Nerf clerics. In fact, let’s go a step further and get rid of the class entirely. Let’s go even further and remove the very concept of “healers” or “priests” or “medics” or any class whose modus operandi is to sit in the corner and stay very still so they can enable other players to have fun.
I’m a cleric in EQ1, level 75 with a ton of AA. I have a 60 cleric on EQ2, a 60 priest in World of Warcraft, and a bard in Dark Ages of Camelot. I’ve spent a LOT of time watching health bars rise and fall while everyone else kills the monster. A lot of times in EQ1 I’d have to hide behind a wall or something and I wouldn’t even see the fight at all. Other people would kill the dragon. I’d watch a blue bar rise and fall.
A week or two ago, I won a really nice weapon in EQ1 in the Demiplane of Blood – Daybreak, Bringer of Light. This weapon procs a group heal, so I used it in later prolonged fights to save mana and also keep my group healed. It procs a lot, just like the Hammer of Holy Vengeance, its predecessor from the Plane of Time. I had a lot of fun hitting the monsters until we came to the big hitters when I’d be once again huddled with the rest of the clerics, coordinating the pressing of our Complete Heal hotkeys.
I have this fine weapon and a shield of unmatched glowiness. Armor of legend. Jewelry that would have made King Tutankhamen cry. I wasn’t meant to stare at health bars. I was meant to wreak holy hell upon my enemies.
Dungeons & Dragons didn’t have this narrow view of clerics. There, clerics were active and able fighters in their own rights, perhaps not as able to take hits as a warrior, but they did their share. I played a cleric proudly in D&D and when the time came to smite, I smote.
But EQ and many of the games that followed decided that prime healers – clerics – should be stashed away. Druids and shaman could take on other roles as needed, paladins and rangers were pretty versatile, but the prime healers whatever their class name would just do this one thing.
This one thing is a pretty lame thing. Makes an active player into a immobile lamppost that occasionally zaps a heal to someone. It’s no surprise that so many people run around with two-boxed clerics following their main characters. It’s so easy to play a cleric. When you get hurt enough, press the heal button on your cleric. You don’t need a mind to play a cleric. And nobody plays a cleric for the challenge. They play because it’s simple, you’re needed, and you’re part of a tight healing team keeping everything going.
Great reasons. But it still comes down to watching those health bars rise and fall. How could it be done better?
Heal by Fighting
Let clerics buff their weapons. Every time they hit the monster, it heals. Better weapons or better spells heal more. Different buffs replace the healing with disease cures or poison antidotes. One buff placed on an ally would heal or cure only them, but for greater effect, with each hit.
Battle Clerics FTW
Every cleric harbors within them a secret desire to mix it up face to face with the monster. Druids (in the EQs) nuke. Shaman do damage over time. Clerics fight and by fighting keep the others alive. Hitting a button now and then just won’t do. Moving around and helping kill is how you do the job.
Duh, that’s what a paladin does!
Yeah, I’ve long thought a cleric’s life would be allowed to be more interesting if they didn’t have to worry about taking on a paladin’s role. But the whole idea of paladins being support fighters is yet another EQ (and friends) innovation. Paladins were the SUPER FIGHTERS. They led, they commanded, they were first on the front lines — fighters were the rank-and-file. Instead of that glorious destiny for the holy warriors, they were diminished in MMOs to being kinda sucky warriors, and kinda sucky healers.
It’s obvious the Warrior Union changed the rules on them.
Paladins (and Shadow Knights or Anti-Paladins for the evil set) should be reserved for the very best of the best fighters. Something to aspire to, not something to settle for.
They aren’t needed when you have Battle Clerics. So, place knights back in their proper positions as super warriors or cavalry and leave the healing to the priests.
Battle Cleric vs Random Victim in PvP
Obviously, fighting a battle cleric who heals with every swing of their mace is going to be a little harder than currently, where you just wait until they are out of mana before you kill them. They can still be rooted, stunned, mezzed; leave them with only their smites and the piddly self-heals left to them and it becomes much more fair.
Bob can solo, I want to solo, too!
There’s no reason clerics can’t fulfill the healing role in a group and preserve their ability to solo. The old rule — groups are forced to need clerics so clerics must be forced to need groups — is a false choice. Took my 60 inquisitor five minutes and 4/5 of her power to kill a level 50 heroic giant in Solusek’s Eye last night. A level 60 of almost any other class would have just mowed through that mob and they wouldn’t have needed a cleric with them, either. With a new role as battle clerics, maybe we could deal a little more damage and worry about petty healing a little less.
(Yes, I know EQ2 does in fact have an explicitly named Battle Cleric AA line for Inquisitors. But their role is still the same — stand still and heal.)
