You're one of very few. Don't take this rudely, but have you been able to run any of the lv60 dungeons solo-healing? I see the biggest complaint about Devoted Clerics right now being that Astral Shield has gotten the world's biggest nerf and basically cut 33.3% of the Cleric off into little, bleeding pieces.
I appreciate that you like to have challenges, but I fear that most people are calling "impossible" situations rather than just a mere challenge. I'd be pretty pissed if I worked my tail off to get to 60 so I could run dungeons, only to find that I party-wiped every single time my AS went down. That would probably cause some uninstalling. Or, I would be equally pissed if I couldn't even get lv60 gear because of my party-wipes due to my lack of skill, which was a result of my lack of gear, and thus the cycle leads to my ragequit and uninstallation of Neverwinter.
Let me know how your gameplay goes. I really do want to have hope for the DC, and I feel that your attitude would be good for giving advice to the community and salvaging the love for the DC again.
I wouldnt say theres few people that area actually happy with the current state of things. None of the people i played with and there was quite a lot did actually complain about AS change. Most adapted and moved on. From my point of viev the change to AS is actually good however that should go along with buffs in other areas.
I can solo heal pretty much every dungeon including CN with GF or without doesnt matter i wouldnt say im not breaking a sweat here and there however as it is weight of responsiblity for party has been moved from Clerics to other classes as well.
No more permanent blue circle of faceroll now you actually have to pay attention to those red circles use a potions etc.
Its outrageous that other classes have to use potions now while they got accustomed to not even carrying them in some cases - pre AS change.
Cant say i was having fun pre patch -DROP AS/FF run in circle dodging bajillion of adds every dungeon every boss fight it got dull and boring pretty quick.
PVP i wont even go there everybody knows its messed up and with AS change DC doesnt exist there and serves more as a free frag while bein so susceptable to crowd control AS was the only thing that kept us alive granted we didnt get kicked out of it. Right now against better geared people Cleric really has no place in PVP as we get locked down so easily+it feels like chain armor is in reality a toilet paper instead of an armor.
Certainly we need some rehaul of existing skills and probably a buff to non divine versions of heal skils cause they really do feel like trash -cba to go in details as theres other thread for that.
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sh4dowrunn3rMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 17Arc User
edited June 2013
AS changes are fine, other cleric powers aren't. They all need to be buffed to the point they are just as viable as AS.
Right now every cleric is heal bot with same skills on bar... no choice what to use and the supposed battle cleric Cryptic strives for is dead.
With the changes made to devotee Clerics, I find myself being able to heal quite better.
Also its rather more dynamic than it was before, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind if AS was back to 100% uptime, but i've solo healed most epic end-game dungeons, with 10.1k score, without really having much trouble, but there again, I guess the pug's I had actually had decent people on them, some people might not be that lucky.
Normaly my combination of encounters i use are Sunburst, As, And healing word, despite most clerics not liking healing word, i find myself that it heals rather well, provided that you know when its time to use it, also feated astral seal and flame at-wills, seem to heal my party rather well by themselves most of the time.
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daervonMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
With the changes made to devotee Clerics, I find myself being able to heal quite better.
Also its rather more dynamic than it was before, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind if AS was back to 100% uptime, but i've solo healed most epic end-game dungeons, with 10.1k score, without really having much trouble, but there again, I guess the pug's I had actually had decent people on them, some people might not be that lucky.
Again, though, it's not about our ability to heal, or how playable the class is. Yes, it is still possible to solo-heal all PvE content.
The big -- HUGE -- issue is that, after the patch, the cleric became completely one-dimensional, and not in a good way.
Before the patch we had more options about what powers to use, simply because our 3rd Encounter (and possibly our 2nd Daily) could be used for whatever -- debuff, dps, cc or just more healing -- since we could hold our own well enough through just AS and Sun Burst.
After the patch we are basically forced to slot 3 healing powers there -- whether one of them still is AS or not seems to depend on individual choice, with viable builds both using and ignoring it. However we can't really do anything else. On top of that, due to the lack of "umph" of our powers, the difficulty of targeting (if using Healing Word), as well as buggy or long recast timers (again Healing Word as well as Bastion of Health), our job is much more frustrating than it was before.
