Feedback: Cleric 101 (Work in Progress)

[VorpalUser]

If you're choosing a cleric... HEAL! Wear heavy armor because divine magic isn't affected by spell failure. Concentrate on maxing your heal and concentration skill... and that's about it. I have a cleric and i chose to make it a living pharmacy... and believe me, that's what groups will be expecting from you, and even more from lvl 12 and up. Forget about making a battle cleric. If you wanna have a good fighter that heals, choose a goddam light monk or efficiently multiclass your fighter into a cleric!

[Moorganna]

Having played Clerics in this game for 5 years... (My first character 5 years ago was a clr and he is still fun to play) I now have seven Clr on Thelanis all capped (or nearly so) and by far my favorite is the 40 cha Radiant servant healbot! I have seen several state that cha is a dump stat and yes, turns do regen with RSII BUT, churning out 29 DV 3s to fill up a lvl 20 Bard or topping off another clr between shrines in a raid is FUN! (and handy I might add)
I'll just say that the Clerics that are the most fun to play are the ones that have been planned out to lvl 20 BEFORE creation. There are MANY ways to plan/build YOUR clr, but if you don't know what you want before you start... you won't be happy with what you get! (and probably won't follow through to cap said clr)

All that being said... I HAVE to mention Clogues! I mean, what ELSE is the 'Find Traps' spell for??!! ;-)

[TheDjinnFor]

Yes, but there's another key fact: Due to the design of DDO, a low level Cleric cannot be an offensive caster, not effectively. Before about level 10, there just aren't enough reasonable offensive spells for that to be a workable role.

Maybe that'll change someday with new spells or a prestige specialty for offensive casting. But currently, the only way a lowbie Cleric can be helpful in between healing (or if nobody else is hurting the monsters) is to use a weapon.

...Sorry?

Soundburst (for groups of weak trash like kobolds), Command (for the beefy Ogre types), Holy Smite (for AoE debuffing evil enemies), Chaos Hammer/Orders Wrath (for a great stun against lawful/chaotic creatures) are amazing for both soloing and groups. Then there's Greater Command and Cometfall for upper levels.

I'd rather be the first person into a fight with my cleric and hit a group of mobs with one of those AoE spells, then mop up as a melee. I did it with a 28 pter too.

Most clerics default response to a group of trash at mid levels is to throw a blade barrier then heal the result. The problem is, the trash is dead 5 seconds later and the cleric also needs to throw a mass cure moderate or something because the group took some hits. A good cleric throws a cometfall and then doesn't need to heal anyone

[Angelus_dead]

I'd rather be the first person into a fight with my cleric and hit a group of mobs with one of those AoE spells, then mop up as a melee. I did it with a 28 pter too.

A CC+Melee is one kind of character, and an Offensive Caster is another. A Wizard or Sorcerer can reasonably be an offensive caster at low levels, which would not work for a Cleric. If a low level Cleric isn't attacking with a weapon, then he's got a lot of spare time in combat waiting around.

I did it with a 28 pter too.

Yes, it was the guy I was refuting who claimed a 28 point Cleric could not function in melee.

[TheDjinnFor]

A CC+Melee is one kind of character, and an Offensive Caster is another. A Wizard or Sorcerer can reasonably be an offensive caster at low levels, which would not work for a Cleric. If a low level Cleric isn't attacking with a weapon, then he's got a lot of spare time in combat waiting around.

Spare time? Most mid-level battles last about 3 seconds with 4 melees mauling through them. I barely have enough time to cast a Chaos Hammer before everything is dead unless I'm the first one in.

And for soloing, thanks to dungeon scaling, it's pretty easy to drag a horde of mobs behind you, then turn and throw a Chaos Hammer/Order's Wrath plus Holy Smite combo with some enhancements and a potency IV item and kill them all in a normal, level 8 quest. And you have to throw both of them because it's better than max/emping one of them.

Is it smart to occasionally melee against weak, CCed, low-hp mobs? Yes. As a wizard you wouldn't even bother casting a spell but would just wait for the melees to mop them up... or kite them to the next group of victims, and there's nothing stopping you from doing so as a cleric.

[samho]

Most clerics default response to a group of trash at mid levels is to throw a blade barrier then heal the result. The problem is, the trash is dead 5 seconds later and the cleric also needs to throw a mass cure moderate or something because the group took some hits. A good cleric throws a cometfall and then doesn't need to heal anyone

I'm sorry, but...

If a cleric throw a BB for a group of trash then he also need to mass cure, then either he's doing it wrong or the group just don't understand how to work with the blade barrier.

