Frustration with Cleric: Ding, ding, ding!!

Well, I mainly play a cleric and I am not satisfied with my doing.
To much ding in my party. Nobody even suggest that it could be my fault, but I think I could do better.
I am talking about a static group about 5-7th level. Certainly some squishy toons there. But that is not the question here. If somebody dies in a trap or after 2 hits, well... thats another problem.

I think is more a question of my personal real life dexterity, and some lack of strategy.

First problem, that bothers me a lot:
As a radiant servant I, with maximize, I felt quite confident to keep everybody alive.
Then it happens every time. I had selected some toon of the party, and left it like that. The time comes that I want to push the healing burst. Nothing happens. Panik. Then I realize I have somebody selected. Deselect. Healing burst. Too late. Some advice, tricks ? How you deselect fast? I do it by rightclicking somewhere.

Second problem: I get hurt, badly. Then I think, if I die, other of the party may die also. So I try to run away from pain. I think is not a good strategy. What do you do, usually, when you get hurt and you can imagine that in 3-4 seconds you could be dead? Just stay the ground and cast healings like crazy?

Third problem / advice: Clumsy with the mouse. I usually select a party member pushing F2, F3 and so on. Then, usually I use the mouse for clicking the healing. Pushing the number 3, or 8 or 9, would be quite faster I guess.
Do you usually toggle with Ctrl + 1,2,3 and so, or you have some uber setting of your keyboard keys?

Thank you for the advice!!

Keep burst on 1. Use burst by hitting F1 1.
(Edit: I don't play a cleric. Was it changed so it no longer requires you to target yourself to burst? If so, ESC 1.)

If I am in danger of death, I heal myself.
If it's a caster attacking me, in low levels they can be nullified with resist energy or soundburst.
If it's a brutish melee attacking me, in low levels they be nullified with command.
Carry a metal tower shield with the highest enhancement value you can find. Use its active blocking DR to reduce incoming damage if you're on elite and unlikely to get crowd control off.
At higher levels, with blade barrier and destroy, trash will be a joke.


..You click icons on main hotbars? The numerical mapping bit is sort of the entire idea.

Whether to toggle bars with ctrl or to use a limited number of bars or both is personal preference.
Myself, I use alt, ctrl, shift and ` as modifier keys to access the 5 different bars important enough to be in common use.

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How you deselect fast? I do it by rightclicking somewhere.

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Target yourself with F1. Use burst.

I have my key mapping set up in a custom way....as most people I am sure.

I never ever use the F1-12 keys for selecting people, if I wanna select someone I click their name in the party list. This does two things, gives me extra hotkeys for spells, scrolls, wands, actions, etc.....and keeps my eyes on the whole party not just the person who needs healing the most.

I re-key my select self button to the R key.....this way when I need to select myself really fast I can and also keep my mobility optimal as I do not have to move my fingers away from my WASD movement keys. Moving well while healing on a cleric is important.....as you can avoid being in harms way much better.

My primary healing spell....which by level 11 will be the HEAL spell itself is set to my number pad + key......it's fast and right next to the mouse. Heal scrolls or most powerful scroll is set to my numberpad delete key. Healing wands are set to F1 and F2...once equipped you can use right mouse click. My healing burst key is set to my number pad ENTER key.

When I need to do a healing burst I never look to see who I have targeted, I always default to click my R key then hit my numberpad ENTER key.

My ailment healing spells are on my number 1-0 keys and set as
1-Bless
2-Remove Blindness
3-Remove Curse
4-Panacea
5-Remove Fear
6-Mnemonic Potions.....this was more a concern back in the day when getting Feeblemind was extremely detrimental
7-Restoration, Greater Restoration
8-Remove Paralysis
9-Neutralize Poison
0-Lesser Restoration

If I am not carrying the actual spell it is replaced by a NON-GUILD potion.....the funnel action potions can be used on other member and is way faster than switching to a scroll or wand......if I am carrying the spell the same potion, wand, or scroll goes in the same spot as above however I add the CONTROL key for a meta.

So Bless wand would be CNTRL-1....and so on.

My cure spells later to be replaced by Mass cure spells are set to
F8-Cure Light mass
F9-Cure Moderate mass
F10-Cure Serious mass
F11-Cure Critical mass
F12-Heal mass

F6-F7 are Raise and Res

F5 is Break Enchantment.....yeah getting rid of those area of effect spells mitigates a ton of damage.