Certainly, a big chunk of the frustration can be mitigated by being in a set group of people who know how to work together well, but that's true of pretty much anything; it doesn't solve the problem, just means that a well-coordinated group can carry through (or carry the cleric through, if you want to be more cynical) greater difficulties than a group of strangers.
On the PvP side, it's a whole different mess altogether. It might have been better if we had the option to swap between two (or more) Power builds, because then we could use one for PvP and another for PvE but, as it is, PvP is just an exercise in futility, as we are penalized from the start on all areas -- dps, survival, and point gain -- comparative to other classes.
The most disheartening part is that despite Cryptic's replies to the AS threads, and others, about how they're listening to our feedback, their only real reply has been about how excited they are about these changes and how we should be excited too...
Well, I'm fairly new to 60, and am not incredibly geared (7.8 gs i think?) anyway, I'm working on it. But I am in queue and pugging nonstop in the lvl 60 dungeons. When queue pops, I am always the only cleric *shrug* Two things I have found..
1. Healing is beyond easy if you have a group who 1. uses potions, (we were never meant to eliminate the need for them,cashshop,you know). and number 2. Does not faceroll, If you have dps standing in all the red, we cannot keep them alive, this is supposed to be action combat, not stand and mash buttons combat, dps was too used to facerolling, (not paying attention to what was around them) Kind of like the blind guy from "Robin Hood (men in tights)" When he got a sword and went to town on a post thinking he was really doing something. *snort*
2. The DC feels more balanced now in a sense that I am no longer a 1 ability class.
P.S. The DC was never meant to be a do it all MT/Healer/OT class, we have a Main tank class (GF) and an aoe tank class (GWF) those who are complaining that they find it boring to play a healer, maybe you should roll the aoe tank class instead? And remember that the GWF finaly has it's role back, as well as the GF not having to get pissed off over none of his abilities working better than heal agro.
There is still balancing needed for DC, but stopping the overdependancy on a single ability was a good start. Rebalancing the agro put us back in the role we were meant for.
I guess the most important point to remember is the fact that the DC will probably never be able to do away with the need for healing potions, I honestly believe this is the way cryptic wants it. So your group mates (and you) are still going to need them. Hell it could be the fact that we elimminated the need for our group mates to use potions that brought about the nerf in the first place.
P.S. The DC was never meant to be a do it all MT/Healer/OT class, we have a Main tank class (GF) and an aoe tank class (GWF) those who are complaining that they find it boring to play a healer, maybe you should roll the aoe tank class instead? And remember that the GWF finaly has it's role back, as well as the GF not having to get pissed off over none of his abilities working better than heal agro.
Wrong. Unless they change our class specification from Leader to Healer, we are supposed to do a little bit of everything (we're even secondary controller). This wasn't supposed to be your stereotypical MMO healer (there's a developer interview on this), but now it most definitely is. Most of the frustrations (including mine) stem from that. I'm ok with being a healbot if my party needs me to be, but what if I don't need to be a healbot? What if I can help my party more by debuffing the boss? Or making trash-clearing faster? It's weird to me that "support" automatically means healer to most people, where-as the class description obviously has us as a Leader class.
Wrong. Unless they change our class specification from Leader to Healer, we are supposed to do a little bit of everything (we're even secondary controller). This wasn't supposed to be your stereotypical MMO healer (there's a developer interview on this), but now it most definitely is. Most of the frustrations (including mine) stem from that. I'm ok with being a healbot if my party needs me to be, but what if I don't need to be a healbot? What if I can help my party more by debuffing the boss? Or making trash-clearing faster? It's weird to me that "support" automatically means healer to most people, where-as the class description obviously has us as a Leader class.
