FvS and Clerics should be OP

[Xezrak]

Yes, FvS and Clerics should be OP, why? Already in PuGs the last spot to fill in a group is the healer, yes if you are lucky enough to be in a well organised guild maybe you have healers for your raids and elite runs but when it comes to the PuG scene it is quite a different story.

I mean Devs just log into a server and you will see that there will be a few PuGs with the last spot waiting to be filled by a healer.

Having played healers to level 20 with most of my runs with PuG groups I can tell you it can get quite stressful and you have to be on top of your game throughout the quest especially during raids or you could potentially lead the group to wiping (yes I know with a good group this may not always be case but in a PuG raid/run the healer has significantly more responsibility).

You also spend alot more in game plat on scrolls/mana pots then most other classes.

Now because of these reasons my main is no longer a FvS (although I do have an alt level 20 fvs). That being said I really don't mind if FvS/Cleric are more OP than other classes, make blade barrier/implosion a little more powerful, give them more sp, I don't mind how just make players want to play divines. I really don't think the overwhelming majority of players want to play a divine to be heal bot. If you do play a healer to be a pure healbot and have full epiced out gear please link your toon because I highly doubt that many such players will exist.

Long story short - encourage more divines, even if it means they will be slightly OP.

I think if we want to make the game harder, make it harder in a way that doesn't make it disproportionately harder on the healers.

[budalic]

Long story short - encourage more divines, even if it means they will be slightly OP.

The issue is that, currently, on live, easiest way to do pretty much every endgame raid except house C ones is just to pile up 10-12 divines (mostly favored souls) and few of the other classes for specialist task they can do easier than divines (say, blowing up crystal in shroud part 2; or dealing elemental damage to cojoined abishai devastator).

As far as being op goes, I'd rather have every class self-healing and do away with healer role, but I understand that's not common opinion. Still, most quest parties lately I've seen usually have a sorc or two, a wiz or two, a fvs or two, perhaps a cleric or artificer, and 0-2 token melees. Granted, I usually have few friends with me that also play casters, so it might be skewed.

[Emili]

The reason you do not see tons of divines apply for pug spots on live often is because they are generally more powerful than most other classes already, Very few need a group of melee to do anything and come raiding there are far more underpowered melee than underpowered divines out there... so they tend to stay within known circles. When they see a pug spot up they question themselves before joining.

i.e. should they take the chance and costs or go raid with people they know will get it done? All it takes is one or two bad experiences and they're put in the hole flipping the bill due to someone else.

To sum it up Clerics and FvS are two of the most self-suffcient and adequate classes in the game already, and is the lacking average of other classes generally at thier level keeps them from taking risks - so they do things themselves.

My suggestion to the author of the OP is to roll up a divine - Cleric, FvS or Druid when they come out, then you'd understand why few of us pug them. Personally in any quest I just go solo or take the first people to respond ... You never really need a healer dedicated postion outside of some raid.

[Ertay]

Raids are another story, but if I play my divine and see a group waiting to fill with a "need healer" tag I avoid it like the plague. Healing those guys is usually not worth the sp it takes, I'll gladly throw a few heals around in a byoh group but being relegated to healbot duty is neither fun nor effective.

[hifdfklgdfdkg]

The reason you do not see tons of divines apply for pug spots on live often is because they are generally more powerful than most other classes already, Very few need a group of melee to do anything and come raiding there are far more underpowered melee than underpowered divines out there... so they tend to stay within known circles. When they see a pug spot up they question themselves before joining.

i.e. should they take the chance and costs or go raid with people they know will get it done? All it takes is one or two bad experiences and they're put in the hole flipping the bill due to someone else.

To sum it up Clerics and FvS are two of the most self-suffcient and adequate classes in the game already, and is the lacking average of other classes generally at thier level keeps them from taking risks - so they do things themselves.

My suggestion to the author of the OP is to roll up a divine - Cleric, FvS or Druid when they come out, then you'd understand why few of us pug them. Personally in any quest I just go solo or take the first people to respond ... You never really need a healer dedicated postion outside of some raid.

haha, i've rolled a divine and man are they "easy to solo"(but with gear)... yes you always get those rare groups that die a lot, just don't raise em take em to the shrine....
but there is a bit of a bias to your post of "thinking things through" for me i just join pugs for the fun. (alas this is an mmo not a solo rpg where its only yourself carrying the weight...) yeah there is always those few groups to get a healer, but hireling are there for the support and when your doin a raid just ask the "who channel" go through the fvs and cleric range and ask if you would like to come.... your sure to get at least one yes out of those many you ask

[Emili]

haha, i've rolled a divine and man are they "easy to solo"(but with gear)... yes you always get those rare groups that die a lot, just don't raise em take em to the shrine....
but there is a bit of a bias to your post of "thinking things through" for me i just join pugs for the fun. (alas this is an mmo not a solo rpg where its only yourself carrying the weight...) yeah there is always those few groups to get a healer, but hireling are there for the support and when your doin a raid just ask the "who channel" go through the fvs and cleric range and ask if you would like to come.... your sure to get at least one yes out of those many you ask

May call it bias or jaded or maybe a tad bit of drama avoidance. All the same I do not mind pugging so much, but every once in a while you run into those fellas who think just because they can swing a weapon, they should, and just because you can heal them thru hell an' back, you should... yet show them a little better efficient way and because it does not involve them sucking up blue bars as much they tend go off the deep end.

