Your thoughts on the Battle ClericFollow

I'm a battle cleric and I'm proud! However...a good cleric knows when to sit their butt down.

Tonight I replaced a cleric in Hate who meleed until the tank was at 15 percent and then hit cheal. The tank died several times, and I was called in to replace her. What was this person's mistake? Was it standing up and fighting at all? NO. The mistake was in not knowing her place. I proceeded to cleric for the next 8 hours. Tank deaths: 0. Cleric deaths (me) two. Enchanter deaths: two, other deaths 1. FYI Both Cleric/Enchanter deaths due to 4+ pulls in which the low level enchanter could not get mez off. It was not her skill level. I died healing her first, tank second, me third. (And yes I used DB and no I don't gate, get a life folks it's just 4 percent you lose).(The random death was due to CR on me and the chanter having an invis drop).

So. Level 61 cleric, c2+blessing of reverence+sd+wind of marr...excellent to godly mana regen. (That's right, no KEI, my friends). What to do with the mana? The few times I was below 40 percent I SAT. When above 40 percent I took my Hammer of Souls and entered the fray. Yaulp V before I took a single swing. And before bashing and crushing my little heart out, I casted Judgement. Sorry fellow clerics, when the battle is short, our DD is still the way to go. AFTER the zap, I swung my weapon and bashed. During the fight if the tank got low I used Ethereal Light (aprox 1700-2100 hp heal with my improved healing IV). Casters aggroing accidentally I saved with my Ethereal Remedy (1k-1200 hp aprox with IHIV). Due to being dexed to 260 by Yaulp and the BST IOS+dex combo I procced almost every other hit. If the fight was almost over and the tank was above 50 I stopped healing and did a cheal at the end of the fight. (Another worthy post is using cheal correctly...face it guys, we have uber heals and none of them hold a candle to the healing/mana ratio on cheal).

Battle Clerics are only good when they maximize their mana. The DD we have is almost wizard/mage worthy in the damage/mana ratio, but it is awful on the cast time/recast time. For most fights get it off once, near the beginning but not so near it attracts the mob (which shouldn't be a problem with a good tank). And then you swing. Throw in your animated hammer, or mark of whichever you choose ONLY when it's a long fight. (I should post someday though on full effectiveness on your hammer...you can save it for mob after mob and thus get it hasted, but that's a whole different situation). But if you get LOM or the tank is about die, you are DONE being the battle cleric. That's what I think a lot of groups are leery of because they have been with the battle cleric that never knows their place.

Some may say here, ah but where are your stuns? The paladin and the cleric are the masters of the stun, aren't you wasting mana healing people on mobs that could have been stunned? It all depends on the mob. If it's going down 1 minute or less and is NOT casting here's what stun does (OH do I miss my Force of Akera on my Pally!): knockback. Tanks lose their place and lose aggro because they aren't the one's stunning to know where it's going precisely, huge aggro on you (ok you're not made of butter like a chanter or wizard but cmon why risk it? Your job is to keep others alive, not yourself). Of course if it's a caster pull out 1-3 stuns, but if it's pure melee you simply don't have to, you will do more damage with your hammer and cause less healing. (Mob dies quicker=less healing).

So I've been pretty detailed on how to be effective at healing and damage dealing at the same time. But forget everything I've said and play your own way and how you are comfortable but remember one thing: Your place is to heal. That's what you do. Anything else you do is to compliment your healing. If that means standing up swinging, go for it! But not when your tank or your chanter is about to die. (Important things to remember: Shaman can generally take care of themselves but still keep on eye on them around the time they cast slow, Necros can take care of themselves and don't need healed unless 40 percent or below unless they either ask for a heal, or are going down fast, Mages and Wizards should NOT be getting hit, but the mage might get aggro with no fault of their own, watch them, Wizards that get hit so bad that shielding/rune can't take it they are doing something wrong, other classes might need a heal here and there but generally should now how to control their own aggro.) Oh yeah, and one more thing, you now can switch spells at lightning speed, so if you see that AE go off don't panic, just switch out something and get a group heal in). Get Pure Blood quest done, it removes tash and slow in one cast.

