Why a Cleric?

[Corpsebride]

I don't see it as my place to argue with another player over what they do and do not want to do. I simply mark them down on my do not group list if it is a greivance so bad as to warrant it or a significant playstyle clash. If you run into a cleric that refuses to heal and it bothers you, just make sure to avoid them in the future. If you are leading the group be clear as to your expectations before inviting someone to group and if they won't meet it, politely decline them and find a replacement that will. That goes for any class, any group, any quest.

If your LFM's take forever to fill, then consider a hireling and asking yourself and your group mates to BYOH and be self sufficient - with group tactics and careful play, being self sufficient does not have to be expensive. It drives me nuts to run on my cleric with groups where no one has even heard of heavy fortification or curse removal/lesser restoration pots. I don't mind decursing, but if you have a curse that prevents healing and I'm on cooldown, you'll die before I can get to you - especially if you are squishy! Being prepared to take care of yourself to some extent is expected - and if you can't, the healers will very quickly pick up on it and avoid you like the plague. If you are incapable of taking care of yourself, consider this: I once had a barbarian hand me 10 raise scrolls and a stack of heal scrolls, saying only that I would need them. He at least knew his limitations and tried to be proactive instead of just assuming the healer would be able to 100% watch him.

[herzkos]

Because many of the lfm's that say need healer are trainwrecks
waiting to happen. Ones that say need good healer are definitely
off limits to most competent clerics.

clerics play this game (whatever their build) for fun as well.
NOT to get cussed at and blamed by people that do their best
to commit suicide at every opportunity and expect their "healer"
to bail them out.

also, party makeup (levels and classes) play a role as well as which
quest the group is intending to run.

[Zachski]

clerics play this game (whatever their build) for fun as well.
NOT to get cussed at and blamed by people that do their best
to commit suicide at every opportunity and expect their "healer"
to bail them out.

Pretty much this.

[taurean430]

Barbs with 900hp will take 30pots to get them to full. And it will take a while sitting there drinking 30 pots.

Everyone is self-sufficient to some point, but if you doing an epic quest you would get like 2 attack animations off before backing off to heal, then going back in. That takes WAY TOO LONG.
Rangers run out of sp and to make their healing good enough they would have to take maximize or something (taking away from something else).

If you are running easy quests, sure you don't need a healer. But if the monsters do more damage than you self-heal (which happens very often) you will need a dedicated healer.

I don't understand why it is that you are confusing regular quests with epic/raid content?

And by this time I have come to the understanding that some players simply want a hireling... of course without even spending in game money on that. They want a healbot - someone to follow right behind them and stare at their red bar and spam spells to keep it constantly full. Nothing else... at. all. That's not what I do as a healing class. These are the same kinds of players without remove curse pots or wands, and won't utilize house buffs either. They expect that is what the healer is there for... I'd even go so far to as to say that if the strategy appears to be to get as much as they can from everyone else, so they can buy what they think is a weapon of uberness from the AH.

It's no coincidence in my observations insofar that the lfm's the read NEED HEALER/ NEED HJEALS are chock full of these types of players. I say no thank you.

[Emili]

Stop being a group of eejits already... people heal where they can, they heal themselves and where it applies heal others. FvS and clerics tend to heal more because they can Heal more. Quite simple... You bloody go into a quest together ... if you're a heal capable character you heal yourself and others, You cannot expect the level 20 berzerker to pull off Horoth and start drinking potions no more so then let him die and tell him afterwords - you should have healed yourself. Plain silly idea... you go into a quest together and you work as a team... if you wish to not work as a team then do not bother grouping - ever!

I can take near any character and solo much the game... question comes down to this? Do I want some company to play - together - or am I out only to do it myself.

I don't understand why it is that you are confusing regular quests with epic/raid content?

Where I and many people come from - level 20 - this is the game ... all that other **** is but a fragment - a blink of a character's eye - of the time to get here.

[Corpsebride]

You cannot expect the level 20 berzerker to pull off Horoth and start drinking potions no more so then let him die and tell him afterwords - you should have healed yourself.[/I]

No one is talking about Raids and Elite/Epic content - that would be silly beyond reason. The discussion is around regular questing only and no one has brought the topic of raid healing into question.

[Calebro]

Where I and many people come from - level 20 - this is the game ... all that other **** is but a fragment - a blink of a character's eye - of the time to get here.

And where I and many people come from - all the other levels - this is the GAME.... all that grinding of the same quests over and over again is but an annoyance that we don't want to deal with - the death of the character - and it's not rez'able.

[guardianx2009]

I'll give you a recent example..

My L10 Cleric joined a group for Gladewatch Outpost Elite figuring it would be a quick and easy run. Most of the group is level 8 - 9. As the quest started, I start running in with the melees with my curse spewer to "tag" everything and throwing CC's, etc. Next thing I hear the leader complaining saying "stay back at the gate! You're a healer do your job!"