[budalic]

Long story short - encourage more divines, even if it means they will be slightly OP.

I think if we want to make the game harder, make it harder in a way that doesn't make it disproportionately harder on the healers.

Oh, yes, also encouraging people to roll divines because they are OP doesn't mean they will heal.

I mean, I have FvS because I like the class. I won't heal anything but raids with her, and I try to avoid raid healing too, if I can...

[alexp80]

Healing on pugs usually means:

Run like a chicken with the head cut off to follow other chickens with their heads cut off but curiosly screaming HEALZZZ!

Healing is a pleasure with competent melees, but they are so hard to find.

[Udalric]

Dirty , stressful work should be more rewarded that's obvious. That's how economics work - if nobody/few wants to do particular job (healing) you are going to pay more wages or give other benefits to encourage them.

Personally i've never met 20lvl epic geared healbot , existing healbot toons are builded as guild raid undergeared healing bots , they are not main toons, nobody wants to play healing slave that's ruining fun for sure.

[Aelonwy]

My main is my cleric, Aelonwy, on Thelanis. She isn't a healbot, she's a caster cleric however i do mainly heal with her and cast offensively for situational purposes. I do not seek for my cleric to be OP (never played a FVS) but I would appreciate the devs changing the healing of groups and raids to be less resource intensive. Perhaps this could be done in the enhancment pass by making healing enhancements cheaper or better, or by making healing spells slightly less expensive sp pt wise, or reducing the animation length of heals somewhat.

Essentially, if they want to encourage healing they should stop making things so expensive for us. Its great when someone is kind enough to reimburse their healer but you can bet it doesn't happen that often in PUGS. Typically, we get the other end of the stick... that is rude ppl complaining that we aren't behaving like their personal hireling. Don't get me wrong, I understand that the devs have zero control over ppl's behavior, but if they made healing as effortless and inexpensive as possible (while still maintaining game balance) it would be less of a hassle and aggravation to heal groups that are not made up of the most considerate ppl. (By considerate, I mean not running off from group, not running ahead to pad kill count, yelling and/or swearing at me because I stayed with group instead of following them around.) There are only so many ppl I can put on my list as not fun to group with.

I would also appreciate getting some enhancements to my offensive spells that currently don't exist such as fire and untyped dmg but I'm not holding my breath since it feels like they don't want clerics to do anything but heal. I'd like my domains too but thats probably never going to happen because cleric is a F2P class.

[Alcedes]

i leveled both a cleric and a fvs. and i must admit, the early levels i was primarily a healbot due to being a bit of a newb when i rolled them. but both of them saw the same results. struggle, struggle, struggle...get BB, pwn, own, ***pwn, cap.


they both hit 20 wearing some starter gear. neither of them ever struggled after BB. I am not a great divine player. they dont need to be buffed up to be OP. they are already "OP". divines are a great class that dont really need anything else more than a tweak here and there.

[Kawai]

My main is my cleric, Aelonwy, on Thelanis. She isn't a healbot, she's a caster cleric however i do mainly heal with her and cast offensively for situational purposes. I do not seek for my cleric to be OP (never played a FVS) but I would appreciate the devs changing the healing of groups and raids to be less resource intensive. Perhaps this could be done in the enhancment pass by making healing enhancements cheaper or better, or by making healing spells slightly less expensive sp pt wise, or reducing the animation length of heals somewhat.

Essentially, if they want to encourage healing they should stop making things so expensive for us. Its great when someone is kind enough to reimburse their healer but you can bet it doesn't happen that often in PUGS. Typically, we get the other end of the stick... that is rude ppl complaining that we aren't behaving like their personal hireling. Don't get me wrong, I understand that the devs have zero control over ppl's behavior, but if they made healing as effortless and inexpensive as possible (while still maintaining game balance) it would be less of a hassle and aggravation to heal groups that are not made up of the most considerate ppl. (By considerate, I mean not running off from group, not running ahead to pad kill count, yelling and/or swearing at me because I stayed with group instead of following them around.) There are only so many ppl I can put on my list as not fun to group with.

I would also appreciate getting some enhancements to my offensive spells that currently don't exist such as fire and untyped dmg but I'm not holding my breath since it feels like they don't want clerics to do anything but heal. I'd like my domains too but thats probably never going to happen because cleric is a F2P class.

I'll /sign this portion... the Clerics need some luv, way overdue...

[mute_mayhem]

A well-played divine is already OP, there's no need to make them even more so...although my FvS wouldn't mind getting even more powerful.

