Clerics from the Other POV

[biggin]

So, I've been running clerics pretty much exclusively since I started DDO. About a week ago I decided to roll up a TWF Heavy Pick Barb (was collecting them for a guildie and he didn't need them so.....), my first real non-healing equipped toon. I've always been the cleric or at least had use of wands/spells, so I knew the types of players I liked to run with and try to play that way. I keep plenty of pots on me, pass wands to an arcane if he/she doesn't mind wand whipping me between fights, etc. But I seem to be running into a lot of clerics who just don't seem to like to heal, other then themselves, or at least don't heal WF.

Now I know there are some quests that shrines are scarce. I know in many elite quests it makes more sense to stop after a fight and drink pots to conserve SP for when it's time for the cleric to start throwing out the divine love in droves. This is not to what I'm referring.

I was in a Stormcleave last night (just an example, many more instances of this) and had a cleric who refused to heal me. He also ran out of SP by the 2nd shrine and typed in party chat, "out of SP, watch yourself." So I replied in voice, "you've run past 2 shrines, why don't you shrine up?" Reply, "I know where the shrines are, just letting the tanks know I'm out of SP and won't be healing."

Here's the deal clerics. I and many others can solo most of the stuff we are running. However, if I wanted to drink 100 pots I wouldn't be in a group. It would have been cheaper (and what I did since I wasn't the PL) to just solo it with a pocket healer. If someone in your party is much more efficient at something, you let that person do it. If you want the healing evenly split up you better be killing, not aggroing everything with your xbow and running for dear life. Stormcleave (and many other quests) can be zerged very fast and it costs you 0 in game resources.

I'm not saying you should nanny every single player in a quest, but if you see someone whose DPS far outweighs the damage they are taking and it costs you nothing to heal them, just throw them a heal. Quests go a lot faster if you don't have 4 DPS bunny hopping in fights trying to self heal while you swing your starter club around and run back to the quest entrance in fear. If you see a player that completely self buffs, knows the quest, and is playing smartly (tripping casters, goes for side/back attacks, etc), realize that player is on your side and part of a good group. If you don't you are going to find yourself standing in the Market wondering why you can only join groups that have 5 idiots in them.

As a side note: I wasn't in a Frenzy. I wasn't taking near as much damage as everyone else, I just wasn't drinking pots because I figured with shrines on every corner there wasn't much point.

[vVAnjilaVv]

I see your point and agree very much...but in defense of what are probably new clerics...the first few levels really are horrible for a cleric when partying.

Once you get to a point where you have all mass spells it's great, and level 11 is a big breakthrough also with aquiring the Heal spell...until that point tho mana is so tight.

What the guy did in SC tho is just moronic...passing up shrines and not using them especially since there are four in the quest....and sorry clerics......u should be healing wf'ed too.....many times they are less of a liability than the rest of the party because of their inherent immunities.

Tip to new clerics/FvS', if ur not a healer tell people up front...99.9% of the time that's why your getting into the party you request to join.

[tomfar72]

Tip to new clerics/FvS', if ur not a healer tell people up front...99.9% of the time that's why your getting into the party you request to join.

This is true, but I'll take it one further. You ARE a healer regardless of spec, but if you choose that you don't want to heal, let those blind inviting you and whispering you asking you to run X quest that you don't want to heal. 99.9% of the time that's why they are whispering you.

[biggin]

And honestly, I've run with this guy before (he has a unique stupid name that is hard to forget), but I must have been on another quest on Norm because I didn't notice he wasn't healing me before. I even have in my Bio that I have Healer's Friend and if you don't want to heal WF just let me know ahead of time. Personally as a cleric I like to see those low-mid level TR's or vet players tear through quests. I like throwing out Soundbursts to help slow the mobs down and keeping those DPS chugging right along, buffing on the go so we can get through quests as efficiently as possible. Why add 10 minutes to a quest waiting for a Barb to chug down pots while you have a full SP bar?

And another side note, I was stopping and using the shrines to try and get what little healing I could out of them, as was the rest of the party. He had plenty of time to shrine, he just didn't want to for whatever reason.

Not trying to make a rant post, I just want clerics (I keep saying clerics because I haven't seen a FVS act like this yet) to know that sometimes SP conservation isn't needed. Sometimes you can go all out with Offensive Casting/Healing/Melee. That's what good clerics can do. If you don't know what quests you can do it in (and a shrine every 50 ft might be a small indicator), just ask. You look a whole lot dumber letting players get incapped in a fight with SP left kiting around a kobold like it's a Pit Fiend.