Basically this is general cleric advice, because to me being a battle cleric is part of the show with our hammers and bash. I know I'm rambling but I've been up a long time doing my thing, all the way til the servers went down :)

By the way battle clerics...did your KEI just get dispelled and your only mana regen is your own? SIT DOWN.

:)

Okay, fine, I'll add a Disclaimer: Some people can play the Battle Cleric well and still do a great job, unfortunately too many can't. As always it's the PLAYER who makes the difference. Dagnystout seems to know how to pull it off without letting his group down, but I'm usually the Enchanter who dies for it.

When a Cleric tries to play the "Battle Cleric" usually the group is getting nervous and start sending tells "the Cleric's not medding and is swinging at the mobs!" I usually reply with "Well, lets see how he/she does." I'm usually apprhensive myself though and too few players pull it off right. Personally, little is worse than a poorly played Cleric or Enchanter. More often than not the group can make up for another groupmate that isn't such a good player, but Enchanters and Clerics who aren't played well cause more deaths than any other.

As always I guess it falls to the abilities of the PLAYER, but most people will became nervous at the sight of a higher level Cleric going into the battle and taking some swings.

Any cleric that melees instead of saving the chanter is an idjit, plain and simple. :) In an impossible situation I WILL (and have) let the tank die so I can save the chanter. That chanter will keep those mobs mezzed so that others in the group can handle them one at a time IF the tank dies. Save the tank (or yourself) instead of the chanter in an impossible situation, you really did just turn it into impossible.

There's really only ONE rule to being a battle cleric: know when you're done being a battle cleric. :)

And just to be ornery, strangely I barely notice the absence of a druid in my group and I always notice the absence of a shaman ;).

I've played with clerics that don't play following the normal cleric template. I've played in ldon with a great cleric puller. Its funny. I had a cleric who I swear pulled just as good as a bard. The pulls were always there in the camp as we finished the next mob. I've also played with clerics who fight some in their down time.

While it helps a little bit I think it is important that the cleric understand that they are in no way dps :) Also while they are ok for some light tanking it tends to prevent them from being able to heal and even thought they have good armor they tend to not mitigate damage well. Having parsed clerics most have been distressed at the fact that they typically only do 10-30dps while warriors and other classes do 70-90 and rogues, wizards, mages are up closer to 200. (this is parsing a lvl 65 with a moderate amount of aa ~100 or so)

Ok so first of all i play a cleric as my main, though i have a few alts. To me battle cleric doesn't mean you don't heal/buff/rez your group, it means that you fulfill your role as primary healer while adding dps if its feasible in the situation. A truely effective battle cleric knows when it's ok to melee/nuke and when it is not. Post 56 we get this wonderful line of proccing hammers. Being level 62, having an even better proccing hammer, and tanks that are usually decent since i'm in a pretty big guild, i've found in planar zones especially i can melee (from behind to avoid riposte dmg of course) and heal at the same time. Clerics get two very useful lines of spells to make meleeing a bit more viable for us, yaulp with mana regen which i don't believe paladins get, and the blessed armor of the risen line of spells which is a self only mana regen buff. In most situations i summon my hammer, yaulp, assist and melee my happy little butt off until my groups hp needs tending to, whereupon i move back, heal, and then jump back into melee if i'm good on mana. Doing this i rarely go below 80m, and i can throw in a few of my 1100 pt nukes too. The mobs die faster, and the group isn't in peril b/c of my melee/nuking. I know there is alot of bias against battle clerics mainly because there are some "battle clerics" who represent that melee should be their primary role and healing their second. The truth is a clerics primary role is healing, but it shouldn't be limited to just that. A perfect example of what i mean is the shaman, a class that is well loved for their slows. However, shammies can do alot more then slow, just like every class is really equipped to handle a bit more then thier primary role. Clerics are a diverse class, my dps with haste perhaps matches that of a paladin along with a few well placed nukes. There are a million things clerics are capable of: i've got heals over time, fast heals, cheals, hp buffs, ac buffs, spell haste buffs, death pact type buffs, the hammer pet for more dps, the summoned hammer, mana regen self buffs, DD nukes, Stuns and stuns with DD, AOE nukes and AOE stuns, root, undead dots, summoned nukes, undead nukes, fear spells, pacify, invulnerability, ITU, blind, cures, etc etc etc.
Point being I don't feel that i should have to announce to a group from the beggining that i will be using my resources to the best of my ability. I've had a few enchanters and shamans balk when i request haste, but usually as soon as i begin to melee and they see that i'm not neglecting the hp bars, they relent and haste me. I feel that every class when the situation calls for it should call on all their resources and not just their usual tasks. I've seen enchanters pull, rogues tank, so what is so wrong about a cleric meleeing?
Do what the situation calls for. There is no need to announce that ahead of time, or apologize for it, or generalize about "battle clerics". The clerics who let you die and didn't rez, who refused to buff, who melee'd constantly even when they were complaining they were OOM were not a representative of battle clerics as a whole. They were just BAD clerics. Being a battle cleric does not mean that you are automatically a bad cleric. There are bad clerics of every type, bad members of every class. I'm sorry you had the misfortune to run into these people.

