I have been leveling another GF alt, and I have noticed a disturbing trend recently. For my previous GF it was instant groups for Dungeons or Skirmishes, but now it seems that there is a quite a long wait for a DC. One time I had to wait 30 minutes, and got in a group without a DC even during Skirmish Hour. (I like to think we managed that high-level skirmish due to my superb skills, but the two CWs chain-CCing everything might have helped a little
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Conversely, queue times are still instant for my DC. Anyone else had the same experience? And, if so, I can't imagine how bad the wait times are for DPS nowadays....
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i got one in the 30s that I'll probably finish leveling up...as soon as my Guild gets another fulltime tank.
I'm doing the same now, which is to queue up, and then hit the next zone and start questing. If anything, I am outlevelling them less now, despite questing far far faster (partly due to more experience, and partly due to GWF being pure faceroll). Thus, for me, it might even be better.
Thing is I doubt that DPS would notice the difference easily - the constraining factor is a lack of either a DC or GFs. But for a GF it used to be instant queues meaning that DC probably outnumbered GFs while now the long queues indicate that the balance has changed. Whether this means fewer DCs or more GFs I don't know. But it is completely obvious when previously it was a minute, if that, and now I sometimes end up in skirmishes after a long wait without a DC...
1) PUGs not listening / understanding the dungeons
2) Aggro was broken back then
3) Class wasn't what I had envisaged and there was no real move by Cryptic to change it
4) Biggest issue was the cries of 'heal moar!' from people who never responded to instructions, but were quite willing to blame the cleric for not healing them when they were stood in red circles, aggroed too many mobs etc.
AS nerf didn't bother me as I'd already quit - but the -40% self-healing and AS nerf would have probably put me over the edge anyway/
Therefore, to summarise, the cleric isn't the most fun character class in this game and coupled with a selfish player-base that expects you to sacrifice your own playing enjoyment so they can enjoy theirs doesn't help...
Not saying that this isn't a factor but if they were mainly playing PvP though it shouldn't make such a difference in PvE Skirmishes and Dungeons.
Anyway I didn't really see much of a difference from two months ago when I leveled my first character and the present where I am leveling another. No issues until I hit the Helms Hold skirmish and beyond. After that the queue times can be fairly long which makes the daily skirmishes where you have to complete them 2-3 times nearly impossible. I've been queuing up for the Wolf dungeon as well but so far no luck so I will more than likely outlevel that.
Give it another go; I "unshelved" (ick) mine recently, and it's a lot more fun than it was. The fact that aggro mostly works now makes it like night and day. It takes a couple of pulls getting used to the fact that AS is down for about five seconds, but that's relatively easy to cope with (keep Hallowed Ground ready, if nervous)- you just need to be a tad more proactive on the Sunburst/seals.
You might hate it still, but you won't know until you try. Pick something solid but easy like Karrundax. You'll be amazed at the difference.
I had to read this a couple of times before I got over the "seriously, are you even paying attention?" grumps. However, now I have done so, I see what you're saying, and it's quite possible that you're right. Hrm...
Their defense is poor, their damage is worse and to top it all off, they can't heal themselves (not enough to make a difference anyway). It takes a very dedicated player to play a cleric, I just don't think there are that many people who can be bothered with it.
Like klixan said, its takes a more dedicated player. You can pretty much roll a TR, CW or GWF and glide through the content to 60. Heals and Tanks require a little more patience and effort. That being said, I PVPed most of my levels with my Cleric, so I've spent a lot of time at in quest zones being much higher then the content.
- JailBreak (in development)
...and that difficulty of being a cleric and lack of clerics is why I still keep playing as a cleric.
I appreciate the, "Nice heals," after dungeon completions and get satisfaction of "saving" the team from near-death with a well-placed Bastion of Health or Divine Armor, or Astral Shield + Sunburst combination.
Still the frustrations mount when players continue to ignore huge red circles. This is going to sound mean, but after a few warnings/suggestions, I just stop healing them so they learn their lesson. Sure, they'll be mad, but you can guess what my retort is. :cool:
Cleric: Marquis Elmdore - Current Main
Wizard: Iamblichus
Fighter: Anna the Titan
Barbarian: Anann Valkyrja
Ranger: Minerva Cory'phaia
Warlock: Suri Coralyne Reid
Guild: She Looked Level 18.