[rendet]

When playing my WF fighter I constantly ran into healers that would complain about my race or not heal me at all. On occasion I had a healer even tell me that I was lucky clerics healed me at all lol. I always had pots and self healed unless in the middle of big fights and with an 18 fighter 2 rogue ac evasion build I was always the last one standing. This stigma that WF get because of the random no healers friend build is annoying to deal with. My main is a cleric and I have no issue ever healing WF unless they dont take healers friend. I promptly DNG listed all the odd healers that wouldnt heal me and last time I checked they are still below level 10 and my fighter was cap'd a couple months ago. Just let the inexperienced part time healers not bother you and complete the quest and drop group. There are many others that have no issue healing any good player.

[Srozbun]

I had forgotten how bad low level pugs can get sometimes because on my lowbie wiz I usually solo with a friend. However, I recently made a new rogue and was leveling him up. I was in a few groups doing harbor quests on norm who insisted on waiting for a healer (I just left). Also, was in a group doing Cerulean hills on hard, and the lvl 6 WF FvS informed everyone he couldn't heal. One guy in the party flipped out, typed everything in caps, insulted the FvS, and rage quit half way through. We completed it on hard no problem.

Back to your point though, a lot of new players are unfamiliar with how to conserve SP or how to heal properly. I know I've been in groups where as soon as I take damage, I get a heal thrown my way. Also, some of them may have had bad experiences with terrible WF players in the past. My first toon was a battle cleric and I remember being in a group in cerulean hills with two WF who zerged ahead, and completely drained my SP. Then when other people started taking damage I was blamed for not healing well enough. I think what hurts the most though is when you're grouped with other new players who don't know how to avoid taking damage (lets have all the tanks attack the ogre from the front anybody?) and take up the cleric's attention. Then when it comes to healing you, the cleric decides you're not worth the sp and that he'll save it for the squishies. I know I've been in good lowbie pugs before on my WF wiz where I told the cleric I can self heal and he still healed me just because everyone else was working well together and he was bored of not having to heal people.

Anyway, I've run some raids with you before on my high level toons and you were awesome XD. Drop me a tell with your lowbie's name and I can run with him on my WF Wiz, then you won't need a cleric anymore

[Nezichiend]

Wonderfully said. This happens even at cap for me sometimes... I do more DPS than these other noobs, keep me up. That is all.

[Wickednisse]

I have a level 7 FvS that I've been healing alot with and up until last night I'd lacked the experience of healing WF. Last night I ran Jungles of Khyber on casual (I was level 6 at the time) and there was one WF in the group that according to him had a **** ton of HP. I'll admit, I was managing my sp and did not heal him as often as the others because I couldn't afford to run out of SP in between shrines. After the casual run we ran it on normal (I was then level 7) and we picked up a second WF, I dumped gold into buying some wands and even then it was a chore healing both WF and the group (keep in mind I believe the entire group was 2 levels below the quest) and though we wiped on the Inevitable we didn't do too bad and it was great experience for me healing wise. The WF in the group had GREAT attitudes and I know that the one that remained from the casual run did their part by chugging pots and eating hams and such, I had no qualms healing him when I saw his effort at self maintenance - he indeed had a '**** ton' of HP, when he shrined it didn't even bring him close to half health. I know that on my rogue I have UMD and have no problems with wanding myself to help out heals, my monk is path of light so again I have some self maintenance with her as well.

If you have the ability to heal yourself, then do it and try to help the healers out. Get a Mnemonic pot? Toss it to your healer, get a wand, scroll? Same thing. The group I ran with last night was completely awesome in that, it was a great attitude and experience but I did feel bad when I was popping my cure serious on the WF and it was healing them for a whopping 12 hp. They had 20% healer's friend (I asked because like I said I'm still learning and this was my first experience with healing WF) and I felt so inefficient.

Some people do have a 'healer complex' but do not misinterpret that for simple common sense. If you are not within distance of the healer and aggro a bunch of mobs - don't get upset if/when you die. This is true if you have expeditious retreat/striding item/haste and the healer does not. Also, you can't heal through objects such as columns and walls - situational awareness is your friend.

Just a PoV from a still learning healer.

[Frodo_Lives]

Low level PuGs can be an adventure all on their own. Some players are very good, others not so much.

WF hate is (partially) understandable from new healers, there have been some that I have run with that are just so horrible I actually wondered if they were being that bad on purpose. They were such a drain and played so badly while at the same time they came off with the attitude of "ain't I the greatest thing you ever saw" I honestly can't tell you if they were intentionally that bad to provoke a reaction or not, simply because I have a hard time believing that anyone is that stupid.

