What Makes for a GOOD Raid Cleric

[SableShadow]

Question to all clerics. What Abilities, Feats, Spells, Gear, Strategies make for a good raid cleric?

Apologies for the roguesque tangent the thread has taken.

/threadjack

In my opinion, the best raid cleric is the one who spends a lot of time raiding and asks him/herself "How could I have done that last bit better?". Heck, the best raid <anyclass> is one who takes that class into raids often.

Personal player experience is a big part of this game, and "If you don't suck, you used to" is very, very true.

[Xyfiel]

Heal yourself above all others.
Be flexible
Keep the important people alive(this will very)
Make sure your key binding is setup for ease and quickness. This is very important.

[sirgog]

In my opinion, class specialization is more usefull in 12 person raids than in 4-6 person questing. So the better a rogue is with traps the better, the more dps a barbarian does the better, the more potent the bard song the better. Same can be said of the cleric........which can diversify very well and be very potent in many areas.......but if Im forming a raid of 12 people, I would always prefer healbot clerics to any other. I have 10 people doinging there thing.......from dps to cc to specialty........none can heal as well as a cleric and a cleric can not do the other things as well as a person in another specific catagory. So to me, a sold out pure healbot is built for raid support better than any other. I like halfling personally thanks to the dragon marks, but just my preferance. With two heal bots you have 10 very confident people able to do the heavy lifting knowing they are not going to die under normal circumstances........makes everyone preform better when the healer is not swinging an axe. Much like power attack for rogues, Im not sold on quicken for healbot clerics.........mostly because thus far I have not really had issues with interuptions. Ive at one point had quicken on all my clerics to test how it changes the game for me, but likey due to play style alone, have found it unnecessary for me for my pure healers. Only my combat clerics have gotten much play out of it, but again could be my twitch casting and timing has been refined away from its use more than any reflection on it being a good feat or not.

I'm really not a fan of Healbots in most raids, or 6-person quests for that matter.

Clerics sacrifice so little by diversifying into offensive casting (the main difference is that a Healbot has more DVs and Mental Toughness, and the offensive caster has Spell Penetration feats instead; assuming we are not talking about a gimped healbot without Maximize), that there's really IMO no reason to stay pure healbot. DVs are too slow to effectively use in most raids anyway (Shroud part 4 being a big current exception).

Where party members are versatile, you have more ways to salvage a raid that's going belly-up - for instance, an offensive caster cleric can drop a Bladebarrier as a last resort in a failing Hound of Xoriat run to get the aggro of every mob in the centre, then run them outside the inner circle and die there - possibly giving the charmed dogs the last twenty seconds they needed before the party got overrun and wiped. A Healbot that tries the same thing likely is less built to survive aggro and thus has fewer HP, reducing the chance of success.

Likewise Shroud part 4 goes faster when the Bard doesn't just buff, but melees as well (this isn't always advisable and should not be done in weak groups). Shroud 4-5 is easier when the Sorc/Wizard doesn't just debuff Harry, cast Acid Fog and nuke, but when they also Reconstruct a WF tank. And VOD is easier when the trap monkey can also rip shreds into an Elite Orthon Guard in melee (or ranged in rare cases); then can also use UMD to summon an Efreeti from a scroll, cast Fire Shield on themself and heal or spam Protection from Energy 10th wands during the suicide bomber bats.

That said, there's times in raids where a cleric that isn't built as a Healbot will need to turtle up and play a Healbot role, and versatile clerics will be a little weaker at this than pure Healbots. This doesn't make up for all the times a Healbot is weaker than a versatile cleric, however.

[sirgog]

Apologies for the roguesque tangent the thread has taken.

/threadjack

In my opinion, the best raid cleric is the one who spends a lot of time raiding and asks him/herself "How could I have done that last bit better?". Heck, the best raid <anyclass> is one who takes that class into raids often.

Personal player experience is a big part of this game, and "If you don't suck, you used to" is very, very true.

So true.

[Varr]

Most people dislike playing healing specialized clerics..........so the idea of healbots is inherantly offensive. Healing is boring compaired to the other things clerics can do. In fact most specilization becomes cost prohibitive........the less specialized the more things one can do well with a character allowing for more fun to be had. Guessing there is little to disagree with there, certainly not from my persective. It feels like Im argueing two different arguements at the same time. Generalists are typicaly more fun to play and able to do everything or most things very well. Specialists are excellent, best in field, at one thing and can do most everything else modestly well. 4-6 man parties are better served with a group of generalists, and a 12 man raid has the body count to allow itself to become more potent by grouping with specialists.