You are talking to one of the most avid bard players around, bard was the reason I left Rift. (they refused to make support a role needed in dungeons beyond aoe healing)
I love playing support and will pick up the class if it is offered before any other. If that is waht they wanted of Devoted Cleric maybe they are going to put in more support with another paragon path? And Honestly if you want to make your current DC a supporter you still can, they did not take away your cc abilities, debuff anilities, nor your ability to tank, they took away the ability to do everything while depending on one ability to faceoll while doing it.
You are talking to one of the most avid bard players around, bard was the reason I left Rift. (they refused to make support a role needed in dungeons beyond aoe healing)
I love playing support and will pick up the class if it is offered before any other. If that is waht they wanted of Devoted Cleric maybe they are going to put in more support with another paragon path? And Honestly if you want to make your current DC a supporter you still can, they did not take away your cc abilities, debuff anilities, nor your ability to tank, they took away the ability to do everything while depending on one ability to faceoll while doing it.
Of course there will be more Paragon Paths (maybe in a year with the rate this game is going, lol). Unfortunately if you want to do well in dungeons as a solo-cleric, you are forced into the healbot role. Nobody is arguing that Astral Shield was too strong, it's still the best ability by a cleric by far and that says a lot after it got nerfed/fixed. Content is still easy as hell with Astral Shield (even doable without, as long as you spec 3 heals). Our CC is basically non-existent, debuffs are unusable due to the nature of the content and how they were built, and tanking of any sort has basically been taken up by CWs (lol) and the fighter class. If you make a cleric anything other than a healbot you are going to be laughed/cussed out of an instance, which again, says something on where the cleric currently stands.
Of course there will be more Paragon Paths (maybe in a year with the rate this game is going, lol). Unfortunately if you want to do well in dungeons as a solo-cleric, you are forced into the healbot role. Nobody is arguing that Astral Shield was too strong, it's still the best ability by a cleric by far and that says a lot after it got nerfed/fixed. Content is still easy as hell with Astral Shield (even doable without, as long as you spec 3 heals). Our CC is basically non-existent, debuffs are unusable due to the nature of the content and how they were built, and tanking of any sort has basically been taken up by CWs (lol) and the fighter class. If you make a cleric anything other than a healbot you are going to be laughed/cussed out of an instance, which again, says something on where the cleric currently stands.
Then I think your real issue here is that the other support abilites are not viable enough to use in place of healing. I think that would be the better arguement, not that "DC is broke without AS 100%uptime"
If people are seriously wanting to play support roles I'm all for it and will be the first to pick up the class/spec and love it. However The current or prior DC is/was not it. Just because one ability let you play Tank/AOE tank AND healer, does not make you a support class, that makes you the all in one MAIN TANK, OFF TANK, HEALER. That is not a support role. That is exactly what it reads as, and no game developer is going to make a class that specializes in tanking and another that specializes in AOE tanking, and yet another Who can do both of those + heals. As the one who can heal will take the job of the other two, leaving them as useless classess.
Like I said before I doubt highly that the cleric was meant to be the all in one MT/aoetank/healer. Support is something completely different than being and all in one class that negates 2 other specific classes.
The current DC is definitely not a tank (by role, definition, or mechanics). The previous iterations (broken AS) made not just the cleric (heal aggro magnet) a tank, but every and all other classes inside it. Now that healing aggro has been fixed, the cleric only has 1 job, and that is to heal. That's why the TR is also crazy OP (previous iteration) because they have tanking skills as well as dealing through-the-roof DPS.
I do agree with your points (I don't get how I don't come across as). The skills and how the devoted cleric was made to be is the problem. I never said they were meant to be MainTank/Healer (I don't get how you come to that conclusion), i only said that they were supposed to Heal/Buff/Debuff/SupportDPS through a plethora of ways.
The current DC is definitely not a tank (by role, definition, or mechanics). The previous iterations (broken AS) made not just the cleric (heal aggro magnet) a tank, but every and all other classes inside it. Now that healing aggro has been fixed, the cleric only has 1 job, and that is to heal. That's why the TR is also crazy OP (previous iteration) because they have tanking skills as well as dealing through-the-roof DPS.