I keep the hot keys buried in one bar on my screen which is not a problem once u have them memorized. I always keep my number pad bar on top of the ones I have buried. I do however make sure I put my mass spells visible somewhere else on a bar not buried just so I can see the cooldowns on them. Uses extra hotbar slots but makes me feel more comfortable.

You get the general idea, make use of those hotkey setups on ALL of your characters, you will be way faster and efficient once you find a good setup.

Mine is just an example, do it how you want, but make use of the feature.

Have no fear, fellow healer!

First, don't be too hard on yourself. At level 5-7 your spells aren't that uber yet, and they aren't very mana-efficient.
Right now you only have the Burst, once you get the Aura, Heal, Effective Masses, and Blade Barrier your role becomes much easier.

Having said that, take this challenge as a learning opportunity but have faith that it will get better.

Personally, I use F1-F12 to target my party/raid members.
I slot my spells like this (At level 20, suggestions in parentheses):
1. Heal (Or until you get it, your strongest single target cure)
2. -
3. Mass Cure Moderate (Or Mass Cure Light, but use it with an Ardor clickie)
4. Mass Heal

Keeping an eye on red bars, I can quickly toggle to my party member who needs a heal and send one out due to the close proximity of F1-6 with 1-4.

If I need to quickly target myself or lose a target I just hit F1 then Esc.

Now, at level 5-7 this strategy may not work, but what I usually do is keep up with the Party instead of hanging in the back (unless its absolutely necessary for my survival, like a trap) and cast Masses targeted on myself. If my party members don't realize what I'm doing within 30 seconds I usually tell them and ask them to stick close to me for heals. Then I use Heal to spot heal. You can also do this with your Aura on and use the Burst to spot-heal.

The "Heal" spell is your most cost-efficient healing spell. Once you learn it try to master it.

I also recommend having a pile of scrolls/wands at all times. Yes, they can be expensive, especially on a first life, but they are worth the investment. Eventually you will get to a place where you rarely need them. Once you can use Heal scrolls have a stack of 100 on you at all times.


Your responsibility to keep the party alive only goes so far. Specifically it goes just far enough to meet your party members' obligation to stay alive, so if your party members aren't meeting you half-way there isn't a whole lot you can do. They also need to have potions, proper gear, etc.; and if it is a static group they should be helping you out with resources.

Already got some good advice in this thread on keymapping and such.

So let me just say that it isn't just you that's responsible for your teammates' health. If you're having trouble keeping everyone healed, then maybe suggest that the rest of the group play a bit more careful? I run with a static group and in the early levels when we were still learning to work together and trying to mesh our playstyles, we would frequently have the same issue - the main melees would bite off more aggro than we could handle and the poor cleric could not keep up.

Now, we are better at working together, managing our aggro, and the cleric has a slightly easier time. The cleric also knows who to heal first - and it's not always the person who is closest to death. When things get really bad and a wipe is imminent, the cleric knows to concentrate his heals on himself and our main tank, regardless of what happens to my squishy rogue. :) Sometimes as a cleric you will have to let people die to complete the quest.

And we still wipe. But it's all good - in a static group, we don't play "blame the cleric." We just reset and try again and have fun.

Good luck!

hey, I do use the f1 -f12 keys to select party members, for your problem with deselecting I would hit f1 to select myself then cast..

for you taking damage..try to hold your ground and keep healing ..activly shield block.

I have all healing and cureatives in a line on the key board..in a big fight like healing in the shroud 4 I pad with scrolls to save mana,,

try out some of your crowd control spells sometimes its more efficient to use that than to heal evfery body up..

for instance..five ogres attack ..you sound burst, they stun, party kills them, no damage taken...

big tip 1: as other have said use keys to select party memebers - f1 through f6.

for bursting press f1, then the burst key.

Hot key your spells. make custom hot keys. i use, r,t,y,q,e,f,g,h and 1,2,3,4 for common spells effects and weapons.


big tip 2: get your self a superior ardour clicky apropriate to your spell lvl. these are cheap enough to by and will save you a a lot of mana and also your spells will be putting people on full health much easier.


big tip 3: cure mod wands, they are cheap (500 plat), and you can get them by turning in colelctables.

thanks a lot and +1 to all, (Frozen Nova, I could not rep you, have to spread more rep around). I didn’t know I could target myself for healing burst, but yes, it should work. Will try this evening. A lot of good advice.