I join pug raids for fun, because it's not a guaranteed completion/snoozefest like the guild/channel runs I normally heal. Having a 99% chance of success gets boring after completing a raid for the 300th time.

[DeafeningWhisper]

The main reason you see few healers puging has nothing to do with the game or it's mechanics and a lot more to do with the people playing the game.

Too many want to tell us how to play, to stcik to healing, to basicaly be their slightly smarter, with more hp/sp hireling...

So unless they have a patch to fix stupidity and jerks, yeah more OP Cleric/FvS is not gonna help.

[taurean430]

I'd say they need two things viewing the new xpac stuff:

Earthquake
Storm of Vengence

Oh, and Sunbeam (wishful thinking). But dead serious on the first others.

Some people actually build raid healing capable casting divines. It only makes sense to give them the spells their counterparts in PnP have out of the box as they say.

[Kawai]

So unless they have a patch to fix stupidity and jerks, yeah more OP Cleric/FvS is not gonna help.

I'm afraid that would actually apply too ALL classes... ~just say'n

[Alcedes]

My main is my cleric, Aelonwy, on Thelanis. She isn't a healbot, she's a caster cleric however i do mainly heal with her and cast offensively for situational purposes. I do not seek for my cleric to be OP (never played a FVS) but I would appreciate the devs changing the healing of groups and raids to be less resource intensive. Perhaps this could be done in the enhancment pass by making healing enhancements cheaper or better, or by making healing spells slightly less expensive sp pt wise, or reducing the animation length of heals somewhat.

Essentially, if they want to encourage healing they should stop making things so expensive for us. Its great when someone is kind enough to reimburse their healer but you can bet it doesn't happen that often in PUGS. Typically, we get the other end of the stick... that is rude ppl complaining that we aren't behaving like their personal hireling. Don't get me wrong, I understand that the devs have zero control over ppl's behavior, but if they made healing as effortless and inexpensive as possible (while still maintaining game balance) it would be less of a hassle and aggravation to heal groups that are not made up of the most considerate ppl. (By considerate, I mean not running off from group, not running ahead to pad kill count, yelling and/or swearing at me because I stayed with group instead of following them around.) There are only so many ppl I can put on my list as not fun to group with.

I would also appreciate getting some enhancements to my offensive spells that currently don't exist such as fire and untyped dmg but I'm not holding my breath since it feels like they don't want clerics to do anything but heal. I'd like my domains too but thats probably never going to happen because cleric is a F2P class.

"I would appreciate the devs changing the healing of groups and raids to be less resource intensive."
This would make things SO much better. Currently it is very resource intensive to heal a group.

"if they made healing as effortless and inexpensive as possible (while still maintaining game balance) it would be less of a hassle and aggravation to heal groups that are not made up of the most considerate ppl."
This would actually have a very positive impact on the pug experience. Healers would be more likely to hit that LFM

"I mean not running off from group, not running ahead to pad kill count, yelling and/or swearing at me because I stayed with group instead of following them around.)"
I am very clear when I heal. I tell them that my heals will be centered on <insert name here> and if they want to be healed, i suggest they stay close. and i do not mind letting people die in order to get my point across.

[voodoogroves]

Nah, what they need to do is

- auto-enlarge any and all healing spells (like they did for rays)
- have an option provide a feedback that is both visual and audio for THE ENTIRE PARTY that says "Joe tried to heal Sam, but Sam is blocked / out of range / stupid"

I realize this second may make it difficult for some people to lie and say "oh I tried to heal you, you were blocked" when really they weren't paying attention.

Own your mistakes healers. I'll be the first to say that you died because I was watching something else, but then again I make no claims to be a great healer ;-)

[herzkos]

the reason (and this may have already been stated) that pug "healers" are hard to find
is that there are very few players out there that want to be the "sidekick" to all of the
egomaniac heroes. Not all pugs are that way but a good number of them are.

newsflash: babysitting the superstars red bar isn't a whole lot of fun for most players.
especially when said superstar is rude and obnoxious and takes no care for his own
health because that's what his hireling -err i mean healer- is for.

[Aelonwy]

I am very clear when I heal. I tell them that my heals will be centered on <insert name here> and if they want to be healed, i suggest they stay close. and i do not mind letting people die in order to get my point across.

Oh I don't mind letting ppl die that are causing the group more strife (and me more resources) than necessary, but for some reason these type of ppl seldom seem to learn any lesson from their behavior. I've had them threaten to blacklist me (and I'm thankful), I've seen them recall out when I left them as a soul stone for longer than 60secs and then if the party leader wasn't quick enough they re-enter, I've squelched a handful for the language they use when ppl don't do everything their way, I've been in groups where I was griped at for not chugging sp pt potions, or not carrying enough of them or not using my entire stock of heal scrolls so group could complete(cause you know after you've used a certain amt and things aren't getting any better that you're just wasting them)... and I've had a handful of party members/leaders tell me they are so sorry that so&so was such a PITA and to ignore/squelch ppl like that, because yes there are good and bad in PUGS. The problems arise from clerics/healers having these bad experiences too frequently.