I do agree with your points (I don't get how I don't come across as). The skills and how the devoted cleric was made to be is the problem. I never said they were meant to be MainTank/Healer (I don't get how you come to that conclusion), i only said that they were supposed to Heal/Buff/Debuff/SupportDPS through a plethora of ways.
Well, when I first said "The cleric was never meant to do it all (MT/aoetank/heal)
you quoted me saying :
Wrong. Unless they change our class specification from Leader to Healer, we are supposed to do a little bit of everything (we're even secondary controller). This wasn't supposed to be your stereotypical MMO healer (there's a developer interview on this), but now it most definitely is. Most of the frustrations (including mine) stem from that. I'm ok with being a healbot if my party needs me to be, but what if I don't need to be a healbot? What if I can help my party more by debuffing the boss? Or making trash-clearing faster? It's weird to me that "support" automatically means healer to most people, where-as the class description obviously has us as a Leader class.
See my confusion? Nothing we were doing before was "support" we were tanking adds/boss and allowing our group to facetank anything they wanted as well. That is not support.
To run as a real support type DC, you wont be using AS anyway, so the nerf had no bearing at all on being a support class.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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xen0phreakMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 14Arc User
edited June 2013
I feel great about my cleric, the patch inspired me to make some major playstyle changes and I am not using astral shield at all anymore. I've successfully solohealed every T2 in the game including an epic dracolich 3man kill. The complainers need to take a step back and look at their abilities, feats and gear and find changes that work with the current situation.
I didn't play before the Patch. I'm level 30 now, have soloed absolutely everything except for the quests that call for Queues. Right now, I've finished all my quests at my level and am working on level 37 quests. I'm still having no issues. I'm defeating enemies 7-8 levels higher than me with exceptional ease, and I'm only using gear that I have found (I figured I'd save the AH until max level). I am using a lot of enchantments I'm finding, and a few defensive potions occasionally. I've died only one time throughout all of this, and I'm convinced I began rubber-banding at the time because I went from full health to nothing instantly, after taking 0 damage from several enemy attacks.
So my guess is the people who played before this nerf just have their feelings hurt. If you're able to solo 5-7 levels above your own level, something tells me the class isn't too weak.
Leveling content is basically a tutorial. The scaling over the last few levels does not seem proportional to those middle levels. When you first hit level 60, go solo a Foundry and see if you don't notice a difference.
Otherwise, solo material was never really the issue, except for a rogue gets it all done substantially quicker. Group challenges were the headache pre-patch, because the cleric was basically hogging all the aggro. Now, the issue is that clerics have a harder time keeping groups healed, and they are sub-par to the other classes in every area except healing.
I wouldn't say my feelings are hurt. I would say that the game became more frustrating than fun, and as a result I moved on to playing other games for the most part.
I feel great about my cleric, the patch inspired me to make some major playstyle changes and I am not using astral shield at all anymore. I've successfully solohealed every T2 in the game including an epic dracolich 3man kill. The complainers need to take a step back and look at their abilities, feats and gear and find changes that work with the current situation.
Take a look at the PVP scene please, you will see a difference
I didn't play before the Patch. I'm level 30 now, have soloed absolutely everything except for the quests that call for Queues. Right now, I've finished all my quests at my level and am working on level 37 quests. I'm still having no issues. I'm defeating enemies 7-8 levels higher than me with exceptional ease, and I'm only using gear that I have found (I figured I'd save the AH until max level). I am using a lot of enchantments I'm finding, and a few defensive potions occasionally. I've died only one time throughout all of this, and I'm convinced I began rubber-banding at the time because I went from full health to nothing instantly, after taking 0 damage from several enemy attacks.
So my guess is the people who played before this nerf just have their feelings hurt. If you're able to solo 5-7 levels above your own level, something tells me the class isn't too weak.
When you get to level 60, you can get killed in less than 1 second without astral shield and even with astral shield sometimes. Then you will start raging and complaining xD Also pre level 40, everything can be soloed easy. Once you hit wolf's Den, then you will probably die a couple times. That was my first death in this game.