I will rethink all my hotkeys and discipline myself to use more the keyboard and get used to it. I know it is faster than with the mouse. For office work I am very fast with ctrl+v, ctrl+x, Ctrl + c, ctrl + f, so I should be able to do this. Only difference, at the office I do not get panic ….usually.

There is one other option to stop the melee beat down on you, put Diplomacy on your hot bar. While turtled under your shield use it. It will send the attacker to the nearest other target.

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Originally Posted by Ugumagre

thanks a lot and +1 to all, (Frozen Nova, I could not rep you, have to spread more rep around). I didn’t know I could target myself for healing burst, but yes, it should work. Will try this evening. A lot of good advice.

I will rethink all my hotkeys and discipline myself to use more the keyboard and get used to it. I know it is faster than with the mouse. For office work I am very fast with ctrl+v, ctrl+x, Ctrl + c, ctrl + f, so I should be able to do this. Only difference, at the office I do not get panic ….usually.

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That will definitely help. I plan everything around what is easiest for my fingers to reach: In an emergency I'm more comfortable hitting 1-6, so all the things I need to hit fast when its the fan will go there.
Hotbar 1 is healing spells, bursts, any potency/devotion/ardor clickies, + Empower Heal
Hotbar 2 is Offensive spells + Maximize/Empower
Hotbar 3 is Team Buffs + Extend
Hotbar 4 is Melee Weapons and or Wands (depends on the build)
Hotbar 5 is Pots that I Swear I'll Have a Use For But Never Remember To Use
Hotbar 6 thru whatever is Clickies and Swappable Gear

Also if you're in a static, you can always sit down with your teammates and work out team strategy a little better. I run a chibi cleric in a guild dedicated group. Wipes tend to be very rare, but I don't think anyone realized how hard it can be on the healer until our team leader decided to change to a FVS. I missed our next meeting and then she was like "HOLY ****! We need to strategize better before our cleric kills us!!!!"

I have a question that is sideways to your original questions about keymapping since many people have given good suggestions. My question is did you mean to say Maximize in your original post or Empower Healing. Empower healing is the pre-requisite for radiant I, though you could have also picked up Maximize. That said, I really would not be having maximized turn on if I were you when doing most of your healing. You would burn through your sp far too fast, and it shouldnt really be necessary at those levels.

Also, back to addressing what you have asked, if you are being attacked by a mob, run towards the other party members, rather than away from them. Most people's natural inclination is to run away from a threat, but thats also usually away from help as well. If you can get a mob that is attacking you to have to run through party members to get to you, it will slow it down and possibly switch its aggro to the party members. (Slow gazelle theory I know, but we are talking about your survival here).

Also, healing burst may not always be the most optimal way to heal a party in the middle of danger. I know its a very nice thing to save sp, but if you need to heal someone fast it will usually be better to use a spell, especially if you need to select them and run over to them. The burst is useful for after battle group heals or when the party takes a lot of damage at once (which means someone either blew a trap while you were bunched up or you left a caster unattended and were bunched up). The healing burst is probably also a little better for battle-clerics who plan to be in the thick of combat and thus can afford to have themselves selected preferrentially over others as they aren't afraid of taking damage and it puts them in the center of the party for quicker burst healing.

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Originally Posted by Enoach

There is one other option to stop the melee beat down on you, put Diplomacy on your hot bar. While turtled under your shield use it. It will send the attacker to the nearest other target.

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Oh, so right! I am putting every level some point, and forget to use it!!


Mellifera, yeah, we are having some aftermath emails. We are long time friends. I had some feedback a bit after I opened this thread (that person does not read the forums, it was coincidence), and it seems that everbody is pointing to the "zerger" in the group :p . He is the most experienced player (has another toon in 17th Lvl), but he doesnt spend very much thoughts on team work. The info that he gives is always quite cripled. "The room will close, so everybody enter the room" "OK, I am in". Somebody opens the chest, and the space between the columns NOT THE ROOM get closed. Three toons inside, killed after some time by the elementals and the traps. And so on.
But it will be impossible to speak up some strategy. Our emails tend to mutate into insults and personal attacks, that are funny at the beginning, but at the end no more. So I will try to do my best with our "just run and kill stuff" strategy.