There are people who play new characters who seem to forget that they aren't on their high level characters any more. The same tactics and playstyles don't work. A shield is often a good investment and using power attack or TWF at level 3 or 4 is usually a waste of time. People forget that sp is a little harder to come by and without the mass cure spells sometimes it doesn't take long to burn through way more than you are comfortable with.

Most of the time at low or mid levels you don't run into bad WF players any more than bad players of any other race, it's just to healers bad WF seem to stand out in the memory banks a little more. As the OP shows there are just as many bad clerics out there as there are bad WF melees. I try to judge everyone on his/her own merit rather than brush an entire race/class with a single stroke.

[ajspjs]

I got a level 7 Barb and just started my cleric. I was in the "Proof is in the Poison" on Hard, and the Healbot kept notifying us every time she used up X amount in Plat from wands and such for healing us. Seriously, is that necessary? IIRC there is only one shrine, and we had quite a few deaths, some by traps but most others by zerging ahead. So my advice?

*Do quests in your level range.
Doing a Lv. 9 quest at Lv. 7 doesn't give you any extra bonus. Melees disable Power Attack, Casters get resisted, Trappers can't find the boxes, and Healers deal with more crits, longer fights, and non-recharging shrines.

*If you don't know anything where every <Noun> is get someone who does.
That Lv. 7 Wizard with 80hp isn't going to make it through those double flame-jet traps on Hard/Elite, even with resistance. If you're group is in a maze, make sure you re-group before seeing what is behind that door. Ever got trapped in a room by yourself with 5 Skeletons?

Just slow down.

[vVAnjilaVv]

I think the one thing that annoys me the most about some offensive casters both divine and arcane, is some of them burn thru their SP way to fast. I think, unless the situation calls for it, that a conservative caster that let's the melee do their thing is far more of an asset than one burning thru their SP a million miles an hour. Yeah sure ur impressive for a few seconds then ur SP is gone and ur a gimp and have nothing left to help the party with. And I did say some...please do not think I am talking about casters in general because I am not....there are many fine offensive casters in the game. But this particular breed of caster annoys the he** out of me.


This is coming from someone who has played all classes to either high level or cap so it's not biased.

[biggin]

Some of you need to reread my OP. I'm a lvl 10 Barb running Stormcleave. I went from the quest entrance, cleared out the entire front, and was finished with the fight by the 2nd shrine to clear out the portal area by the time he even hit me with a divine healing. Maybe 1 shot of heal through the whole quest. You're right, you do need to conserve SP in certain situations. But how is running past 2 shrines, not using them, then running out of SP about 1 minute later during a fight with a named make any sense?

Trust me, after clericing for 4+ years, I know a good party when I see it. I know how to play a melee simply for the fact that I know who in a quest is being effective DPS and who isn't. I play my melee like I would want someone to play if I was the cleric. I pass wands to arcanes at the beginning of every quest and let the clerics know not to top me off after a fight, just throw me heals when we are in the thick of it.

I wasn't zerged off away from the party. I wasn't taking unnecessary aggro from anything. Even if I was, if you know you're quests, Stormcleave on hard with a solid party is very fun and easy, you almost never stop moving, and solid players can wade through the mobs. When I zerg I know how to keep myself up, bunny hop and drink pots. This wasn't the case. This was a cleric not healing a member of the party without any rhyme or reason. This was a cleric who was going to make me chug 50 pots for no reason other than he didn't feel like hitting a shrine even though the rest of the party was. You CAN'T run out of SP in SC unless you just try to. That's bad clericing, don't defend it.

You can look at my past posts. You can see I always champion the clerics cause. But I won't defend bad healers in any way shape or form. I'm beginning to think I may have been swayed to far to one side of this issue. I'm not by any means saying that I downloaded the game and was the best thing DDO had ever seen. I just don't know if new clerics are seeing "be self sufficient" and taking it to far to the extreme. Good divines and arcanes don't need parties, but if kobolds are too much for you to handle make sure you keep alive the players who can handle it.

[toughguyjoe]

I had a really exceptional experience the other night. It was very late my time (EST) and I was bored. I saw an Epic Tharask Arena group up, so I clicked on it. No Healer yet.

Healer joins, a pure 20 cleric. We get into the quest, kill the small group of trash mobs and buff up a bit, Invis etc. Finally, we get to the fighting part, and Start up our deal of Firewalls, Acid Fogs, and once the casters have agro attacking from behind.

Everything is going great for a little while, then a couple mobs get agro'd from outside the range of the freiwalls and such, Can't remember how. I turn and stun one quick with some luck, and take him out, but before he stuns he hits me a couple times.