Alliance: Imperium
In PvE we are 100% dependent on the skill of the other 4 people in the group thus if you have inexperienced players with you no matter how experienced/skilled you are as a cleric entire your team will fail if they are poor players. It is near impossible to carry anyone in Neverwinter if they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing like in other MMORPGs such as WoW, etc. No amount of gearing, skill, etc will be able to save people who are standing in red circles, etc.
Solo DC is PAINFULLY slow as our DPS is pathetic so doing foundries solo is not fun at all. I ran solo content as a GF easy where my DC struggles even though my cleric is WAY more geared then my GF. Doing solo content as a cleric is extremely frustrating...
So there you have it... Not a big mystery why a lot of clerics are burnt out on the class.
It's an ungrateful class, if the team wipes you get blamed, no matter what you did and how much your team member sucks. If you add the boredom of cheating there are 0 reasons to play anything but Rogue Online.
I don't bother doing Foundry quests with my DC though as that's a waste of time.
Clerics at low level have good damage, good heal, can substain themself, good armor, overall a very decent class.
Once in the high levels, you have low damage, can't heal yourself, armor doesn't do anything and whenever something is useful, they nerf it or simply put it on a half an hour invisible cooldown to make sure you don't spec it.
We scale like <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, armor scale like <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Add that to the rage of having to manage your team because people stand in the red and they don't keep the add's off you and you've got yourself a winner class.
Might as well go play a GF and press 3 buttons to kill a Cleric.
The main problem, atm, is that our T2 PvP gear needs work and we need more support in end-game PvP if things are to remain as they are. It would be nice if Prophetic Action, on top of blocking one attack, significantly increased your DR for a few seconds, for example. Obviously these changes will come, it's more question of when. I'm pretty sure that at least some of the things going on PvP atm wasn't intended by the developers. The enchants themselves are still pretty screwy. Some have bonuses that are close to worthless and some are just godly compared to others, regardless of class.
And no, clerics are not rarer. My low level GF friends still get into dungeons faster than my low level clerics.
How many cleric characters are you playing?
But for levelling (levelling a GF alt in the 40s), I have not noticed any real difference.
I have nothing to really compare it to since my first was a DC when it was GFs that were super rare, second was a DPS to whom long queues are fact of life.
I haven't had any problem with solo nuking but in dungeons I'm not sure how to heal people. Or how to tell if I'm doing a good job healing people. Most of the time spamming astral seal, sunburst, and divine FF keeps people topped off but in the hard fights, I do... what exactly? Well, mostly I run away from things trying to kill me or spend my time nuking archers that no one else seems to notice exist. After five failed tries in Gray Wolf Den we succeeded after I switched to a DPS loadout and didn't tell anyone that they weren't getting anything but astral seal for healing because I was busy nuking the **** wolves and archers.
Argh. x.x
Yep, I give a pug pvp group 1 minute, if they don't have their act together I quit and queue back up. As any other class I'd just play for points, but with a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> group It doesn't make sense to end up with a mediocre group since I don't get anything for pure heal participation as a cleric. Cryptic knew this, pointed out that they knew they were <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> clerics, and still nerfed assist exp. Like we were really leading the charts before anyways.
At that point I realized that how useful I feel as a healer was entirely reliant on other people not being stupid. We all know how that goes. Knowing how those skirmishes went, dungeons would only be even more difficult and I would feel even more worthless. I get that DC are designed more around maintenance healing than burst healing and that people are supposed to avoid the hits that require big heals, but when a potion can do a better job of saving a life than I can ever hope for that is just not my idea of fun or being useful as a healer.
So, since I only have 2 character slots and wanted to try something else, I deleted the cleric (thus why I didn't remember any ability names). Shame really, I like the way clerics look in this game and can normally suffer through not being the best if it means looking good. I just can't stand the thought of getting to level cap and realizing I'm still worthless in a bad group.