...... Need I say more? It's groups like those that make us NOT want to join LFMs "LOOKING FOR HEALz"

[Nezichiend]

Divine casters have many more tricks besides Healing and Blade Barriers.
Play with your spells sometime. Learn them.

Divine CC is very hard to land at high lvls (well it really depends what quests you are running, I pop energy drain + hold person without heighten often in VoN1ep).

Damage spells are very mana-inefficient.

What do you want me to learn?

[Mr_Ed7]

One problem about having a certain attitude about healing or having the mentality of "heal/cure" yourself is...well here is an example:

My party was engaged in fighting a boss.

At one point I was saying "Conan needs a remove curse! Conan needs a remove curse!"

The reply I got was "Drink a Remove Curse pot!"
The problem was, I was not Conan... he was the main fighter who was tanking the boss. I had been removing his curses, but I was dead.

So once again having an elitist attitude can be detrimental, not only to one's fun but perhaps even to the quest itself.

[Impaqt]

Stop being a group of eejits already... people heal where they can, they heal themselves and where it applies heal others. FvS and clerics tend to heal more because they can Heal more. Quite simple... You bloody go into a quest together ... if you're a heal capable character you heal yourself and others, You cannot expect the level 20 berzerker to pull off Horoth and start drinking potions no more so then let him die and tell him afterwords - you should have healed yourself. Plain silly idea... you go into a quest together and you work as a team... if you wish to not work as a team then do not bother grouping - ever!

I can take near any character and solo much the game... question comes down to this? Do I want some company to play - together - or am I out only to do it myself.


Where I come from - level 20 - this is the game ... all that other **** is but a fragment of the time to get here.

Completely missed our point you did.....

No one ever said the Main tank on horoth needs to be completely self sufficient. I dont understand why people need to go to the extreme to try to disprove things...

"Of course it totally acceptable for a group of Level 4's running Waterworks to wait around to 38 Minutes with a LFM up that says "NEED UBER HEALER", what do you expect? a 900HP Barbarian tanking the Demon Queen on Epic to drink Pots?"

[taurean430]

Stop being a group of eejits already... people heal where they can, they heal themselves and where it applies heal others. FvS and clerics tend to heal more because they can Heal more. Quite simple... You bloody go into a quest together ... if you're a heal capable character you heal yourself and others, You cannot expect the level 20 berzerker to pull off Horoth and start drinking potions no more so then let him die and tell him afterwords - you should have healed yourself. Plain silly idea... you go into a quest together and you work as a team... if you wish to not work as a team then do not bother grouping - ever!

I can take near any character and solo much the game... question comes down to this? Do I want some company to play - together - or am I out only to do it myself.


Where I come from - level 20 - this is the game ... all that other **** is but a fragment - a blink of a character's eye - of the time to get here.

Healing a group is indeed what I do, but it's not all that I do. What's required for the group to make it through Shroud for example isn't the same as what's required for the group to complete Madstone Crater. Any group outside of a raid that expects the healing classes to do nothing at all save stand back and fill red bars is not my kind of group. Especially when I know for a fact that it can be done while utilizing crowd control/melee/and other spells.

Level 20 content, raid content, etc... is markedly different in what is required regarding a healing class in what I have seen so far in this game. I heal raids, and have no issues doing that. However the method that's used to do that effectively is not going to work out for me in non raid/epic content.

[jarlaxle_dourden]

One problem about having a certain attitude about healing or having the mentality of "heal/cure" yourself is...well here is an example:

My party was engaged in fighting a boss.

At one point I was saying "Conan needs a remove curse! Conan needs a remove curse!"

The reply I got was "Drink a Remove Curse pot!"
The problem was, I was not Conan... he was the main fighter who was tanking the boss. I had been removing his curses, but I was dead.

So once again having an elitist attitude can be detrimental, not only to one's fun but perhaps even to the quest itself.

Conan ... for coming into a party unpreparred ... IE: No curse removal pots ... would end up on my "Friends" list ... That's how I roll ...

... and "healers" that do pander to these types ... are not really helping these players to learn how to take care of themselves.

[Impaqt]

Conan ... for coming into a party unpreparred ... IE: No curse removal pots ... would end up on my "Friends" list ... That's how I roll ...

... and "healers" that do pander to these types ... are not really helping these players to learn how to take care of themselves.

I treat Main Hate Tanks differently. If this was VoD for example, yes, the main tank gets a Pass on using Madstone. I.. or someone else.. will remove his curses.....

However, that kind of thing needs to be made clear at the start of the raid. If ya got a meatbag fighter thats gonna be doing the main tanking against a boss that throws curses, it needs to be made clear who's going to be removing those curses.

If you refuse to carry Remove curse pots, or think you need to be madstoning all the time, sooner than later, your going to be on your own.

[Khelden]

I personally avoid running with battle clerics, unless we already have a good healing cleric. Something quite fun I started to do recently is to refuse to disable traps [My disable device is high enough for every quest I've ran into, I don't know yet about epic].