/steps off the soapbox.

/tucks it into her bag and walks away

~Baroness Lethi Sha'lin~
62 high elf cleric of tunare
lanys t'val server

Sorry was up all night I didn't mean BoR :) Of course I meant self blessing which I'm still too tired to remember the name of.

I'm level 61, the quickest/largest heal for my level that I own (sorry I don't ebay my plats) is ethereal light. If I'm at full mana, this is not a problem. The point for it being the highest mana for the heal is that it's faster. Actually if you calculate it out, the remedy line though faster is even less efficient.

Yes, sorry I was tired on that statement, and yes I had a bard with me. The point I made throughout my posts is you need to know what your mana capabilities you are. That's all. Know what you can do and sit down if you need to med.

65 Battle Cleric!

Any post 56 Cleric that doesn't melee when FOM is just lazy. (in general) Being a Cleric used to be boring. Not anymore. (of course soloing still sux...can be done but isnt really fun.)

Of course there are certainly times when you can't melee or someone ...the MT, the Chanter, the Shaman or... the Cleric...will die! On a raid usually not. Hard LDON, usually not.

Nuking takes mana that should be preserved for heals. Stuns and bashing are needed to keep certain healer mobs from Ching themselves or others.

You can Melee from horseback..so keep medding. Yallup VI is fantastic and always keep it going while meleeing and almost never drop below 90%. FT15 :) (pardon me...Mana Regen 15 now heheh)

With level 65 Chanter haste, soulscream belt (31% haste), Yalup VI, Hammer of Damnation and full Shaman Buffs, I parse at 45 dps. Not too shabby while keepong everyone at full HPs too.


Besides...I can DA and /shout TRAIN TO ZONE!! Come back and click 'em. heheh

Bring a bard and tell him to chain mez

I guess this whole dicussion boils down to whether you are bored sitting and medding. I understand that at the higher levels the cleric is given some pretty good yaulp tools to help them wade into the fray...and at the early lvls a cleric or halfling can be quite formidable...but between 20 and 60 you should med.

Lets run this scenario...happened to me when I was lvl 22 and still had the habit of melee. I was at FM and waded into the battle to help...the pally in the group asked "Why is our healer fighting?" I began to phrase my response...me at full mana and the rest of the group at 85% HP or better...when our truly lousy puller pulled the entire next room...so I stopped fighting and began the process of heal/med/heal/med until I was oom. People started dying. I pulled agro to allow a caster to run and then hit DA and tried to exit...did not make it because I took a wrong turn :-). When it was all over they blamed the healer for fighting rather then medding. Didn't matter that I had fm and the puller sucked at his job.