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Originally Posted by Paleus

I have a question that is sideways to your original questions about keymapping since many people have given good suggestions. My question is did you mean to say Maximize in your original post or Empower Healing. Empower healing is the pre-requisite for radiant I, though you could have also picked up Maximize. That said, I really would not be having maximized turn on if I were you when doing most of your healing. You would burn through your sp far too fast, and it shouldnt really be necessary at those levels.

Also, back to addressing what you have asked, if you are being attacked by a mob, run towards the other party members, rather than away from them. Most people's natural inclination is to run away from a threat, but thats also usually away from help as well. If you can get a mob that is attacking you to have to run through party members to get to you, it will slow it down and possibly switch its aggro to the party members. (Slow gazelle theory I know, but we are talking about your survival here).

Also, healing burst may not always be the most optimal way to heal a party in the middle of danger. I know its a very nice thing to save sp, but if you need to heal someone fast it will usually be better to use a spell, especially if you need to select them and run over to them. The burst is useful for after battle group heals or when the party takes a lot of damage at once (which means someone either blew a trap while you were bunched up or you left a caster unattended and were bunched up). The healing burst is probably also a little better for battle-clerics who plan to be in the thick of combat and thus can afford to have themselves selected preferrentially over others as they aren't afraid of taking damage and it puts them in the center of the party for quicker burst healing.

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I have empower and maximize AND I did mean maximize.
Maybe I am wrong, but I think when using the burst with maximize, the healing is doubled too... or at least the damage you cause to undeads. Hmmm, I am quite sure that the healing is double. And as it is a no cost enhancement, it doesnt take any sp away. Problem is sometimes I forget to turn off Maximize, and suddenly I see my SP veeeery low.

This is a great discussion.

Someone mentioned running to your party members, I do this. I try to put a meat sack between me and whoever is trying to attack me.

Question, on the Break Enchantment comment on AE spells. what do you target to actually get rid of the spell? On a melee character i once tried this with a dispel magic clicky but it didn't work. Just trying to figure out the mechanics on my cleric.

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Originally Posted by Ugumagre

Panik.

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Playing with a static group at low levels, doing quests at-level or lower should never induce that kind of OMG even with an accidental keyslip or a bugged targetting.

Nice thing with a static group is that you can pretty much top them off constantly with wands and expect them to refund you for this by trading you the plat. This gives a large cushion for tricky fights.

Maybe tell your guys to slow it down a tad.

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Originally Posted by FlyingTurtle

Playing with a static group at low levels, doing quests at-level or lower should never induce that kind of OMG even with an accidental keyslip or a bugged targetting.

Nice thing with a static group is that you can pretty much top them off constantly with wands and expect them to refund you for this by trading you the plat. This gives a large cushion for tricky fights.

Maybe tell your guys to slow it down a tad.

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Well, we always try to play on "hard"."Normal" is really no challenge (well, excluding proof is in the poison and a few others) and elite is sure death (no rogue in the party).
We should slow it down, no question, but when Mr. Zerg is around, we get infected with the zerging virus and run around like chickens without head. If we all were experienced players, or had a good leader, maybe no problem with zerging or lets say, "doing the quest in a fast pace"...

We began playing as a static group in february... and we have reached lvl 5-6. I have tons of alts in similar level (some extremely gimped), just killing time waiting for the next possibility to play together.
But well, that is not really the question that I want to discuss in this thread. I already got tons of good advice, I have to read carefully a second time.

Oh, and yes, everybody is very generous, we have a "community pot" and I can buy wands and so on without problems.

If you have a mouse with extra thumb buttons, those work *great* for your burst heal or whatever mass heal you use the most. Link 1-5 with your most commonly used heals. your E and Q keys can be remapped for commonly hit keys if you can strafe with the right mouse button.

I have never used the function keys. Ever. I didn't know about I could change them at the beginning so I got used to my lefthandedness. I mouse everything.

I've seen quite a few who use mouse to select party members via the group listing.
It's intuitive and prevents you fumbling over keys in raids, but it's also slower.
One tip would be to move the group listing so it's effectively next to your character while playing. Then you are constantly looking at them no matter what you're doing, and it is easy to hold right click to select one.

id suggest rolling my previous life.was running around with 101 ac in raids. gives you the power to not care!

Saligia misses you!
Arraetrikos misses you!
The Jailer misses you!
The Judge misses you!
Nythirios misses you!
Horoth misses you!
Suulomades misses you!
Stormreaver misses you!