I didn't play before the Patch. I'm level 30 now, have soloed absolutely everything except for the quests that call for Queues. Right now, I've finished all my quests at my level and am working on level 37 quests. I'm still having no issues. I'm defeating enemies 7-8 levels higher than me with exceptional ease, and I'm only using gear that I have found (I figured I'd save the AH until max level). I am using a lot of enchantments I'm finding, and a few defensive potions occasionally. I've died only one time throughout all of this, and I'm convinced I began rubber-banding at the time because I went from full health to nothing instantly, after taking 0 damage from several enemy attacks.
So my guess is the people who played before this nerf just have their feelings hurt. If you're able to solo 5-7 levels above your own level, something tells me the class isn't too weak.
You're level 30 little kiddie. Your opinion currently mean absolutely nothing, I mean nothing at all. DC's are great at low level, but everything changes at 60. Come back when you're 60 and you've played most T2 dungeons and plenty of PUG pvps. We'll hear you out then.
To answer the topic: Yes... but is that really what you want? Simply "playable"? How about balanced, how about fun or exciting? I didn't create my Cleric to simply be able to "play".
The Devoted Cleric could be replaced by a companion with Astral Shield as it's only ability. We're basically bots with one powerful encounter power. Sounds like a fun class to play? No.
I'm bored and I'm tired of it. In PvP we're sitting ducks because of our lack of anti-CC/personal defense/DPS, and in PvE we have way too much responsibility and our healing is way too weak. Crazy idea - remove the 40% reduced healing on oneself, that's a start.
Comments
I appreciate that you like to have challenges, but I fear that most people are calling "impossible" situations rather than just a mere challenge. I'd be pretty pissed if I worked my tail off to get to 60 so I could run dungeons, only to find that I party-wiped every single time my AS went down. That would probably cause some uninstalling. Or, I would be equally pissed if I couldn't even get lv60 gear because of my party-wipes due to my lack of skill, which was a result of my lack of gear, and thus the cycle leads to my ragequit and uninstallation of Neverwinter.
Let me know how your gameplay goes. I really do want to have hope for the DC, and I feel that your attitude would be good for giving advice to the community and salvaging the love for the DC again.
I can solo heal pretty much every dungeon including CN with GF or without doesnt matter i wouldnt say im not breaking a sweat here and there however as it is weight of responsiblity for party has been moved from Clerics to other classes as well.
No more permanent blue circle of faceroll now you actually have to pay attention to those red circles use a potions etc.
Its outrageous that other classes have to use potions now while they got accustomed to not even carrying them in some cases - pre AS change.
Cant say i was having fun pre patch -DROP AS/FF run in circle dodging bajillion of adds every dungeon every boss fight it got dull and boring pretty quick.
PVP i wont even go there everybody knows its messed up and with AS change DC doesnt exist there and serves more as a free frag while bein so susceptable to crowd control AS was the only thing that kept us alive granted we didnt get kicked out of it. Right now against better geared people Cleric really has no place in PVP as we get locked down so easily+it feels like chain armor is in reality a toilet paper instead of an armor.
Certainly we need some rehaul of existing skills and probably a buff to non divine versions of heal skils cause they really do feel like trash -cba to go in details as theres other thread for that.
Right now every cleric is heal bot with same skills on bar... no choice what to use and the supposed battle cleric Cryptic strives for is dead.
Also its rather more dynamic than it was before, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind if AS was back to 100% uptime, but i've solo healed most epic end-game dungeons, with 10.1k score, without really having much trouble, but there again, I guess the pug's I had actually had decent people on them, some people might not be that lucky.
Normaly my combination of encounters i use are Sunburst, As, And healing word, despite most clerics not liking healing word, i find myself that it heals rather well, provided that you know when its time to use it, also feated astral seal and flame at-wills, seem to heal my party rather well by themselves most of the time.
Again, though, it's not about our ability to heal, or how playable the class is. Yes, it is still possible to solo-heal all PvE content.
The big -- HUGE -- issue is that, after the patch, the cleric became completely one-dimensional, and not in a good way.