To me is a mechanic as fun as an assassin, no.......so I dont have one.
To me is a healbot as fun as a casting or battle cleric, no.......but I have one and can spam healing to a large group faster and more potently than either of his brethern cleric archtypes.

Is it necessary to have specialists in a raid, no.......so much so that most raids can be done with any 12 good players reguardless of class.

Is a raid party stronger with specialists.........In my opinion, it is so yes im suprized there is this much debate, unless it is more debate a about bucking the mechanic or healbot archtype superiority in there specialty by those players that play those classes but not those types....protecting there in play characters percieved value.

Which is unnecessary because Ive consistantly taken the position that a good players playing well is far more important than character, loot, or stats. Give me any 12 at 80% character efficency played by compitent players over my perfect party played by moderate or inexperianced players..............but the group will be more powerful if you give me my perfect party played by compitent players.

[Reverand]

Resources? I see it posted over and over, 100 heal scrolls, 25 raise dead scrolls, and 12 mana pots. Good god, thats insane. If you need to use all that to make sure your raid is successful, then it deserves to fail. Not every quest needs to end in success at that cost. Running mainly PUGs, I've run too many times trying to save a bad group, spending tons of gold on wands/scrolls/mana pots, only to have it fail after all and then be out resources and gold and have nothing to show for it but a high repair cost. (Beats an XP hit anyway but still)

I run a drow healbot cleric with a level 2 greensteal Sp item. I have about 1600 sps. 17 DV3s, and DH3s. All healing focus, potency item, and the reaver gloves. Nothing too insane. I also got all this stuff with running my cleric.

I rarely use mana pots in the shroud and never for the reaver. RARELY i use 1 or 2, if one of the other clerics go down. I still have the same stack of heal scrolls from 3 months ago. Sometimes, i use 4 or 5, if i feel like it. usually to top off the high hp guys between fights. Heal scrolls are just too **** slow to use effectively in raids. Raise dead scrolls are nice to save some Sps, but i rarely need to use those either, Someone usually has a clicky or shroud rez item or the bard likes to show off.

Empowered Mass Heals, that have a high crit range can go along way. Letting the high HP guys or WF barbs, take some damage then hit them with a 1000-2000 point Heal Spell. Just because their bar is 1/2 way down doesn't mean much, they still have 200+ hit points. Why waste 3 or 4 lesser healing spells to top that off when ONE spell can fix it all.

There are a few other spells that are useful in raids, Destruction is nice for the air eles in the reaver if your casters are blasted trying to get a charge. Recitation is of coarse a huge one for the shroud.

I've heard the stories about VoD, but i haven't run it yet. 6 raids a week is all i really have the game time for. Shroud, Reaver and Hound are my focus. With that high of a resource cost expected from a cleric, i probably wont be running VoD anytime soon.

[tolana]

empowered healing and maximise are a waste of feats if you ask me. nobody needs to be doing 1000 point heals. get your self two item setups. one to improve healing and one for battle.

[krud]

empowered healing and maximise are a waste of feats if you ask me. nobody needs to be doing 1000 point heals. get your self two item setups. one to improve healing and one for battle.

Empower healing feat only becomes worthwhile when you take the improved empower heal enhancements along with it. With all the enhancments, it's only 6 more sp for 50% more healing. If you can get the hound necklace it's even better (50% more healing for only 4 extra sp seems like a no brainer for me). It's not that hard for a cleric to find the AP for at least the first two empower heal enhancements. I agree it may be overkill for a heal spell, but if you do a lot of cure mass spells it is a very efficient boost for not much investment.

Maximize is good if you also throw down blade barriers or cometfalls, and when you really need burst healing. The break even point for maximize is at level 4 spells, so your cure mass spells actually become more sp efficient, provided you're not doing a lot of overhealing as a result.

One of my clerics is more of a damage dealer and has all three max/emp/empower heal. The other is squishier and doesn't like to draw aggro, so he only carries empower healing (with all the enhancements and the hound necklace he never turns it off) and is focused more on instakill/cc for offense with spell pen feats and enhancements. Both can function very well as healing clerics in raids.

pretty much any cleric can turn into healbot mode when the situation a rises, but without any of those three feats, you'll have a harder time keeping up when multiple people are taking big hits at the same time, which happens a lot in raids.

