Cleric Deep Dive Discussion!

Derelicte-Chief-Elf-Judge

Behold!
https://monstersandmemories.com/class-cleric-deep-dive

Fidric

Overview

Clerics are the premier healer: a versatile, faith-powered support class built to keep their group alive, while still bringing holy damage and utility to the table. With this update, we've given Clerics an entirely unique toolkit (several of their core spells used to be shared with other classes), rounded them out with a few new spells, and added some polish to existing spells.

Overall, Clerics remain close to their current form as a strong group healer with useful utility (cures, dispels, resurrection), a damage kit that leans into holy and anti-undead themes, and a few unique and valuable buffs. We've expanded several existing spell lines with more ranks to make the pace of upgrades more consistent, added new spell lines to fill in gaps, and removed a few spells that felt redundant or underused.

Clerics have also picked up a new starting trait: “Blessed.” As a class so tightly bound to their faith, Clerics enjoy a favored status, and thus may occasionally receive divine help on their adventures.

Defensive Upgrade

We've changed the way our armor class system works to provide more defense to heavier armor types. This means that plate armor is more effective at reducing incoming damage than it was before.

We've also given Clerics the Block skill as part of their Prayer of the Faithful self-buff. This increases the defensive benefits you get from shields by reducing incoming damage when you block a hit.

Heals

Healing is what Clerics do best, and they now have Cleric-specific versions of their core heals rather than sharing generic spells with other classes.

Heal

Heal your target, restoring Health. (This is your bread-and-butter single-target heal, with a moderate cast time and heal amount.)

Circle of Healing

Heal your group, restoring Health. (This is a strong emergency group heal on a cooldown.)

Healing Light

Shine a healing light on targets in a frontal cone, restoring Health. (This is a great way to top off a group when multiple people are hurt. It now has a cast time, so it's a deliberate choice rather than a free upgrade over your single-target heal.)

Promise of Mending

Bestow a promise of mending on your target, restoring Health after a few seconds. (This is a delayed heal, handy for topping someone off ahead of an incoming hit. This spell line was renamed from Impart Blessing; the spell itself works the same way it always has.)

Blessed Barrier

Shield your target with a blessed barrier, absorbing damage received. (This is best applied before damage lands, rather than after. The barrier only lasts a short while, and any unused absorption is lost once it expires. Its mana cost per point of damage mitigated is roughly equivalent to a standard heal, so you’ll want to weigh its instant cast time against the risk of wasted absorption.)

Damage

Clerics aren't a DPS class, but their holy magic gives them real teeth, especially against the undead.

Rebuke

Strike your target with divine energy, dealing Holy Damage. (This is your standard nuke that works on all target types. Formerly the Shock line.)

Smite the Dead

Smite a target undead with holy light, dealing Holy Damage. (This hits noticeably harder than Rebuke, both per-cast and over a sustained fight, but it only works against undead targets. It was renamed from Repel the Dead and its damage has been improved.)

Holy Strike

Strike down your target with holy energy, dealing Weapon Ratio Damage plus Holy Damage. (This is a melee-based attack learned at level 1, giving you something to do in combat besides casting. It also has a small chance to channel the wrath of your faith.)

Buffs

Holy Fortitude

Bestow holy fortitude upon your target, increasing their maximum Health. (This spell is largely unchanged, but it now automatically heals your target for the amount of health gained, so you don’t need to top them up after casting it.)

Hymn of Fortitude

This is a group-wide version of Holy Fortitude. It requires a reagent to cast.

Blessing of Devotion

Bestow your target a blessing of devotion, increasing their maximum Health. Additionally, if your target falls to low Health while the blessing is active, it restores Health and the blessing fades. (This buff also increases maximum Health and stacks with Holy Fortitude. It provides an emergency heal when things get dicey, but requires a reagent to cast.)

Prayer of the Faithful

Call upon your faith, increasing your Strength, Mana Regeneration, Secondary Mana Regeneration, and Block, granting you a chance to activate Fulfillment on melee attacks and the ability to see magical effects when considering targets. (This is the Cleric's signature self-buff, rolling several older spells, including the old Supplication line, into one long-lasting package.)

Divine Aegis

Surround yourself with a divine aegis, granting you immunity to all incoming damage for 15 seconds. (This is your emergency panic button.)

Inhibit Pain

Inhibit pain in your target, reducing all damage received for a few seconds.

Retained Spell Lines

Most of the Cleric's utility was carried over from the current version of the class. Some of these have picked up fresh Cleric-specific names and a few extra ranks along the way, but their core functionality hasn't changed.

Atonement

Blind

Corruption / Disease / Poison Protection

Cure Disease & Cure Poison

Dispel Magic

Fear the Dead

Gate

Invisibility versus Undead

Pacify (renamed from Placate; now limited to a single target at a time, rather than several at once)

Polar Alignment: North

Redemption (renamed from Resuscitation; your resurrection spells)

Shackle (renamed from Root)

Soulbind

Stun

Summon Food and Drink

Summon Hammer

Removed Spell Lines

We tightened up a few areas of overlap while working on this update:

Supplication - This spell's effects were rolled into Prayer of the Faithful.

Oath of Protection - Clerics already carry plenty of cooldown-gated defensive tools between Divine Aegis, Inhibit Pain, and Blessed Barrier.

Oath of Freedom - Though there was no direct replacement to this spell, Clerics instead gained Circle of Healing, which felt like a more useful cooldown overall.

Snare the Dead - Clerics already carry a dedicated anti-undead nuke and fear, and can fall back on their normal root against undead targets.