I'm about 120 Hp down from those attacks, and the cleric puts in Party Chat "Hey Brass, you gotta take care of yourself"

A level 20 cleric, who apparently doesn't heal wf, or feels that Monks can heal themselves full time, or...I dunno. I drank pots, used my meditations and the nice casters reconstructed me with scrolls if i ended up taking significant damage.

It just blew my mind that a 20 cleric wouldn't just toss a heal spell on me and call it a day.

[AZgreentea]

The only WF I have rolled is a Wiz. Since I can self heal, I usually tell the clerics in the groups to not bother healing me unless its an emergency. Might as well save the SP for the tanks, since I dont plan to get hit. I try to keep the WF healed as my wiz, though I see them so infrequently in groups.

When I play my cleric, I usually ask the WF if they want me to heal them. I have met a few WF who would rather I didnt, so now I ask first. I dont have any issues healing them, and I will normally do so if I see them suddenly taking a lot of damage. I would rather heal them than drag their stone back to the shrine.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Everyone in the party should do what ever they can to help themselves and each other.

Obviously a pure raging Barbarian is limited in self healing/curing ability. But he should try.

But all those Rgrs and Pallies, and Brds.....even Rogues and Sorcs with UMD. And with the current Bug Wizards...shoud all be helping out as needed for success of the group.
Ive been in many awesome groups where one guy gets cursed and three guys are racing to see who can be the first to use their wand on him....these are the groups that I like to run with! The groups that have a very bored cleric....if they even have a cleric at all.

No cleric should ever say they will not heal someone.

But if someone is not healing you and you cannot heal yourself for some reason, than you need to adjust your tactics.....

I've had a Ftr with 1Hp and no pots....and no one was healing me.
So I pulled out my throwing dagger and stood in the back and ranged for awhile.....they eventually got the idea, that it might be more beneficial to have me actually tanking...and I eventually got healed by someone.

If you WF guys are hearing a lot of clerics refuse to heal you, I would consider investing in a Cha item, and a Diplomacy item, and making it clear what the alternative is...

[JollySwagMan]

In regards to OP, you are the exception in my PUG experience. Most random Barbs that I have encountered have a playstyle that works against the group and do not take advantages of opportunities to mitigate incoming damage: Crowd Control. Trip. Stunning Blow. Circle-strafing. Fortification. I don't expect a Barb to have any sort of AC, but to be aware that they don't if this is the case.

I love having WF in my PUGs, except for Barbarians. That particular combination is something I think more suited to guild or static group play, where you can depend upon your party to make full use of your focus in DPS.

While it may be more efficient for you to have someone healing you than chugging potions to solo it, it may be more efficient for the party as a whole to have another build in that slot.

Clerics and WF Barbs are not irreconcilable. But it's one of those scenarios that tests the Cleric's ability to drop a CC spell before the Barb takes twice as much SP's worth of healing.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=246249

[biggin]

Wow, I guess I must be in the minortiy here then. Personally, having played clerics for 4 years as all my mains (read: nothing but clerics for 4 years), I must have been doing something wrong this whole time.

I always chug a few pots after each fight, but even if the cleric has a full SP bar and doesn't want to heal me, I should just resign myself to the fact that every quest will cost me 2-4k plat in pots. I think from now on though groups that divide up the healing need to start dividing up the killing, the lockpicking, the hasting, the buffing, every single aspect of DDO there is in every quest. If I see 6 mobs, I'll kill one and let the rest just go past. We need to share the responsibilty don't we? While I stand there and chug pots the cleric can take 10 minutes to kill one minotaur. If the rogue picks a lock then the cleric needs to buy a bell of opening from the DDO store and open the next lock. I mean a rogue can more efficiently pick locks, but everyone can do it, right?

Remember, we aren't talking high level quests here. It's a lot more efficient to heal than it is to try and Soundburst things to death. Either learn to solo or learn to play in a group. There's no point in grouping for me or for them with scaling. I PUG to meet new people and break the boredom of leveling. I play with the group. I hold up my end of what I'm there to do. You need to also do your part.

[haku-ba]

In regards to OP, you are the exception in my PUG experience. Most random Barbs that I have encountered have a playstyle that works against the group and do not take advantages of opportunities to mitigate incoming damage: Crowd Control. Trip. Stunning Blow. Circle-strafing. Fortification. I don't expect a Barb to have any sort of AC, but to be aware that they don't if this is the case.

I love having WF in my PUGs, except for Barbarians. That particular combination is something I think more suited to guild or static group play, where you can depend upon your party to make full use of your focus in DPS.

