Clerics

Feedback, bugs, and general gameplay related discussion.
kwirl
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Clerics

Postby kwirl » Sat Jan 24, 2009 5:46 am

Double the duration of vitality.
Move holy/unholy word to 8th circle
give clerics true sight at 9th circle
create a 10th circle area of effect heal spell
give us a 9th circle con-based pulsing heal spell (screw you nancy boys, we love ogres!)
10th circle group vitality, quested spell
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Re: Clerics

Postby Gormal » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:04 am

This is a well thought out and well substantiated post





















































Just kidding.
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Re: Clerics

Postby kwirl » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:06 am

shev asked why clerics were considered 'boring' - these are some changes that i think would go a ways towards changing them from 'boring' to much more flexible and able to contribute to a group more fully

vitality is a boring and tedious duty, which is not by any stretch to be considered difficult, just a requisite buffer that is often what requires most of a cleric's time in a zone group. A 10th circle group vitality helps alleviate this, while doubling the vitality duration lessens the strain of tediousness further. Make this group vitality spell both quest, and require a spell component and I think we can say that it is not a game-breaking change.

as it stands now, the only spell above 7th circle that substantially contributes to a zone group is resurrect, GRP is nice, but does not meet the definition of 'substantially, btw', and lets face it, most of the time in zones the damage that matters is area based, making shamans and bards superior to clerics for healing purposes, which is somewhat silly if you ask me. a cleric contributes nothing but vit and full heals, maybe the occasional silence and res. yippe.

shamans have damage, can stone, group heal is more powerful than the most potent cleric spell available, and they get pets to boot (which is meaningless in a zone, but gives them a lot more solo flexibility). oh, and they also get heal and vit, so that means that full heal is about the only in-combat advantage spell that clerics have in their arsenal.
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Re: Clerics

Postby Gormal » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:21 am

Its almost like you listened to what people who've played a cleric at endgame said for an hour and then posted what you could remember.
































No wait, its exactly like that.
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Re: Clerics

Postby Adriorn Darkcloak » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:27 am

Get rid of group vigorize from clerics, give it to rangers. Give clerics group vitality, or group armor if group vit seems too powerful. DO NOT give them group healing spells, as that is what shamen do.

Up the healing points received from full heal, a little.

Full harm blows, blows, blows. I once cast it on one of the TP mobs and it didn't die...

Turn undead is 100% useless. Make it do actual damage to undead.

REMOVE MAGIC RESISTANCE FROM UNDEAD MOBS. (liches/dracoliches being the exceptions)

The thing is, a cleric in an undead zone should be king. Turn undead + other group anti undead spells (oh wait there's only holy word (haha, same circle as full heal) and dburst) should reign supreme and make the cleric seem like a superhero in undead zones like CC, crypts, etc. The problem is, undead zones can be counted in one hand.
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Re: Clerics

Postby kwirl » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:52 am

I didn't say those were my ideas Gormal, some of them, I contributed. Those are the suggestions from the GCC chat earlier and that I have after playing a cleric on Toril, Duris, Medievia, and WoW over the last 15 years. Of course, halfass offhanded insults are easier to write than constructive criticism or your fetish for agility/armor class.
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Re: Clerics

Postby Gormal » Sat Jan 24, 2009 7:06 am

Alright, I'll contribute in a constructive manner since I feel like people are complaining about inane stuff and not focusing on the real problems with the class.


As I see things, there are 3 aspects of this game: Solo, small group, 15man. Clerics are the only class that really shine in only one of these areas, (small group). When it comes to soloing, they're lack of offensive skills/spells really puts them at a disadvantage. When in a full 15-man group that's well-composed, shamans and bards make up for almost all of the healing if doing their job. Yes clerics heal a little here and there. They make up for dragon procs, and cure paralysis, but thats really where their niche ends.

Yes, clerics can silence, quake, and curse; but these roles are filled by druids and shamans as well. In a group with 2 shamans and a bard, the cleric will spend 90% of their time casting vitality or silence. Resurrect is the only compelling reason to bring a cleric in place of another shaman. Cleansing paralysis is important for manticores, but if people are consenting a dispeller like we used to, then this role is essentially filled as well. I keep hearing the argument that "when things go badly clerics really shine", well wouldn't you rather the class contribute something meaningful before things got to that point?

There's the problem as I see it: meaningful abilities. I hear people whining for upgrades to full harm, a weak prismatic spray, or some other shiny spell thats really not going to be more than eye candy.

help cleric wrote:Clerics, regardless of alignment, are also healers and protectors and
concern themselves with the health and welfare of the people they come in
contact with. To heal and to protect those whom you wish to convert to
the "True Faith" is to build a cornerstone for that conversion.