Actually, for my newly created divine casters, I do have intimidate key map into main hotkey for all of them (even without putting any point into intimidate, just use intimidate ring + greensteel air guard. Usuaully it's plenty for trash).

[DoctorWhofan]

Guess what? Healbots are not self suffiant (which alot of people insist other classes to be) if they cannot protect themselves. This means not just passive spells, either.

[wolflairabyss99]

something new clerics should know is that almost all groups will expect you to play healbot and will not be happy when they see you running around swinging weapons and nuking mobs.

mental toughness is a good feat no matter what type of cleric you are.
extra turning feat is pretty good for both healbots or high cha offensives.

i have found that my playstyle doesn't require any cha. dex is useless to a cleric, a +5 item is good enough for dex capping plate. robes w/o shields are acceptable considering that ac becomes all or nothing around the time you reach gianthold.

playing a cleric can get expensive; buying scrolls, wands, spell components, mana pots(optional). its incredibly rude to demand compensation because clerics are only a part of the group, not the center of it.

[Aashrym]

something new clerics should know is that almost all groups will expect you to play healbot and will not be happy when they see you running around swinging weapons and nuking mobs.

mental toughness is a good feat no matter what type of cleric you are.
extra turning feat is pretty good for both healbots or high cha offensives.

i have found that my playstyle doesn't require any cha. dex is useless to a cleric, a +5 item is good enough for dex capping plate. robes w/o shields are acceptable considering that ac becomes all or nothing around the time you reach gianthold.

playing a cleric can get expensive; buying scrolls, wands, spell components, mana pots(optional). its incredibly rude to demand compensation because clerics are only a part of the group, not the center of it.

I agree that some groups might expect the cleric to play healbot. That does not make it a good idea, however.

Mental Toughness is not a good feat. It has a small return until late in the game and other feats are better. Torc and ConOpp works.

High CHA offensives sounds odd considering spell DCs are WIS based, but there are some CHA enhancements I suppose.

Shields can mitigate damage regardless of AC. RS aura healing while shield blocking. The shield mastery and improved shield mastery can help.

Playing a cleric is only expensive if the cleric chooses to shell out for all of the consumablse and use them for the rest of the party. I am not saying he should not buy consumables, but each player can be responsible for some self healing by buying healing potions. Turning in collectibles for wands provides a lot towards saving costs. Using SP for damage mitigation is more efficient that straight healing.

I disagreed with some of your general comments and added some of my own, which I thought might be less discouraging for new players.

[Malric]

I just wanted to point out a few flaws I noticed in this guide that I think are pretty significant.

First off, it lists the primary 3 stats for a cleric as wis, con & str...

Even when it goes into additional, it lists charisma below int...

Really? I mean this may be suitable for a combat cleric but this is nowhere near realistic for a healer which is the primary role of clerics in DDO. Lets be honest, if your group is looking for a cleric and a combat cleric enters the group, how happy are you about this?

I think yes, the primary stat is Wisdom...

Now considering that the only current prestige class for DDO is radiant servant, and every ability you get from radiant servant is based on your turn undead attempts, which in the end determines your overall ability to heal, I'm sorry to dissagree but I'd place Charisma as #2.

Now everyone needs Con, it's a given stat no matter what class you are. We all take hits and we all want to survive them so yeah, I'd place con as #3.

#4 I would say is str, if you do somehow have to do melee damage then you'll need it to hit, but honestly, unless you're a combat cleric, this is unlikely, however it will determine how much loot you can carry. When you're already wearing heavy armor & possibly a shield, with all the scrolls, spell components, wands, mana pots & other stuff you may be carrying, you'll want to actually be able to loot treasure without becoming burdened.

#5 would be int. concentration is your number one skill you'll want and if you have high enough int you can pickup UMD and diplomacy, it's unlikely you'll have enough int to pick more than that unless you've TR'd a couple times, in which case maybe tumble would be good, or balance or jump.

#6 i place as dex, end of story, you need 12 dex eventually max and no more. In heavy armor you can only get a max dex bonus of +1 in most full plate which is likely what you'll be wearing. Adamantine full plate will be better for you than Mithril because if you're using a shield you're still limited with your max dex and the DR will do you better in the end than 2 AC will at the cost of 4 more stat points (really 6 points if placed in the beginning unless you're elf or drow).

On a 28 point build I would put more like 10 str, 10 dex (why AC Penalty?), 10 con, 18 wis, 14 cha and would dump all optional points into wis.

I believe on my 32 point build I actually went 8 str, 10 dex, 12 con, 8 int, 18 wis, 16 cha

14 con and 14 cha would be perfectly fine too though.