I'm not exactly new to clerics, I've played one to cap and I'm playing another now, but I still find it quite unnerving. For the most part I try to keep in mind who is the most aggressive player in the group. In statics that's not too hard to figure out. Those folks often need help the most...if however I find that they are out of range, a lot...then I let them know that. Part of what helps a healer is for the healer to comment, in battle, that they don't know where someone is. That person can then "find" the healer and ensure they don't get dead.

It's not your job to track every blue dot, if they run off, around a corner or some other blind spot, it's much easier for them to realize this then for you to find out by wasting mana. Inform your party to keep LOS with you, if they can't, the so be it, they can get a ride in someone's backpack til the next shrine (at low levels). They WILL learn. Stand up for yourself on this point, you are not wrong!

A static group should figure this out and understand your restrictions fairly well AND keep them in mind. It is incredibly unfair how many party wipes or general deaths are blamed on a healer when the party in question couldn't tell you where their healer was at any one point in time.

Part of a static groups strategy should be KNOW WHERE THE HEALER IS!!!

This goes for:

1 After resting they all run off, but the healer is still shrining, very stupid on their part.
2 Run around a corner, bump into bad guys, come back to healer or communicate to the party you have a prob. Don't fight out of LOS.
3 Every one in the party should watch the healer's blue bar, too many time folks just keep running...and the healer plays along...
4 If the healers redbar is going down, everyone in that group needs to break off what their doing and fix that...NOW!

I dunno I'm sure many can come up with other points, but I think those are a good place to start.

I run a G15 keyboard with the optional keys set to all my needs. Center 6 are movement solely. G4, 5, 6 are Heal, Diplo, and Aura. Bottom 6 keys are all mapped to a different Mass cure. So, when the **** hits the fan as I'm running in circles screaming like Nancy Kerrigan, I can click blade barrier while slamming my palm into those keys casting random mass cures targetted on whoever is taking the most damage.

Inefficient, yes. Virtually fool proof, yes. I'm getting old and my response time is getting much slower =(

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Originally Posted by Ugumagre

First problem: The time comes that I want to push the healing burst. Nothing happens.

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Set up a key/key combo for the burst. Hit F1 to select yourself, then hit the burst key.

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Originally Posted by Ugumagre

Second problem: I get hurt, badly. Then I think, if I die, other of the party may die also. So I try to run away from pain. I think is not a good strategy. What do you do, usually, when you get hurt and you can imagine that in 3-4 seconds you could be dead? Just stay the ground and cast healings like crazy?

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You're right. Running away is a bad strategy but jumping is a great idea! Lol

If I find myself in those just-about-to-die moments, I heal myself then jump away, preferably behind a party member or piece of terrain. If I’ve attracted aggro somehow, the mob may be blocked by the party member or terrain so I can go back to healing the party. If there’s no party member nearby and I have to deal with the mob myself, I either command or soundburst it. If the mob is immune to that, I get out a shield and block until someone can deal with it.

The best way to avoid the just-about-to-die situation is to have a decent amout of hp. That way, you can take a few hits, more often, without going into panic mode. Ideally at that level, you should be able to take a 3-hit-combo from an ogre (non-crit) and still be standing. Thats about 70hp. 80-90 if you want to be safer.

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Originally Posted by Ugumagre

Third problem / advice: Clumsy with the mouse. I usually select a party member pushing F2, F3 and so on. Then, usually I use the mouse for clicking the healing. Pushing the number 3, or 8 or 9, would be quite faster I guess.

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Set up heals on key-combos if you’re better at that. I’m terrible with the keyboard so I just use the mouse.

Overall, it sounds like your party is a bit squishy. Everything in DDO is easier with more hp but also, remember that a useful AC is fairly easy to acheive at that level. Also, always give out the resists you’ll need for the quest, or get a caster to do it, it’ll save you lots of sp.

Everyone's first character sucks a bit. There were so many quests that were super difficult for my 2 friends' and my first characters that now we blow through in 10 min instead of 50, and no deaths instead of many many deaths.

The main reason for first characters dying is usually charging ahead and the wrong people taking aggro. Unless a caster/archer can kill something before it gets to you, let the fighter/paladin/barbarian start the fight and THEN start with the ranged attacks.

Wayyyyy too often, a mage/archer will **** something off and then start running and jumping around trying to stay alive and finish it. This can work if you're good at it, but most of the time it just prolongs the fight and everyone gets hit a LOT more than if you just block and let someone else take aggro. As a healer, having ranged people do that will save you tons of sp and effort.

