Why Battle Cleric's get a bad name

[Xaargin]

just a quick comment:
I saw someone commenting on the release of the new enh. How will that affect the melee aspect of said battle cleric when most of the goodies for their melee prowess come from spells which, unless I'm mistaken, wont change anytime soon...

this is a purely observational statement no flame war starting intended

[ZeebaNeighba]

just a quick comment:
I saw someone commenting on the release of the new enh. How will that affect the melee aspect of said battle cleric when most of the goodies for their melee prowess come from spells which, unless I'm mistaken, wont change anytime soon...

this is a purely observational statement no flame war starting intended

Just the regular DOOOOoooooOOOMMmmm!!!1! that comes with every other update.

The enhancement pass isn't near finished, heck we haven't even seen the cleric's 3rd prestige yet, so don't bet your life that clerics will or will not be healbots with the enhancement changes.

PS., clerics beat fvs in melee power on the heroic level. (dont start a debate about this, search the forrems, already proven this many times over). so why nitpick on clerics? start with fvs please!

I actually wondered why my favored soul, 17/2/1 class split, doesn't get "hate" for being an Arcane Archer build, like the battle clerics in this thread. Occasionally people ask to make sure I'll heal, but I haven't seen anyone outright say or act like I won't be a healer. It also could be that my 2 split is in ranger, which makes it look like an AA build and people might be more tolerant because I am ranged instead of melee, but I don't really know.

And favored souls technically have less DPS because they get a feat for +2 damage at level 12, and enhancements for +1 damage at levels 15 and 18, while clerics get +6 or +8 damage from divine might. Extremely slight difference

[Rubbinns]

Clerics get a bad name because the players can't do the content, need a healer on them to kill first mob, then complain their healer isn't good enough. Solution= Only join BYOH descriptions.

[FuzzyDuck81]

Recently, I've found that a really good battlecleric type build if you want a good blend of melee dps & healing is actually a wolf form druid You get some nice buffs, a fast attack rate giving good damage output & you can cast mass vigor spells plus mass regenerate to get a nice constant influx of healing without worrying too much about overhealing.

Admittedly you can't do so well at bulk healing, but the flipside is that people will rarely expect you to be an amazing healer & you've always got the get-out clause of "hey, if you can't withstand 3 seconds of getting beaten on between the healing ticks, it's hardly MY fault!"

[Noctus]

Melee battle healers are the way to go currently as a divine. Pure healbots are by default gimped, and caster/evoc divines, while great at soloing suffer a few major flaws IMO.

First off, any divine needs to do more than heal to not drag a group down and/or solo/hold his own in fights. I think only the stauchest purist premade grouper would say otherwise at this point of the games life. Single role toons are dead. Finally.

So, taking that into account you have 2 build paths to go down, melee or caster.
Caster, while having great utility and the full spellbook to play with is nice to have. However, as a divine your primary role is healing or keeping the group up. This inherantly brings up a few thing going against your main function. Most importantly, how much damage is generated by sp spent. When you have essentially free damage coming from groupmates that far surpasses what you can do by evocation spells, that sp has now become less effecient. Also, that sp is no longer to be used on your primary function, thus weakening your role. Good sp management can help this by allowing you to cast some while keeping enough to keep everyobe alive and rolling. Myself, i would like to use my build to its fullest, so caster/healer builds can blow some of thier load but then have to keep some in the tank in reserve just incase. When you reach that low sp threshold you are now effectively playing a healbot, because your evocation focus cannot be used anymore, effectively limitting your build.

Now, once you take the above truth into equation, factor in the extremely high dc's require for endgame into the mix, your instA death spells now are unreliable at best, and unattainable for most, what you effectively do now is use your sp for dps. In a solo envirnment, blade barrier is effiecent for the sp used. In a group setting, its a pia for other members to have to deal with you kiting, infact i wont even group with mad zerging bb kiters as a melee, its just not plain fun.

So it boils down to dps per point spent in the end.
As a melee divine, you dont suffer the same weakenesses. You effectively have "free" damage in the form of your attacks which ars always there, regardless. All you have to do is maintain healing the group while doing dps. Buffs for such a task are minimal sp spent, thus taking all of this into account a melee divine actually has MORE sp allocated towards healing, while simultaniously providing more dps than the caster divines at a much higher dps/sp ratio.

So, in effect the best way to play a divine in full regards of effeciency would be the melee route.

HOWEVER, and this is a big one. Playing a melee divine properly takes a myriad of factors into play.
Firstmost, you absolutely need to put healing everyone above your own personal dps. This takes alot of attention.
In addition, and in my opinion the greatest failing of a battle healer is the ability to stay alive. This might even take precedence over healing everyone else. Generally if the healer dies SHTF and chaos ensues. If a general melee dps dies a quick raise and rebuff and your back on your way.

As a melee healer you need to survive well enough to actually put that free dps to work. This requires positioning, timing of spells, as well as having a solid core of defenses, ac, prr, evasion, saves, etc. Most players can't even do these minor things on less important builds, let alone those whom the groups fate hinges on.

Excellent post! Everything hitting home in it!

[arkonas]

i looked at the feats the op had and i guess i was disappointed to see that he doesnt even have empowered healing. so that means his heals are **** imo. What is the point since empowered healing is the only thing that effects heal/mass heal. empower and maximize dont. he doesnt even have Radiant Servant. So free healing there. So why not dump maximize for empower healing so your heals are much better?