Before the patch we had more options about what powers to use, simply because our 3rd Encounter (and possibly our 2nd Daily) could be used for whatever -- debuff, dps, cc or just more healing -- since we could hold our own well enough through just AS and Sun Burst.
After the patch we are basically forced to slot 3 healing powers there -- whether one of them still is AS or not seems to depend on individual choice, with viable builds both using and ignoring it. However we can't really do anything else. On top of that, due to the lack of "umph" of our powers, the difficulty of targeting (if using Healing Word), as well as buggy or long recast timers (again Healing Word as well as Bastion of Health), our job is much more frustrating than it was before.
Certainly, a big chunk of the frustration can be mitigated by being in a set group of people who know how to work together well, but that's true of pretty much anything; it doesn't solve the problem, just means that a well-coordinated group can carry through (or carry the cleric through, if you want to be more cynical) greater difficulties than a group of strangers.
On the PvP side, it's a whole different mess altogether. It might have been better if we had the option to swap between two (or more) Power builds, because then we could use one for PvP and another for PvE but, as it is, PvP is just an exercise in futility, as we are penalized from the start on all areas -- dps, survival, and point gain -- comparative to other classes.
The most disheartening part is that despite Cryptic's replies to the AS threads, and others, about how they're listening to our feedback, their only real reply has been about how excited they are about these changes and how we should be excited too...
/shrug.
- What Class Are You? -
1. Healing is beyond easy if you have a group who 1. uses potions, (we were never meant to eliminate the need for them,cashshop,you know). and number 2. Does not faceroll, If you have dps standing in all the red, we cannot keep them alive, this is supposed to be action combat, not stand and mash buttons combat, dps was too used to facerolling, (not paying attention to what was around them) Kind of like the blind guy from "Robin Hood (men in tights)" When he got a sword and went to town on a post thinking he was really doing something. *snort*
2. The DC feels more balanced now in a sense that I am no longer a 1 ability class.
P.S. The DC was never meant to be a do it all MT/Healer/OT class, we have a Main tank class (GF) and an aoe tank class (GWF) those who are complaining that they find it boring to play a healer, maybe you should roll the aoe tank class instead? And remember that the GWF finaly has it's role back, as well as the GF not having to get pissed off over none of his abilities working better than heal agro.
There is still balancing needed for DC, but stopping the overdependancy on a single ability was a good start. Rebalancing the agro put us back in the role we were meant for.
I guess the most important point to remember is the fact that the DC will probably never be able to do away with the need for healing potions, I honestly believe this is the way cryptic wants it. So your group mates (and you) are still going to need them. Hell it could be the fact that we elimminated the need for our group mates to use potions that brought about the nerf in the first place.
Wrong. Unless they change our class specification from Leader to Healer, we are supposed to do a little bit of everything (we're even secondary controller). This wasn't supposed to be your stereotypical MMO healer (there's a developer interview on this), but now it most definitely is. Most of the frustrations (including mine) stem from that. I'm ok with being a healbot if my party needs me to be, but what if I don't need to be a healbot? What if I can help my party more by debuffing the boss? Or making trash-clearing faster? It's weird to me that "support" automatically means healer to most people, where-as the class description obviously has us as a Leader class.
PVP: How to make your life less miserable as a Devoted Clerics -- Still in it's Unfinished Glory
Dragon
You are talking to one of the most avid bard players around, bard was the reason I left Rift. (they refused to make support a role needed in dungeons beyond aoe healing)
I love playing support and will pick up the class if it is offered before any other. If that is waht they wanted of Devoted Cleric maybe they are going to put in more support with another paragon path? And Honestly if you want to make your current DC a supporter you still can, they did not take away your cc abilities, debuff anilities, nor your ability to tank, they took away the ability to do everything while depending on one ability to faceoll while doing it.
Of course there will be more Paragon Paths (maybe in a year with the rate this game is going, lol). Unfortunately if you want to do well in dungeons as a solo-cleric, you are forced into the healbot role. Nobody is arguing that Astral Shield was too strong, it's still the best ability by a cleric by far and that says a lot after it got nerfed/fixed. Content is still easy as hell with Astral Shield (even doable without, as long as you spec 3 heals). Our CC is basically non-existent, debuffs are unusable due to the nature of the content and how they were built, and tanking of any sort has basically been taken up by CWs (lol) and the fighter class. If you make a cleric anything other than a healbot you are going to be laughed/cussed out of an instance, which again, says something on where the cleric currently stands.