[maddmatt70]

empowered healing and maximise are a waste of feats if you ask me. nobody needs to be doing 1000 point heals. get your self two item setups. one to improve healing and one for battle.

Those feats are not for the heal spell they are for mass cure spells. Mass cures are the primary clerical spells for the shroud and vod. I have empower healing on both my clerics and use those in the shroud/vod all the time. Alot of other players have maximize on or empower/maximize on for the mass cure spells.

[maddmatt70]

I've heard the stories about VoD, but i haven't run it yet. 6 raids a week is all i really have the game time for. Shroud, Reaver and Hound are my focus. With that high of a resource cost expected from a cleric, i probably wont be running VoD anytime soon.

So you listen to stories without experiencing it yourself.. Your frightened of stories.

[maddmatt70]

It is currently the most intensive raid resource-wise.I wouldn't even think of bringing my cleric in a pug.

Don't know about your server, but I would join most of the lfms that go up on my server for vod with my cleric without a second thought. I lead alot vod/hound raids so don't pug much these days and am a little burned out on vod in addition, but I would still join them if I wanted to run a bunch of vods. Vod normal is pretty easy when you get down to it even if the group sucks at damage mitigation and the melee can't dps too well. People who put up vod elite lfms usually know what they are doing.

[Lorichie]

I dont raid very often, and very rarely with one of my clerics.

So why am i here? Well i just wanted to pipe in a thought or two. I consider myself to be a fairly good cleric, some would agree, some may not and i very much agree with a couple things that have been stated, so much so that it bears repeating.

1.) Above all, you must live. A dead cleric is no good to anyone. You may have to let someone else die, so be it. You may let someone else die anyway, simply because they are diverting your attention from group, so be it. Dont be afraid to let folks die, more often than not, they know they did, or in some cases didnt do something to cause it. Triage is sometimes necessary, and the longer you play your cleric the better youll get.

2.) You, for the most part, are the pace setter, you, for the most part, control the group. Dont be afraid to speak up, as the cleric you know about ten seconds intuitively before it happens if the caca is going to hit the fan, speak up. Address whatever is wrong before it happens, fire prevention is always better than firefighting.

One thing that while i dont disagree with, sometimes is necessary is a cleric playing a healbot. I've come to the point that there are times when i want to be right in on the action, and i'm a strong enough player that i can do so with little risk to the group, however if i dont know the group very well, i stand back and play healbot. I think most would agree that while i do want to have fun playing my character, that it takes a backseat to the welfare of the group. Once i am comfortable with a group, then ill jump in and mix it up, and while sometimes i am overcome with bloodlust and forget to heal, its not that often.

Just a couple of opinions for you,

R

[Winded]

In the key fights at today's endgame, Cometfall, Searing Light and Harm are garbage in raids, and Bladebarrier is situational (it's stellar early in Shroud part 2 and late in VOD, other than that, it's the best Cleric spell but take it off your primary hotbars in current endgame raids). Even fully specced for it, Searing Light deals less damage than a critical hit from a greataxe. (This may change with new raids - e.g. we may see future raid bosses with high AC and sane amounts of HP - here spells like Searing Light may be useful in raids again for more than just gaining aggro and trying to steal the kill once the battle is already won).

LOL , time to reroll. Granted the spells are not going to drop any end boss in one hit, they far out damage a greataxe, if they dont, reroll.

Searing Light 185-300 ( No not a crit)
Blade barriers 200- 385
Comet 175-280
Max Emp Heighten FTW

[BlackSteel]

i make it a point NOT to carry more than one stack of heal scrolls with me on raids, and to leave all but one of my mana pots in the bank. I dont care if its elite or not, a good group employing a good strategy can accomplish all the end raids on minimal resources. I've blown more resources in a bad group on normal than I could ever dream on elite, as I will not run elite on my cleric in a completely random PUG, if i know atleast a few of the party members then thats a different story.

The pools in the shroud make it so you shouldnt have to burn resources, on the rare occassion, the pit fiend will wander off to where one of the pools will not be an option, and this can make it tough on whoever was using that pool.

