issue is the cleric itself. I do try to avoid damage, but the burst around me is nice, etc... however the NPC is alive and I'm the one who keeps losing life even though he's the one sitting in a stupid red circle of damage over time cause hey... I put 3 healing words on the wizard, and it's keeping him from dying... but I avoided that stuff and just got hit once but MY healing word and leech and burst are not getting me up in health much at all and wait... weeee swarms of enemies now and I'm going down again and my heals just cannot keep up...
But the bloody wizard is still alive in the **** puddle from the same heals I'm putting on myself.
Don't be telling me that the wizard companion level 11 somehow has better stats and defense and reduction than me so much that he's staying alive and I'm dying even though I'm getting hit LESS than him.
It is annoying when a stupid companion AI with the ability of dodge of an amoeba is alive surrounded by the same mobs longer than me cause we had the same heals applied to both of us...
In every MMO healers have a slow time to progress soling because of his low DPS, not weak @ss heals.
I played a GWF to lvl 46 and a cleric to the mid twenties. Up to that point the cleric was killing just as fast solo play. In dungeons it was less due to focusing on healing the party versus pure dps. The common example I can give is the level 16 dungeon. I would end up with about 240-280k damage on the GWF and 150k damage on the cleric with 150k healing as well. In solo play just focusing damage, it was fairly close.
The only difference was that in beta 2 I had no downtime or potion usage. Just go one group to the next with no care in the world. It was pointless and I felt like no one should play any other class.
GWF was pretty gimped as well.
Leaves a third which could be Chains, or HW for top-ups/healing ranged class.
As Zin says, Clerics kill very fast. Only reason they don't push the numbers in instance is all the time healing/shielding ... playing the leader role. I had a stack and a half of T1 and T2 pots by L27 on week2. Pretty sure they saw that data and decided a balance was in order.
Dunno why so much crying on forums. The 2 (known) bugs from week3 I can see, but saying you can't dps or heal is pure rubbish. .. and those are bugs that the devs have acknowledged, therefore not worthy of discussion
Precisely what I said. I just see no point to playing a cleric if it stands like it was in beta 3. Just none, seriously...
I'll go back to my control wizard. She wipes the floors with things and drinks FEWER potions than my cleric now. Meh.
/sign
i ll play wizard too, cleric sucks now
You really really REALLY don't understand what we are saying.
Again, Clerics are meant to heal, in a party thats their MAIN job, if they nerfed because we do good DPS and had enough heals to not use as much potions as other classes, you nerf its self heal ? NO, you nerf its DPS, of COURSE we are gonna use far less potions, thats our main power, to be able to heal everyone, including us.
And we dont do as much DPS as many say, we have a nice AoE DPS, but single target we DONT win from Wizards or Rogues...go try some pvp and u'll see.
What does have "saving money" to do with the nerf? Take the GF as example: If you know play it well, you'll barely use potions; otherwise you'll be spamming potions all the time. I think could be the same for Cleric, you should have the possibility to save potions if you play it well and using maybe just with big fights or boss fights.
How many games have you played, that casting a heal on a friendly also heals you? Every single Cleric spell does that.
Of course we don't have uber dps on single target, but our AoE is the best in the game. Once you gain some levels, you will see how well Astral Shield works, and I'm guessing you do not use Div+Forgemasters? Have you been to the class forums?
If you had been to any threads about Clerics in the last month, you would know that Cryptic does not view the Devoted Cleric as a pure healer. In 4th ed it is a ranged dps with shielding and buffing skills. A great deal of our power comes in those latter two areas.
clerics are supposed to be great at healing, both themselves and others,
and if the heals aren't doing the job, then it should be fixed
Really, that's the only reason I didn't try to roll a cleric this past weekend, because I heard selfhealing was actually nerfed.
It seems silly to nerf a clerics selfheals, that's like taking away a rogues stealth or something, it's just strange.
But if that the case what stopping the Cleric grouping with a GF 24/7 in a duo and proceed to chop everything to bits with no potions being used by either. This is based on the agro being fixed, if it not fixed no one will be playing this game.
Just relaying what they said, the exact quote is as follows:
Still, I don't think there's anything wrong with the design goal for the class. They didn't hit the mark yet, but hey, that's the point of a beta, right? I think a lot of people confuse beta weekends with preview weekends and don't get the idea that the game is still in active development.
Anyway, the goal of the cleric class is to provide support to their allies in the form of additional survivability and damage through buffs and debuffs, while contributing DPS of their own.
This design goal can be met even with a self-healing debuff. Was the self-healing nerf too high this weekend? Yeah, probably. Coupling it with the aggro issues only magnified both problems.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the class at this point outside of numbers tuning. The class plays really well. The abilities are fun and varied, and I actually find that there's a lot of choice in what you can use. Some abilities might be underwhelming because of their numbers, but that doesn't make them unfixable.
If nobody complains or give truthful opinions, how will they know what works and what doesn't? Just data? Neah.
I'm not saying they won't fix, I'm saying I don't understand the design goal of the cleric whose majority of abilities ALSO heal ... yet cannot keep themselves alive without downing pots.
Look in GW2, who by the way are the big pioneers of NO healer approach. Yes, guardian had a couple abilities to give life back to people (use staff and one of the skills)... casters had water element that had cleansing and some healing... But GW2 did not feel the need to nerf what these abilities heal the user for on top of the self-heal each class had ... and yet somehow this game feels the need to create a class whose main pay-off is healing... cause if that's not the payoff why are they not simply sorcerers? But we have heals, definitely not recovery heals, but preventative heals... but when it comes to OURSELVES, that part of the whole cleric persona was nerfed into the ground.
You think clerics got too good DPS and heals? Well why proceed to nerf the only UNIQUE thing on the class instead of just a slight nerf to DPS? Makes no sense. With crappy heals, again... why not just have sorcerers instead if you want them to be magic users that just pot to heal instead of using their abilities?
The class as it stood in weekend beta 3 made no sense to me. No upside.
This spell works so well, I can't imagine any cleric not using it: once you get it, it's pretty much the only heal you need. Other spells really need to be brought in line with this one's power. Specifically, Bastion of Health, because these two spells represent two different methods of doing the same thing, but Astral Shield far outperforms Bastion of Health.
Do i want to play a Cleric like table top D&D, one that can cast any healing spell and raise death. You bet i will love to do that. But somewhere PW have plans to make money for this F2P and that is buying those (scrolls) for Zen. How do they want the Cleric to buy pots and drain his own cash in game, by lowering the self heals.
They already said there were a bug for the aggro and self-heals in BW3, So now is wait until the open beta (if there is one) and play a Cleric to see if there was any changes/fixes. Or the Cleric may become like the Klingons on STO and get no love for a long time
There is a world of difference between complaining and feedback. Nowhere did I suggest that giving opinions about the state of the game was inappropriate.
If you have problems with the class, feel free to post them. Concise, specific feedback is the most useful.
For example: Cleric survivability during beta weekend 3 was too low. This seemed to come from a combination of very low self healing numbers and increased aggro from mobs.
It looks like you want to give the following feedback:
Clerics currently have no niche advantage. If their self-heals are ineffective, they're left with less damage, less control, and less survivability than the other classes. They should be good at something, and it makes sense for that things to be survival through healing.
What I'm saying is that there is a world of difference between self-heals being ineffective (as they were this weekend) and being too effective (as they were in beta weekend 2), and tweaking the numbers can land them in the area where their heals are contributing to their survival in a fair way.