With the wrath of sora kell set 14 str is more than enough str to loot, but honestly, str items and tomes to bring up str later is easy to get and honestly later game if you're still meleeing you're either a battle cleric or you're doing something very wrong.

Feats:

cleric's don't have a ton of SP and later on with all the meta magic feats you have you'll want all the SP you can get, not sure why any build would not incorporate mental toughness. So dump spell penetration and pickup mental toughness which i would actually pickup right after toughness. At very low lvl like 1-2 people don't have enough HP and you don't have enough SP to need Empower healing right away.

also you need to remember empower spell and maximize do not effect the heal spell, so I'm not sure if you really want both of them unless you plan on doing a lot of damage. it will help with mass cure spells, but be aware the cost of something like mass cure serious or critical will become huge when effected by so many meta magic feats.

Anyway I thought I was gonna make a couple small comments but as I read this build it opens up a whole can of worms and dissagreements for me, so I'll stop now.

If anyone in game is interested in my pure healing build, that is still capable of defending itself when needed, hit me up on cannith, I'm usually on Malric, Celes, Traci or Mondain.

Anyone that knows me or has grouped with me knows I know my role as a healer very well, take it very seriously, and am quite proficient at it.

[xtchizobr]

If you're choosing a cleric... HEAL! Wear heavy armor because divine magic isn't affected by spell failure. Concentrate on maxing your heal and concentration skill... and that's about it. I have a cleric and i chose to make it a living pharmacy... and believe me, that's what groups will be expecting from you, and even more from lvl 12 and up. Forget about making a battle cleric. If you wanna have a good fighter that heals, choose a goddam light monk or efficiently multiclass your fighter into a cleric!

the Heal skill is quite broken at the moment. it simply serves no useful purpose ever. like Repair. Clerics are unfortunate in that the Heal skill is one of their few class skills, but they generally have low intelligence anyway, so why care about skills when you get so few points? since you get so few skill points, though, and since pretty much everything is a cross-class, then max Concentration and throw any remaining points into Balance (where they will do the most good).

the problem with the Heal skill is that at later levels recovering HP while you're at a shrine or safe spot is trivial since there are so many options available to high level characters (and if the cleric is alive and standing around next to you, he definitely is capable of pumping your health bar without forcing you to use the shrine). the theory behind the skill was that it would save a lot of spell points by allowing everyone to be recovered to full health when they rest near a teammate with Healing... except that it doesn't recover enough to completely heal most characters, it doesn't work on Warforged (which would be the most expensive characters for a Cleric to heal) and, as i said, hp are trivial to recover starting in the mid levels (when non-divine characters begin to be able to UMD wands or afford tons of potions or whatever). in the low levels, clerics aren't stressed for SP anyway since high AC will allow a character to solo a dungeon quite easily without ever getting hit in the first place (traps still hurt i guess). wand-whipping Cure Lights is quite cheap and effective, as well.

my advice to new Clerics: the Heal skill is useless. do not waste skill points there. ever. the Heal skill enhancements, however, are required to get your Radiant Servant PrE, but they're pretty cheap and refundable, and your PrE is definitely worth it.

[Letrii]

Don't forget your eternal wand for nuking at low level.

[xavyre]

hey fordytwo do you mind makeing a bard 101 because im going to Tr into a bard soon and i really need help Tring from a ranger to a bard alot of difrenet stuff

[Khuul99]

Just a small thing but as a cleric I hardly ever run around without quicken on, so for me concentration is usually a wasted skill set. If I scroll, I'll do that from a safe spot.

I usually put more points into balance and jump instead of concentration but that might be a personal choice and life is abit awkward for a battle cleric until you taken quicken...

[Yagi]

I prefer to do everything that I am capable of doing.

[sirgog]

Just a small thing but as a cleric I hardly ever run around without quicken on, so for me concentration is usually a wasted skill set. If I scroll, I'll do that from a safe spot.

I usually put more points into balance and jump instead of concentration but that might be a personal choice and life is abit awkward for a battle cleric until you taken quicken...

It's not always possible to avoid damage while scrollhealing.

Cough, cough, Tower of Despair/Vision of Destruction with their teleporting trash mobs. TOD you can rely on Invisibility and not stand near anyone else to avoid being cleaved, but in VOD that is less of an option as you usually want to be close enough to (non-tank) party members to use your Aura.

The epic Cojoined Abashai Devastator takes this same issue even further, as the trash mobs there all see through Invisibility.