Hound iis hit or miss, either you have a sound strat and everything goes well, or you dont and everything blows up and all the resources are spent in vain. A good run is fast enough not to require alot of scrolls / pots.

VoD is similar, one person should be able to baby sit the main tank for the entire quest; and it doesnt take much to watch the rest of the party if theres a intimitank on the orthons. The most damage received on this quest is during the time it takes to get the mobs under control. A quick response from your tanks allows you to spend less sp and resources.

Personally I value survivibility on a cleric very high, nothing is worse than watching the healer go down b/c of a stray fireball, or a few seconds of lag in a blade, or a devil chasing them randomly. This is probably why I rolled a wf cleric / monk ^^.

[sirgog]

LOL , time to reroll. Granted the spells are not going to drop any end boss in one hit, they far out damage a greataxe, if they dont, reroll.

Searing Light 185-300 ( No not a crit) costs 60 SP Maxxed & Emped
Blade barriers 200- 385 Useless on every raid boss at endgame due to frequent evasion and the group wanting aggro away from the clerics and also groups wanting raid bosses not to move
Comet 175-280 75 SP per shot
Max Emp Heighten FTW

Obviously you've never played the Shroud then. (My spells all do that damage save Searing Light being a little less due to being only partially specced for light/smiting spells)

An entire tank of 1800 SP spent on cycling through Harms/Searing Lights/Cometfalls = maybe 5000 to 8000 damage (depending on the number of successful saves made by Harry).

A melee character swinging a greataxe non-stop for 75 seconds (one pass, fighting through the blades) - about 10000-17000 damage depending on gear setup and bardbuffs, with the SP usage on quickened, maximized, empowered self-centred mass healing also benefiting the other melees. If you want to keep up with that, you can - at the cost of chugging down mana pots like they are water so you can keep spamming Searing Light.

Not saying future mods may not change things away from melees and back toward DPS casters (both of the Cleric and Arcane types), but at the current endgame fights with ridiculous boss HP, DPS spellcasting of both types is pathetically weak.

[tc12]

Most people dislike playing healing specialized clerics..........so the idea of healbots is inherantly offensive. Healing is boring compaired to the other things clerics can do.

I'm in the minority here I guess, as I still have a lot of fun on my healbot. LOL

While the OP asked what makes a good raid cleric, I think he meant what should he do with his character -- AS ROLLED -- to make it as good/useful as possible in raids.

My Drow healbot cleric Zest is similar to the OP's -- having started him only 16 WIS, though fortunately a little more CON. So I want to go back to some of his original issues...

I started out back in the day when Battle Clerics were all the rage and did not have 32 Pointers Unlocked, so I went Drow and 16-10-8-10-16-16 (Yes I know the low Con is a Killer, but I WAS a NOOB then )

My Current Stats are 16-12-14-10-30-22. My Feats Currently are MT - Extend - IMT - Emp Heal - MAX - Quicken.

OK, so a lot of discussion in this thread has been about cleric roles. Of course there's 3 main roles you can try to do: 1) healing of course, 2) offensive casting, and 3) actual melee.

Healing- your feat list is good. Perfect actually. There is no more efficient combo for HP cured vs SP cost than Empower Healing + Maximize. Even better if you have the Hound neckace. I find that with emp heal and max on -- along with Life Magic IV and gr pot VII -- I often don't need quicken on for party heals.

The issue for Quicken is whether or not I'm shield blocking in the center of the melee or not. If I'm taking damage from mobs, AoEs, etc then Quicken of course is ideal to not fail any Concentration check. But if I'm in Shroud on norm healing from a pool, I normally have Quicken off. If you do this you can often do the mass healings and the fiend will die before you run out of sp. Now I could optimize a bit more by swapping to Superior Potency VI for Heals, and back to Greater Potency VII for Mass Cure Serious (don't own Superior Pot or Dev VII), but I don't bother. Never asked Impaqt if he has an extra for a guildie. so I just use Gr VII all the time.

DVs I'll comment on here under healing too. I wouldn't add extra turning feats, but since you have a high CHA too yes I'd still carry DV III. Nothing worse than a bad Hound PUG where you still have the reaver of madness before the shrine and all the clerics are out of SP. Likely someone will have a Dwarf cleric that does NOT carry DVs, so it'll be a good thing you have DV's for him so that he can mass heal that fight before the shrine so that you're not wasting mana pots there, or wiping.