Since that incident, in any group larger than 3 I heal and med unless there are specific plans made toherwise up front. But that is ok. While I am sitting and medding I have the ability to help direct things. I have a different perpsective. I can tell when people are not assisting or taunting...when and what people are not following the group's directions. When things go bad I usually am one of the first to notice why and try to make suggestions to salvage or at least not repeat.

If you find it boring sitting and medding and then healing, you made the wrong character. I know all of you with your battle cleric stories will disagree, but I seriously doubt that you are at FM enough to do any serious battle damage anyway...and if you are fighting when you are not at FM then sit down and med. If your group is losing so little health as to not require your healing skills and you are at FM for numerous battles, then your group needs to be fighting soemwhere else or select a hard adventure.

Of course, if you have 2 or 3 clerics, someone will be battle cleric...but that is a different story.

If the experience is flowing, the mobs are dying and your group isn't....does it really matter what else the cleric is doing? As a warrior, I really don't care what the cleric is doing between heals as long as the heals land and he isn't getting an excessive amount of aggro. As long as the cleric has the mana to keep the group healed, he can med, nuke, melee, or do the tango with the mob for all I care. Sure, his melee isn't going to do much damage...but it will do some. Sure, nuking would cause a whole lot more damage...but a cleric nuking is likely to run out of mana very quickly, and is more likely to draw aggro than a cleric meleeing.

It's seen as bad because so many people do it poorly... here's how to play a battle cleric correct.

First, do not melee the first few mobs (4-5) when first starting, or when a member has just been replaced. If during that time you only have to CH once in a fight or less, have a tank that holds agro sufficiently (maybe one or two hits land on slower, everyone else avoids over-agroing) and you have sufficient mana regen (can recover a CH of mana in one or two fight's duration) than you can play battle cleric. The level 56 yaulp or higher spell helps enormously in the mana regen aspect, as you almost regen as fast standing (or fighting) as you do sitting... almost.

When playing battle cleric make sure you have hot keys set up for yaulp, bash, heals (of course...) and one that just says /assist. No name on the assist. This way you can very very quickly switch from the target you're beating on to it's target (you assist the mob). Then when done with the heal, can assist the player back to the mob. You cannot nuke (unless undead), and don't have more than one stun up, suggested.

Reason to play battle cleric... 1) you can do more dmg meleeing than with occasional nukes (through the crazy proc rate of lvl 56+ summoned hammers it's very likely). 2) you can bash, which can interrupt spells and slow down damage if it stuns for enough time. 3) you can speed the group up even more than if sitting with full mana most of the time.

Last, know when to sit, if you hit 65% mana, then it's time to sit. Can start meleeing again when you hit 80m. Things can happen where you may be required to burn that much mana, so you should always make sure to keep mana up there.

If you're at full mana and your nukes are getting resisted, you're wasting a group spot by sitting there not meleeing.

Just thought I would add this quick post to my previous on this thread.

The main job of the cleric in a group is healer, and the real question should be whether acting as a battle cleric interfers with the healing or not.

I think most posters would have no problem with the cleric jumping in to help out the group in combat or stun/nuking casters when Mana is high (which appears to be possible with higher level clcs than the 45 I play). However, if the LDON group is having to take med breaks because the clc is LOM (or OOM) or people other than MT are at 55% HP because healer doesnt have enough mana to heal them and MT,then being a battle cleric isnt the smart thing to do.

In the mid 40s groups where I play, it is a rare occurance where the healer isnt sending out LOM warnings at least a couple times an adventure and you can usually count on at least 1 or 2 forced mana breaks. I know with my cleric (who is not twinked out and has about 225 wis), I can recoup the mana for a CHeal every couple of fights by medding but will drop steady though out the adventure since I will also be casting curing spells and smaller heals on others in the group along with the occasional stun or nuke on a healing mob. After we are done and gating out, I am usually around 30% mana.

Yes playing the healer can be boring (though it can be stimulating to keep the group alive when you get a bad pull or trap goes off), but you can solve that quick by playing an alt.

Bottom line, Battle Clerics are fine as long as mana is high, the problem comes when it is low.