[Creaturz]

Primary strengths-
*Healing
*buffing
*stuns/commands
*undead slaying

If you are one of those melee clerics, guess what? You fail. Go get Fvs or make a paladin. If you are a nuke cleric, guess what? You fail again. The line of direct dmg spells in the divine list is extremely poor compared to the arcane list. The cleric class is not designed to be melee or nuking, except for undead perhaps.

In a group-
If you are thinking it would be better to swing a mace at some random mob instead of keeping vigilance over the parties hps, you need to stop playing a cleric now and find a different class. YOUR job as a cleric is THE most important job in the group, and raids dont exist without you. That job is not to spend all your sp buffing everyone up, though some buffs are nice. Your job is to have sp to HEAL.

In a raid-
No other situation will test your worth more than a raid. The demand on the cleric to buff/heal/raise dead is huge and so time consuming that if you even try to swing a club to hit the dragon, you will be booted by the raid leaders. It is in these situations that you learn what buffs are essential above all others. Aid/Elemental prot/death ward to name a few. Even so, again, never spend alot of sps on buffing. a fighter with aid being smacked to neg100 or disintegrated = a wasted aid. Same fighter being smacked close to zero then receiving a heal = much better. Hours could be spent covering all the bases on raid sense, but only time and experience can really show you. Get out there and raid, and stick to your basics. No club swinging or nuking clerics on raids please.

Soloing-
Even here, nuking or swinging a club is going to be fustrating at times, cause it takes forever to kill the mobs. The one real way out of this to solo is when you reach the insta-kill spells. Slay livings/harms/etc. THESE are as close as clerics get to nuking, and they can be powerful here, but only against a low number of mobs.

More

[sirgog]

Primary strengths-
*Healing
*buffing
*stuns/commands
*undead slaying

If you are one of those melee clerics, guess what? You fail. Go get Fvs or make a paladin. If you are a nuke cleric, guess what? You fail again. The line of direct dmg spells in the divine list is extremely poor compared to the arcane list. The cleric class is not designed to be melee or nuking, except for undead perhaps.

In a group-
If you are thinking it would be better to swing a mace at some random mob instead of keeping vigilance over the parties hps, you need to stop playing a cleric now and find a different class. YOUR job as a cleric is THE most important job in the group, and raids dont exist without you. That job is not to spend all your sp buffing everyone up, though some buffs are nice. Your job is to have sp to HEAL.

In a raid-
No other situation will test your worth more than a raid. The demand on the cleric to buff/heal/raise dead is huge and so time consuming that if you even try to swing a club to hit the dragon, you will be booted by the raid leaders. It is in these situations that you learn what buffs are essential above all others. Aid/Elemental prot/death ward to name a few. Even so, again, never spend alot of sps on buffing. a fighter with aid being smacked to neg100 or disintegrated = a wasted aid. Same fighter being smacked close to zero then receiving a heal = much better. Hours could be spent covering all the bases on raid sense, but only time and experience can really show you. Get out there and raid, and stick to your basics. No club swinging or nuking clerics on raids please.

Soloing-
Even here, nuking or swinging a club is going to be fustrating at times, cause it takes forever to kill the mobs. The one real way out of this to solo is when you reach the insta-kill spells. Slay livings/harms/etc. THESE are as close as clerics get to nuking, and they can be powerful here, but only against a low number of mobs.

More

In raids, it's usually the case that multiple divines take turns healing.

When it's not your turn to heal, you contribute a lot more swinging a weapon (assuming you can stay alive) than you do sitting behind a rock. If you are lucky enough to own a Torc of Raiyum, you might even gain SP out of being in a melee.

Playing a melee divine takes skill, and bad ones are terrible, but they bring unique abilities to raids. And unlike the Barbarian they might replace in your raid, they can shift gears and heal the whole raid if another cleric disconnects.

[Creaturz]

In raids, it's usually the case that multiple divines take turns healing.

When it's not your turn to heal, you contribute a lot more swinging a weapon (assuming you can stay alive) than you do sitting behind a rock. If you are lucky enough to own a Torc of Raiyum, you might even gain SP out of being in a melee.

Playing a melee divine takes skill, and bad ones are terrible, but they bring unique abilities to raids. And unlike the Barbarian they might replace in your raid, they can shift gears and heal the whole raid if another cleric disconnects.

If a cleric is swinging a weapon, then a cleric is in argo range of fresh pulls and a cleric is not paying close attention to others situations. Of course, im sure if it's a relaxing little raid, unique things can be done to entertain.

[TheDjinnFor]

If a cleric is swinging a weapon, then a cleric is in argo range of fresh pulls and a cleric is not paying close attention to others situations.

Reread the first sentence of the post you quoted for the response to this sentence.