Casting- Your main issue is the same as mine: the starting 16 start / 30 current WIS is limiting your potential here. So you have to consider what kind of offense you can do with the feats/enhancements you're willing to carry. If you want to one-shot stuff (Slay/Destruct) and use Harm -- all those are necromancy spells -- you'd probably need to pick up both spell focus feats to get you DCs reliably high. And then you'd likely need both spell pen feats as well as the enhancement line. But as a Drow with only 6 feats, that's *really* limiting.

But you can still contribute with you existing feat line. With just greater potency VI and Maximize on, an otherwise full heal-spec'd cleric still makes great use of blade barries and commetfalls. Perhaps others have suggestions for great spells to use when your DCs/Pen are low, but those are my 2 favorites.

Melee- Just don't. With your low CON you just don't want agro, even if you've got quicken on and spamming mass heals. I think you'd just be wasting too many SP on your own short buffs (divine power/favor) for what you'd be contributing. Most melee clerics use a lot of Soundbursts, Greater Commands and/or Holds to focus their melee on helpless mobs. Those are great spells and if they land reliably enough for you then use them, but I'd do so mainly for the real melees in the party to do even more damage to the mobs faster rather than so you can melee too.

Bottom line is that I think with the character you have, you should continue to focus mostlty on healing, but do use the damage spells that will work well with your existing feats. I say all this just as it best fits the character you have. If you want to roll another one, then there's lots of builds here for you to match the roles you'd want to play on your next one. My own second cleric project is a max-WIS / high-CON human which will be much better suited to casting. Even if he becomes my primary/preferred cleric, since you mentioned *raiding* it's great to have more than one cleric given raid timers anyway. So there's always gonna be room for your healbot too!

TC

[Reverand]

So you listen to stories without experiencing it yourself.. Your frightened of stories.

I'm not frightened of stories. I'm one of the many players that dont have content issues. I only have one capped toon. I just dont see a reason to run every raid as often as i can. There is still PLENTY for my other 8 characters to do. I choose not to run Vod, because i have no interest in it.

[maddmatt70]

I'm not frightened of stories. I'm one of the many players that dont have content issues. I only have one capped toon. I just dont see a reason to run every raid as often as i can. There is still PLENTY for my other 8 characters to do. I choose not to run Vod, because i have no interest in it.

You have never run vod so how do you know anything about it. You base all your knowledge you have on the stories that people tell hence you are frightened of stories. The raid has been out 4+ months. The quest takes 25 min or less to run. About 10-15 min to get to the quest. You have no excuse really.

[maddmatt70]

By the way all this talk of offensive casting inside the raids is laughable. The reaver sure I can instakill some elementals or cast dps spells on the giant, but I can also go afk in a corner through the whole raid too. Vod, Hound, and Shroud are the real end games at this point. The only offensive spell that has any value is blade barrior at the end of hound and to a lesser extent at the end of vod (perhaps symbol of death at end of vod too) every other offensive spell is a waste of mana. The job of cleric is to heal in these three end game raids. If you don't heal the raid leader will not be bringing you back the next time he is looking for a cleric.

I honestly have not seen a cleric adequately mass cure and melee other then perhaps my guildie killeric, but even then the healing burden falls more heavily on the other cleric because of sp issues and the melee cleric having to have quicken on which eats up even more sp.

[tc12]

I agree with you overall that healing is the main thing you do in the end raids, but...

By the way all this talk of offensive casting inside the raids is laughable.

Well against the bosses perhaps, but there's usefulness in speeding the cleanup of trash mobs.

I honestly have not seen a cleric adequately mass cure and melee other then perhaps my guildie killeric, but even then the healing burden falls more heavily on the other cleric ...

That may be, but that doesn't mean there's no place for melee on a cleric properly built for it as not every cleric is mass healing all the time anyway. It's inefficient to have 2-3 clerics each trying to be primary healer at the same time, they'll overheal and waste SP. So while one is primary, if the others have melee or other support-casting capabilities that's great. So long as they're focused on healing when it's their round of primary healing duty.

All I'm saying is there's plenty of reason folks build clerics with melee or offensive casting. I you have one, likely it's not your first cleric you're still a good healer too when you need to be. So if you have one of those builds, no reason not to make the most of your effectiveness in raids too, even if most of your effectiveness by far is your healing.

TC