So when I group with a cleric who tells me to heal myself instead of doing it, I tell him to remove the traps by himself. Having an active evasion allows me to avoid enough damages to get on the other side without huge harm and then heal myself while the jack have to go through the traps (now that the traps are striking for 200 it's really fun to see ^^), heal himself (if he did survive...), whine then leave, to get replaced by a hireling which often turns out to heal way better.

Evil? Maybe, but it makes things SO much more fun ^^

People need to keep in mind that if we really can heal ourself, we won't bring a healer with us, a DPS would be quite better.

[Zachski]

I personally avoid running with battle clerics, unless we already have a good healing cleric. Something quite fun I started to do recently is to refuse to disable traps [My disable device is high enough for every quest I've ran into, I don't know yet about epic].

So when I group with a cleric who tells me to heal myself instead of doing it, I tell him to remove the traps by himself. Having an active evasion allows me to avoid enough damages to get on the other side without huge harm and then heal myself while the jack have to go through the traps (now that the traps are striking for 200 it's really fun to see ^^), heal himself, whine then leave, to get replaced by a hireling which often turns out to heal way better.

Evil? Maybe, but it makes things SO much more fun ^^

People need to keep in mind that if we really can heal ourself, we won't bring a healer with us, a DPS would be quite better.

So...

The cleric telling you to heal yourself, which is something you're quite capable of doing...

...is equivalent to telling the cleric to remove the traps, which is something he's NOT capable of doing.

...

I question your intelligence.

[Anthem]

Very rare is the cleric who won't heal competent party-mates when it's needed, and when that's what it takes to get the quest done.

Quite often though, an experienced cleric can bring down mobs more efficiently than the (possibly poorly-built, and inexperienced) people they're grouped with, and it is a frustrating waste of time to stand back and keep useless mana-sponges standing, when we could bring a mob down ourselves in half the time and taking a fraction of the damage.

We can very quickly spot who is costing us more resources than they're worth, and just as quickly we can spot those who are well-built, competently played and assets to the party.

A properly built melee usually gets the best possible healing from clerics because it's quickly obvious when we'll best succeed that way. Conversely, when the Cleric sees he's the better melee than the poorly-built and/or poorly-played Fighter, then it's in the party's best interests for everyone (including the Cleric) to step up and do the Fighter's job for him. Usually for the Cleric while still healing the group, though with less emphasis on the Marshmallow.

No other class gets to refuse to do what they were designed to do[...]

And no other class is expected by others to ignore all of their other abilities just to stand back and focus on just one ability. That rogue you mentioned, do you also expect him to just quietly follow along and only work the traps the same way you expect us to just stand back and only heal?

why did you make a cleric in the first place if you didnt want to heal...

We make clerics in the first place because we can heal, because we can crowd-control, because we can offensive cast, because we can buff, because we can melee, and because we have solid enough AC and HP to survive and thrive on the front line. IMO clerics are the most versatile, and overpowered class in the game, and capable of doing anything that needs to get done.

Keeping ineffective party members on their feet simply doesn't need to get done.

[Khelden]

So...

The cleric telling you to heal yourself, which is something you're quite capable of doing...

...is equivalent to telling the cleric to remove the traps, which is something he's NOT capable of doing.

...

I question your intelligence.

A cleric could do it, he'd have to take the disable device as cross-skill. Will it work? Probably not. It can be compared to asking a class which is NOT good at healing to heal himself. The selfish game can go very far. It's much better when everybody focus on what they do best.

Anthem: I think there are way more clerics who simply refuses to heal than you think... I am not talking about selective heals, which is all fine, but really about cleric who simply DON'T WANT to.

[Mr_Ed7]

Conan ... for coming into a party unpreparred ... IE: No curse removal pots ... would end up on my "Friends" list ... That's how I roll ...

... and "healers" that do pander to these types ... are not really helping these players to learn how to take care of themselves.

OK. Put him on your "Friends" List (Which by the way I use for my FRIENDS...?!) after you give him the remove curse, 'cuz he is probably saving your @$$ at the moment!

[taurean430]

I personally avoid running with battle clerics, unless we already have a good healing cleric. Something quite fun I started to do recently is to refuse to disable traps [My disable device is high enough for every quest I've ran into, I don't know yet about epic].

So when I group with a cleric who tells me to heal myself instead of doing it, I tell him to remove the traps by himself. Having an active evasion allows me to avoid enough damages to get on the other side without huge harm and then heal myself while the jack have to go through the traps (now that the traps are striking for 200 it's really fun to see ^^), heal himself (if he did survive...), whine then leave, to get replaced by a hireling which often turns out to heal way better.

Evil? Maybe, but it makes things SO much more fun ^^

People need to keep in mind that if we really can heal ourself, we won't bring a healer with us, a DPS would be quite better.

I see you've missed the point yet again. In this MMO, a healing icon does not translate into a healbot. They are two entirely different things. Even in that example you've given you'd find many players that would simply avoid whatever trap it is that you are referring to. That's not the point of the discussion.