Also, I think it's way too early to be using maximize for heals unless you're only using bursts, and even then I think it only affects the damage vs. undead. The cost for cure spells has been reduced drastically in U9. So, you can generally cast a cure __ wounds spell 5-6x or one time at double strength. If you quick key more than 1 cure spell, it's much more effective to just toss 2 different cures on one player than one maximized one. Later on in raids and such it'll be worth it to max/empower, but for low level quests you should be fine.

The other thing that makes you squishy is most likely your gear. I remember my first char's gear sucking so much. The crafting system helps a lot with that now though. Invulnerability is a lv 15 arcane recipe I think, so you really only need lv 5 to have a 50% shot at it. DR 5/magic is soooooo helpful early on, even into the early teen levels.

You can also craft ardor/devotion items but I'm not sure if those require a higher level or not.

cant help with the healing question but having monk experience I feel qualified to give key map advice. In fact I liked the way I mapped my monk keys I converted them for all of my toons.

fist of all map your ` key to your most used function. I love it for my stunning fist on my monk since it does not inter fear with any of the "normal" hotkeys and it is within finger reach of the wasd movement.
I also mapped Q R F G H for the same reason, all are for the special moves I use frequently. This also leaves my standard 1-0 hot keys available for other things like my elemental strikes. The more important / frequently used stuff lower in number for easy reach with movement keys.
Note I also remapped my push to talk to T way back when I first stared playing before I started key mapping my specials.

Ohh one more thing I don't know if it works for your but I use the mouse look function as my normal control method so my toon controls like i'm playing a first person shooter, I find it easier to control that way. I mapped the toggle to my center mouse click (not the scroll , the click) so I can hop out quickly to hop to a hotbar for an equipment swap or interact with something in game that isn't easily done with mouselook enabled ( halflings are short and some of those door levers are high)

I also keep some less frequently used but still need to be done kinda fast swaps (mostly weapons) on alt ` through 0.

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been toying with the idea of getting a mouse with a couple more buttons for ease but i'm a cheap SoB so i've been "thinking" about it for a year or more, maybe one day.

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Originally Posted by Noobian

4 If the healers redbar is going down, everyone in that group needs to break off what their doing and fix that...NOW!

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No, please don't. How about worrying more about your OWN red bar and so not needing as much babysitting from a "healer". That Clr or FvS who can most easily heal himself is the guy about which you least need to worry.

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Originally Posted by Seph1roth5

Everyone's first character sucks a bit. There were so many quests that were super difficult for my 2 friends' and my first characters that now we blow through in 10 min instead of 50, and no deaths instead of many many deaths.

The main reason for first characters dying is usually charging ahead and the wrong people taking aggro. Unless a caster/archer can kill something before it gets to you, let the fighter/paladin/barbarian start the fight and THEN start with the ranged attacks.

Wayyyyy too often, a mage/archer will **** something off and then start running and jumping around trying to stay alive and finish it. This can work if you're good at it, but most of the time it just prolongs the fight and everyone gets hit a LOT more than if you just block and let someone else take aggro. As a healer, having ranged people do that will save you tons of sp and effort.

Also, I think it's way too early to be using maximize for heals unless you're only using bursts, and even then I think it only affects the damage vs. undead. The cost for cure spells has been reduced drastically in U9. So, you can generally cast a cure __ wounds spell 5-6x or one time at double strength. If you quick key more than 1 cure spell, it's much more effective to just toss 2 different cures on one player than one maximized one. Later on in raids and such it'll be worth it to max/empower, but for low level quests you should be fine.

The other thing that makes you squishy is most likely your gear. I remember my first char's gear sucking so much. The crafting system helps a lot with that now though. Invulnerability is a lv 15 arcane recipe I think, so you really only need lv 5 to have a 50% shot at it. DR 5/magic is soooooo helpful early on, even into the early teen levels.

You can also craft ardor/devotion items but I'm not sure if those require a higher level or not.

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Ardor clickies, in the early tiers, are low level. Ardor I, Superior, is doable without any crafting levels. Ardor II, Superior, probably needs a level to get, but you should get up to Superior Ardor III/IV before really needing to grind crafting levels.