I disagree with the "group healing is a shaman's job" statement, because its a statement about how things are: and how they are is screwed up. Giving clerics a weak aoe heal that does not cure blind doesn't weaken a shaman's role in the group at all. However, if people are dead set of clinging to shamans and bards having the only aoe healing, then why not consider the third type of heal that Toril hasn't yet used: the heal over time (HoT)?

An 8th circle HoT that ticks at the start of each combat round for 10 rounds, and heals for around 500 total health. With a cast time double that of full heal's, it should give clerics enough oomph to really make an impact in healing. Another idea with this that we came up with, was to make it heal for a base amount plus a secondary amount based on the target's racial constitution. A bandaid fix to help balance against agility, yes, but what fixes aren't bandaids with 2.0 "on the horizon"?

My other suggestion is to change cure critical into a flash-type heal. Possibly move it to 4th circle, reduce its cast time to 1-2 stars, and have it heal for around 70hp. Being able to drop quick heals on people would be a really fun dynamic to the class.


These suggestions are in regards to clerics in a 15-man setting as I feel that is the most important scenario to balance classes against first. As for full harm and blind being quite useless, and a general lack of offense; I agree that the class needs some work. Blind duration should be increased to double its current or close to. Full harm could just use a buff in damage I guess, its not gonna hurt anything and will help clerics out soloing exp I guess. Vitality could use a duration boost to 6-10 minutes.

Spells aside, I think that giving clerics double attack up to 70ish would be a nice boost for soloability that wouldn't really affect group situations. I didn't touch on a lot of things like splash healing, debuffing, or group buffs, but I think those options are not the best solutions.
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Re: Clerics

Postby Ragorn » Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:13 am

Give Clerics a spell that performs group vitality, group armor, and group bless all in one casting. Make it the highest possible spell circle. This would eliminate a lot of the tedious spellup.

Add a heal over time spell that emulates full heal but takes several waves to accomplish. This would be useful for pre-emptively spamming on a tank that's about to walk into a difficult room, and it would be great in small group for mitigating the damage dealt between full heals.

Give clerics double attack that caps at 75, and make sure they have all the necessary weapon proficiency skills (and offense). This would help small group somewhat, and solo somewhat.

Move holy/unholy word to a circle that would allow Clerics to use it rather than memming a bunch of garbage.

**I realize it looks like I just ripped off a bunch of what Gormal said. In truth, I did not. In truth, I (and he) have just explained how Clerics on Duris already work.
- Ragorn
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Re: Clerics

Postby Inames » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:30 am

An 8th circle HoT that ticks at the start of each combat round for 10 rounds, and heals for around 500 total health.


didnt miracle do this in previous incarnations of the game? i think it would be a reasonable suggestion to bring this spell back for player use, add to the number of rounds it goes off for, last i heard it was 3 full strength fheals spanning a 10-15ish second timeframe, i think making it last 5-10 rounds randomly (but influenced by spec healing of course) and reduce the healing amount to 50-100 each time (influenced by spec healing again) would be a really good 9th or 10th circle spell.

i also agree that vitality doesnt last long enough, is tedius, and boring... and that other than the occasional heal after a wing buffet from a dragon a cleric is useless for healing when theres a shaman and bard in group.

BUT....

as gormal often likes to say...

it will be fixed in 2.0, as has shevarash already pointed out with the domain spells and reworking of the spellcasting system in general...


EDIT: i also want to point out... that a HoT type spell could be overpowering with chimera circlet... unless of course you couldnt stack 4 on a single player at once...
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Re: Clerics

Postby Gormal » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:45 am

With a long cast time as I suggested, the HoT would be mainly for spellups. I figured that would be easier than coding it so you could only have so many ticking at the same time.
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Re: Clerics

Postby Dalar » Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:57 pm

Would be nice if you didn't have to wait for spells to fade.
It will be fixed in Toril 2.0.
Aremat group-says 'tanks i highly suggest investing 20 silver in training weapons from cm to cut down on the losing scales to shield'
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Re: Clerics

Postby Disoputlip » Sun Jan 25, 2009 8:50 pm

I think the change that is needed is that warriors needs to be hit in an other way.

I am a little unsure how, but i can see some of the new zones, especially CPV is really good at damaging players so the cleric becomes useful. In CPV 2 clerics could even be a good thing.

Mabye I should elaborate.

Right now, some tanks, especially those +max_agi elves, don't get hit by melee. Then all that really can hit is level 57 demons or area spells, and especially psi damage.

If there was a more steady stream of damage, then clerics could more easily do the thing they are supposed to do, heal.