While it may be more efficient for you to have someone healing you than chugging potions to solo it, it may be more efficient for the party as a whole to have another build in that slot.

Clerics and WF Barbs are not irreconcilable. But it's one of those scenarios that tests the Cleric's ability to drop a CC spell before the Barb takes twice as much SP's worth of healing.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=246249

Hey thanks for linking to my thread. Not sure why you did though, as I don't think it should be used to emphasize your point. Personally, I completely disagree with your point about warforged and barbs.

As was being stated in that thread, usually warforged and barbs only have a problem when they are either being played by new players, or are in a party with players who don't have so much experience playing a divine class. Having been in a situation similar to the OP's I can say that in my experience the vast majority of players will be good to group with and will recognize the things you are bringing to a party, but some players will just keep on refusing to see any positive in a warforged barb.

If the OP is using some pots, playing in a way that maximizes all his skills and is working hard for the party, no divine should refuse to heal him. Sure WF barbs tend to take a lot of damage, usually because they have all the agro and attention of the mobs. Often, many of the other party members are getting free attacks and taking hardly any damage because the barb has all the attention. Does that make them better players, or does that make the barb a less useful class?

To the OP, all I can say is if you find it happening again, do what was suggested by other posters. Sit at the back, let the other party members take some of the heat for a while and see if they notice the difference. Odds are they will.

In quests like stormcleave, the best runs I have had have been when the clerics are CC'ing the mobs and making the whole process a breeze. There is a noticeable difference in how easy a quest goes between one where the divine is using things like hold, sound burst, greater command, and where they are just sitting back and healing. I strongly encourage all divine casters to do more than just heal, as it can make a big difference.

It is hard to be a cleric in this game. People are always on you about healing/not healing blah blah. It is hard to be a barb as you really do get hit a lot. Usually, the people with the experience understand both classes well and are much more accepting. It seems to get better generally though once you start doing lvl 11+ quests in my experience!

[Bladecutter563]

Every single cleric should heal in some way. They're forced to take their healing spells, why wouldn't they use them?

"o i r battelklerick i no hjeal" - Not a good excuse. You have the healing spells. If the party is dying and I see you running in circles bunnyhopping, I'm going to curse my inability to drop group. You'll get squelched and will never see me again.

FvS on the other hand, I don't care if they heal or not. They're not forced to take their healing spells.

I can remember two vivid times when I wanted to punch a cleric over my Ethernet.

1) The Depths. Cleric is a warforged, go figure. Never saw him once pop a heal on anybody. In fact, the only person healing was a bard. All he was doing was whacking at things he couldn't even damage with a sword bragging about how ub3rp00n he was. I swear I heard him call for a hjeal once or twice.

2) The Catacombs. Cleric was some nine year old who clearly wasn't slapped enough. He ran in circles bunnyhopping like it'd help him survive after aggroing fourteen thousand skeletons, screaming like a freakin' banshee over voice chat, singing "LALALALALLALALALAALALLAALALALALALAlalALaLAaLA!!!1 !1!1oneoneeleven" over said voice chat, and generally making me never want to have children. Seriously. Then he died, I took his stone, and he sat in my pocket the whole quest. To my utter torture since he sang the whole **** time.

Phew, that was good to get out there.

[tomfar72]

The other thing to consider is the large number of new players playing this game that are coming from other games. In other games you can drink after every fight if you want to regen SP. Conserving SP for when it's needed is a joke. I'm not making an excuse for the new players, I'm just stating a fact. They have to learn how DDO works. I'm sure the cleric in the OP's post has probably done alot of soloing to get to where he was. Soloing on a low lvl cleric is easy and shrining is not needed at all most of the time because you normally only need to cast a cpl heals the whole quest. Now, said cleric sounds like he has no excuse from his response of "I know where the shrines are, I'm just letting everyone know I'm out of SP and won't be healing." I have heard players complaining about healing WF and using so much SP that they are forced to use SP pots, and that's one thing. SP pots can be expensive for a new player without a higher lvl character to feed them. But I have never seen a person be so lazy as to not use a shrine to get their SP up when they are low. Some new healers will figure things out either on their own, through trial and error, or by reading the forums. Some can figure things out if lead in the right direction by more experienced players. Some just shouldn't be healers because they will never figure it out. Sounds like the OP's healer falls into the last group.

My question to the OP is this; Did you tell the cleric to go shrine to get SP back and you would wait? I know that sounds like something silly to need to tell a healer, but maybe he was afraid of slowing the group up or being left behind. Of course, this level of babysitting shouldn't be needed, but it sounds to me like the healer either didn't know what to do, or was just a piker.