Well, my advice on keymapping would be: Listen to advice, but ultimately, you need to figure out whats best for you yourself. Its not just about how dexterous you are, but its also your way of thinking and your instincts and developed habits - for example I have two "primary" hotbars, one for "regular" situations, one for "undead" situations. When Im buffing, using clickies, skills or anything I have on a different hotbar, I then always switch my active hotbar to the "primary" one for the situation, even if Im not about to use anything from it at the precise moment. I plan ahead and tweak the hotbars a bit before a fight, instead of having fixed hotkeys. Works for me, may not work for you. Etc. etc.

But IMHO keymapping is the least of your worries. Heres a little food for thought that either has not been mentioned in the thread yet or is so important that I want to give it a +1:

Ardor clickies: Hell yeah. Those are your best friends, if you can get your hands on a Greater Ardor V clickie, hold onto it and never let go - personally I can defuse most (not saying all of course) situations with a combination of cure moderate/critical and positive burst under GA V.

Buffs: I have no idea why nobody has mentioned them yet, but the best way to heal a group is to ensure they dont get damaged in the first place. You have resist energy, you have mass aid, if youre lvl7 (you mentioned the group is 5-7, not what lvl your cleric is), you have mass shield of faith, freedom of movement, death ward. Dont be afraid to use them and dont be afraid to (mainly later, lvl9 or so when you have more SP) to get Extend Spell for them too. Resists/protects, freedom of movement and death ward WILL save your party where you couldnt even keep up with healing them no matter how perfect your keymapping is. Its hard to buff properly if you dont know the quest, but reading the quest description/assignment from NPC may help in that case. If theyre talking about fire elemental, you know to use fire resists, etc.

Manabank: If your party isnt full, consider bringing a hireling that can give divine vitality, aka manabank. Buff everybody up, get DV from the hireling, you may even save a shrine... Very useful. And of course the hireling can heal and do stuff if you get lucky and that silicon brain of hers figures it out. If you have a second player cleric in the group, manabanking with him/her might be a bit more complicated, you need to optimize your turns for turning, healing and DVing...

Offensive casting/crowd control: Similar to buffing in principle, sometimes its just more sp-efficient to stun/command/slay living/dismiss/smash with cometfall that baddie (especially casters) than having to heal all the damage they deal to the party. Especially if you get Heighten spell, I use simple command and soundburst quite effectively with it at lvl11.

Tactics: Well, no universal advice here, depends on your party composition, your own build, whether you use voicechat (whole new level of teamwork if you do, much more difficult if you cant)... But if your party has somebody to tank, youre specced as primarily a caster (high wis+cha at the cost of basically everything else), your best bet might be to stay a little back so you dont get aggro on you so easily/quickly, spot for casters, incoming mobs, etc. and heal from a distance, especially (which may be a paradox) if the fight is tough. Even with high AC from full plate and all that good stuff, with this build youre not so tough (not wanna say squishy, but...) and not having to heal yourself is one less thing to worry about.

Responsibility: Someone has already said so, but dont be too hard on yourself. Yes, a mistake (or a series of mistakes) on the healers part may wipe the party. Same as a trapmonkey (especially on elite), tank going zerg, etc. Stuff happens, and even a party-wipe can be fun, especially in a static group (even though miraculous escapes when one partymember survives and somehow manages to get to a shrine and subsequently collect all the stones from a dungeon full of angry mobs are MORE fun). Its a game, having fun is the main objective here - so lets not take it too seriously.

So... Yeah, sorry for the wall of text, hope some of it helps ;) Im also not claiming to be uber-experienced, so if somebody disagrees, let the discussions begin...

Lots of good advice here, so take what you want and adapt it to yourself. I use the F1-12 keys and hotbar my main healing spells to my main toolbar, but also mapped 3 extra toolbars to ctrl, alt, shift.

Levels 5-10 or so are the hardest levels for a healer, in my opinion. Your healing spells and sps aren't keeping up with the incoming damage, and many meleers still have bad habits from when they were levels 1-5.

The big difference on my first healer was ardor clickies. Superior Ardor clickies often get ignored in the AH and are +75%. Greater Ardor clickies drop regularly in end-reward lists. Collect 3-4 for of them and it should easily last you a quest (each click is 3 minutes x3, so 9 minutes each). Also, turn in collectables or buy Cure Serious Wands for some extra staying power, since you will need it sometimes. Try to save your mana for the big fights.

Most of all, hang in there. It will get better and easier soon enough when you get better spells.