I don't nessesarily think anything about the cleric needs to be changed to "fix clerics".
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Re: Clerics

Postby Disoputlip » Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:33 pm

Forgot something, in the proccess, fixing Thac0, then automatically we will also get back the meaty 1700 hp barbarian and dwarf warriors, intead of elves being the best class to everything.

Clerics love to heal those.
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Re: Clerics

Postby kiryan » Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:25 am

The part that makes clerics boring in zone is spending 90% of their time casting vit. I would double/triple how long vit lasts. This will also dramatically reduce the # of vits clerics have to mem which will increase their ability to cast their 200 hp heals (vit and heal are same circle).

I was originally against group vit, then for, and now I think I'm against it again. Operationally it could be a worse solution especially if it doesn't refresh the current vit if someone already has it. You'll have people in and out of the room. Just a lot of irritation and you'd still have to recast it every 5 minutesish. If we do put in a group vit, I request that it be a shaman/druid sized vit.

I love the heal over time (HoT) dynamic in other games, but I don't see it working here with how our damage mitigation works. You get near perfect damage mitigation with blur, scales and displace up, so when they fall you start losing 400 hps a round. With a HoT, the waves are going to be so small its pointless or so large that it makes everything else pointless.

Theres a great set of posts from a few years ago about how the way our damage mitigation causes a lot of our problems. For example if scale blocked 90% of damage from each hit instead of blocking all damage 90% of the time, you'd have steady decreases in HPs that may make HOT useful and may make small heals useful. With current dynamics, waves will be hitting someone at max hps, and healing them a meanlingless amount in the 2 rounds after spells drop and they die.

Regardless of what you do to vit, cleric won't become more fun, just less tedious. To make it fun, clerics need to be able to be meaningful at their primary duty. In the absence of real damage avoidance changes, the only solution is to give clerics much faster heals so they can respond to conditions fast enough to be meaningful. I'm not sure whether just making heal and full heal insta cast would do this or whether we need a new complement of spells.

My best suggestion for changes to zone play.

1. a 2nd circle vit last 15 minutes per cast but only gives shaman vit hps (possibly full vit hps)
2. a 8th circle spell that heals 100 hps with 0* with no lag.
3. a 10th circle spell that heals 2000 hps with 0*, paras the cleric for 4 rounds.
4. a 10th circle spell that heals 150 hps each round for 3 rounds, 0* cast. (with a victim constitution modifier)
5. a 9th circle heal that takes X targets and heals them for 300 / x.

So now clerics can feel useful again. Whether its fun or not will depend on the individual. I can't see giving clerics damage spells to make the class fun. I could see increased melee via proc weapons or self only buffs that I will cover in the next section on solo play.

---

The lack of offensive and long lasting debuff makes clerics unviable for solo work. Think feeble, silence and blind. If I was going to make clerics more viable for solo play, I'd move in the direction of melee since most solo classes are magical damage. I would not give them double attack because with haste they would get 3 attacks. I would give them a self haste maybe with spell based "procs" that blind or stun to give them respites from tracking mobs. The style would look like long bouts of fighting with quick mems while the mob is blind/stunned.

They may or may not have enough damage mitigation as well. If clerics damage avoidance was not sufficient (which it is probably not), I would consider some sort of self only spell that doesn't stack with stone/displace/blur which would decrease damage by say 25% or absorb a certain # of large hits (like say any hit over 75). The idea is to make them take damage, but not so much damage that they automatically die if bashed.
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Re: Clerics

Postby spunionring » Tue Jan 27, 2009 4:43 am

2, 3, and 4 are very interesting ideas that i think would enhance the dynamic of playing cleric. tossing that instant heal at the right moment would be very gratifying :)
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Re: Clerics

Postby Inames » Thu Jan 29, 2009 9:41 am

one thing that clerics definitely need is something else in 10th circle, other than undead zones (even rarely there) clerics dont really use the 10th circle unless someone dies or are prepping for dragon fights, and it would be too easy to switch out a spell for res or grp when needed. i think they need some other supportive spell in 10th circle to give them more to do, but not something thats gonna last 60 seconds and fall..

people say a clerics job is really just to heal people, provide the use of spells like vit, silence, erm... yeah vit and silence... but a cleric in any sense is just another support class for the group... and in that respect they lack any real support spells, some people might reply to this as "why dont you just give clerics stone and globe and blablabla" but those spells are already set to a support class and fit it well, clerics need completely different support spells with new types of functions alltogether.

Gormal wrote:Fixed in 2.0


probably will be but who knows when the hell thats happening..
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Re: Clerics

Postby Jhorr » Fri Jan 30, 2009 12:18 am

Group vitality would speed up a needlessly time-wasting and cumbersome part of the game.

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