PVP: How to make your life less miserable as a Devoted Clerics -- Still in it's Unfinished Glory
Dragon
Then I think your real issue here is that the other support abilites are not viable enough to use in place of healing. I think that would be the better arguement, not that "DC is broke without AS 100%uptime"
If people are seriously wanting to play support roles I'm all for it and will be the first to pick up the class/spec and love it. However The current or prior DC is/was not it. Just because one ability let you play Tank/AOE tank AND healer, does not make you a support class, that makes you the all in one MAIN TANK, OFF TANK, HEALER. That is not a support role. That is exactly what it reads as, and no game developer is going to make a class that specializes in tanking and another that specializes in AOE tanking, and yet another Who can do both of those + heals. As the one who can heal will take the job of the other two, leaving them as useless classess.
Like I said before I doubt highly that the cleric was meant to be the all in one MT/aoetank/healer. Support is something completely different than being and all in one class that negates 2 other specific classes.
I do agree with your points (I don't get how I don't come across as). The skills and how the devoted cleric was made to be is the problem. I never said they were meant to be MainTank/Healer (I don't get how you come to that conclusion), i only said that they were supposed to Heal/Buff/Debuff/SupportDPS through a plethora of ways.
PVP: How to make your life less miserable as a Devoted Clerics -- Still in it's Unfinished Glory
Dragon
Well, when I first said "The cleric was never meant to do it all (MT/aoetank/heal)
you quoted me saying :
Wrong. Unless they change our class specification from Leader to Healer, we are supposed to do a little bit of everything (we're even secondary controller). This wasn't supposed to be your stereotypical MMO healer (there's a developer interview on this), but now it most definitely is. Most of the frustrations (including mine) stem from that. I'm ok with being a healbot if my party needs me to be, but what if I don't need to be a healbot? What if I can help my party more by debuffing the boss? Or making trash-clearing faster? It's weird to me that "support" automatically means healer to most people, where-as the class description obviously has us as a Leader class.
See my confusion? Nothing we were doing before was "support" we were tanking adds/boss and allowing our group to facetank anything they wanted as well. That is not support.
To run as a real support type DC, you wont be using AS anyway, so the nerf had no bearing at all on being a support class.
You are not alone.
So my guess is the people who played before this nerf just have their feelings hurt. If you're able to solo 5-7 levels above your own level, something tells me the class isn't too weak.
Otherwise, solo material was never really the issue, except for a rogue gets it all done substantially quicker. Group challenges were the headache pre-patch, because the cleric was basically hogging all the aggro. Now, the issue is that clerics have a harder time keeping groups healed, and they are sub-par to the other classes in every area except healing.
I wouldn't say my feelings are hurt. I would say that the game became more frustrating than fun, and as a result I moved on to playing other games for the most part.
Take a look at the PVP scene please, you will see a difference
When you get to level 60, you can get killed in less than 1 second without astral shield and even with astral shield sometimes. Then you will start raging and complaining xD Also pre level 40, everything can be soloed easy. Once you hit wolf's Den, then you will probably die a couple times. That was my first death in this game.
You're level 30 little kiddie. Your opinion currently mean absolutely nothing, I mean nothing at all. DC's are great at low level, but everything changes at 60. Come back when you're 60 and you've played most T2 dungeons and plenty of PUG pvps. We'll hear you out then.
The Devoted Cleric could be replaced by a companion with Astral Shield as it's only ability. We're basically bots with one powerful encounter power. Sounds like a fun class to play? No.
I'm bored and I'm tired of it. In PvP we're sitting ducks because of our lack of anti-CC/personal defense/DPS, and in PvE we have way too much responsibility and our healing is way too weak. Crazy idea - remove the 40% reduced healing on oneself, that's a start.