Being a primary healer shouldn’t require you to take an inactive role in the fight. Everyone wants to be up killing the monster, clerics included. Fantasy MMOs since EQ have generally followed EQ’s separation of secondary healers being given gobs of special abilities to make up for their only slightly diminished heals, while the primary healers are given little that is of any use in a typical group or raid. That separation is wrong and it needs to end.
Set the clerics free.
6 thoughts on “EQ: Nerf Clerics”
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While I tend to agree with you on most parts. I think that it’s not that it’s impossible but more of a balacing system. The battle lines for inq’s rock and even though you do have to heal while standing still. In alot of cases more so out of raids you get to run in there and do some good damage. If your on a trash raid and your the second inq you getta do a lotta extra shit that templars only wished they could do. As far as soloing, my mystic has the same problem as you when it comes to DPS/ I spend more time healing myself and warding that the only DPS I have is a few weak dots and autoattack.
This is why I play a druid in every MMO (EQ1, EQ2, WoW). I love healing, but I also love laying the smack down on those that would hurt my teammates. And I need to be able to solo since my play time is often limited.
You should try a druid class, especially in EQ2 or WoW. Furies in EQ2 solo and main heal in groups with little problem. WoW druids are crazy good at whatever they choose to do. EQ1 druids are limited to patch healing, so I don’t recommend them as much as the other two games.
I don’t raid, so I can’t speak for a druid’s usefulness in that arena, but raiding in general tends to be tedious for all classes other than the MT and the Raid Leader.
Silverfur
I started out as a druid in EQ1. She was my first raid character, but I changed classes to rogue before druids were given upgrades to Superior Healing, which meant we could not function as healers. My usual role in a raid aside from porting people to it and casting the cold and heat resist buffs was to keep wizards alive as best I could and nuke when able (but usually I would get resisted even if we druids did manage to stick out fire debuff on the mob). NOW EQ1 druids are uber. I should have stuck with it.
I played a 70 betabuffed Fury in beta. I have a 38 Fury in EQ2Live (just finished the betrayal), and also a 32 Defiler. I’ve been playing her a bit lately and omigod, those wards rock. I got a master of her main ward from somewhere I can’t recall (was looking through my bank and there it was) and we did Varsoon in a five person group with her as the sole healer and it was just no problem, no waiting on reactives to proc or anything; keep warding while sticking on the slows, dots and reverse ward on the mob.
Meanwhile cut to an Acadechism run I did with my cleric, and there it’s mashing all my heals and hoping the reactives actually make a difference. Very stressful. EQ1 is less stressful since clerics there are far more powerful than the ones in EQ2, but still, there isn’t another dimension to their role in either game in a normal xp group setting or most raids.
Come stand by my side my long time halfing friend. Use your mighty weapons to your hearts content and should you choose too heal me so be it. If not then we shall laugh the entire time whilst we run naked through Norrath to retrieve our corpses and try again. Although on this next attempt we shall bring forth our pets and choose not to heal them instead.
*hugs the lizard*
You’ll always have my heals 🙂
You want to play a high DPS class, then play a high DPS class. That class is not cleric or priest. You have a unique ability to support all other players, there is a tradeoff. There has to be a tradeoff.
You want to play a super class that does damage and can heal. Why then, would anyone pick any other class? Besides tanks, because in most MMOs there are only TWO people who really matter in a party: the cleric and tank. All the others are interchangable. Sure, it may be more convenient to have one type over the other but if you really needed to you could get by with any high DPS class.
That’s because DPS classes are brainless button mashers. You don’t hear about mages who come out of a raid worn out and stressed to the max. No they’re just fine. They were probably watching TV while you were working your ass off trying to micromanage everyone’s health bars and buffs. If they are stressed out, it’s YOUR fault because you let them die.
Does it suck? Yes. But when you’re successful there’s all the more glory to it. It takes a special kind of masochist to play healer. But don’t deny it takes skill, focus, and preserverence.
And I’ll tell you a secret (well, not a secret to everyone else but the fact that you even spent time to write this proves you are not the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer)… MOST PEOPLE WHO PLAY MMOs WANT TO SOLO. Intelligent people always WTF when someone says something like this. It’s an MMO, by it’s very definition you WILL be playing in groups. The whole game is geared so that you are forced to play in groups! Groups! Groups! Groups! If you want to play by yourself, play a console game. Every MMO makes it so you cripple yourself, no matter what class you play, by soloing. Less experience, less loot, less dyanamic, less fun. Oh yes, I want to kill a sprite over and over again please, the last 300 just weren’t enough. The whole point of grouping is that theres a DYNAMIC that AI doesn’t produce that only real, skilled or unskilled, idiots or GREAT players, can bring. That’s the whole point.