Cure Blindness - This spell is being removed across all classes as we revisit them. Blind effects are typically short and low-threat, so a dedicated cure spell wasn't pulling its weight.

Fidric

Need to see values and actual details.

When will we see it

Does not feel like it is enough compared to Shaman/Druid utility. (versus say my cleric wishlist thread)

No major shifts in indirectly contributing to party offence/utility/world interaction or more passive/active effects mitigation that I can see. Or any interesting new rider utility effects on existing heals, nukes etc

Or any interesting outgoing or ingoing melee driven spell proc effects to encourage you to wade in and take hits, versus just more medding with our new longer supplication+ between 'imparts' and buff rotations.

I'll miss Oath of Protection + Snare the Dead + Oath of Freedom personally. Why remove niche horizontal options? Is that not the point of spell memorisation choices, or is that just an illusion of choice at the end.

I am underwhelmed.

Clerics have also picked up a new starting trait: “Blessed.” As a class so tightly bound to their faith, Clerics enjoy a favored status, and thus may occasionally receive divine help on their adventures.

What does this do?

Holy Strike...a small chance to channel the wrath of your faith.

What does this do?

We've also given Clerics the Block skill as part of their Prayer of the Faithful self-buff. This increases the defensive benefits you get from shields by reducing incoming damage when you block a hit.

Will Clerics be able to equip either Kite or Tower Shields or are they still only limited to Bucklers? Does this spell delivered block mechanic require skill leveling or is it static to level? Do you still get a block effect if you wield a two handed weapon or an offhand that is not a shield (e.g. like monk can)

Defensive Upgrade

Will this functionally improve channeling spells against damage?

Prayer of the Faithful...Mana Regeneration, Secondary Mana Regeneration

What are the split and scaling of these "primary secondary" mana regen values and how they interact or compare with enchanter and bard or druid season values? Will a bard mana song still help clerics?

Summon Hammer

Any improvement to the stats of this conjured weapon or it's smite proc damage values or frequency? Or being able to apply to buff to an existing weapon for either you and/or allies? Its would be useless damage compared to loot even if it procced it's baby smite on every hit, which it does not. Even with proc, less damage per hit than loot.

Blessed Barrier

Any level scaling within the spell tiers for barriers or scaling off any stat (wis, AC, sta)?

reagent (Hymn of Fortitude, Blessing of Devotion)

How much will these cost? From Vendor or Drops? How many can they stack to? Do they use the same shared reagent or different ones? Feels like it will be an annoying tax on what little quality of life utility we get. Any plans for a greater or group invis undead? Or folding the resist buffs in one?

Will these buffs still wreck our mana? Are druid/shaman getting a reagant cost to their group buffs and single target hp regen buff equivliant fly by utility that actually persists it's effect? Blessing of Devotion is the only interesting new preventative mitigation option and sound like it will churn mana and reagant to get any benefit in a 6 man. And a reagant for a fly by buff or keeping an eye on it in group that might randomly fade just sounds outright aggravating.

Healing Light

Does this still have an insane mana cost? Any improvments for it's target selection/cap or cone dynamics?

Stun & Blind

Will these get any new ranks with scaling single target duration values?

Circle of Healing

How long is the cooldown?

Fulfillment on melee attacks

Any changes to this proc effect's impact? Is it a primary, secondary or tertiary haste and why should we care about it?

Prayer of the Faithful....ability to see magical effects

Do cleric retain sense magic to cast on others?

Ahkilles

So basically the same class but worse in pvp? What a let down tbh.
No more bop or freedom. Can block now and have a circle of healing.
Everything else is basically the same.

prf

Feels functionally the same, maybe with a little more mana since supplication wont be as intensive as before. Kind of a letdown when druids are getting a whole bunch of seasonal effects tied to their moment-to-moment play and clerics get "occasionally receive divine help" as their theme.

I don't see why a group that is succeeding would want a Cleric over the other healers, and I don't know why a Cleric would want to join a party that is struggling to succeed. Will need to see the ingame twaeks to undead nuke line, if barriers scale, and how good the mana feels.

Mesh

Hymn of Fortitude

This is a group-wide version of Holy Fortitude. It requires a reagent to cast.

Prayer of the Faithful

Call upon your faith, increasing your Strength, Mana Regeneration, Secondary Mana Regeneration, and Block, granting you a chance to activate Fulfillment on melee attacks and the ability to see magical effects when considering targets. (This is the Cleric's signature self-buff, rolling several older spells, including the old Supplication line, into one long-lasting package.)

These changes are excellent. I hope all of the classes with multiple buffs receive similar consolidation and group-wide versions.

Not a whole lot to talk about with this round of reworks. These feel more like some light tweaking compared to how significant the changes to Druid and Wizard were.

Hopefully it's because these classes didn't need as much work and not because we're rushing to meet the EA target?

Kellindell

Derelicte-Chief-Elf-Judge

I think I’m mainly going to echo the same sentiments as many here.

The thing with Eq was that clerics were the only pure true healer which is why they lacked utility. In this game Druids and shamans can also main heal.

So the thing I don’t understand is why MnM modeled these three classes off their Eq counterparts and left a ton of utility with shaman and Druid but still left cleric with no decent world interaction or out of combat utility. They can summon food. That’s it. Everything else is directly tied to combat.

If all three classes can main heal and chances are the two nature based ones will do more damage somethings got to give for cleric. They need meaningful spells that aren’t just heals or pure damage.

They need utility in and out of combat. The array of things druids and shamans get needs to be examined with cleric or no one is going to play one. At least not as a main. They will be parked as Rez machines.

Unless this tweak set them apart as better healers. Then we are back to the same issue that Eq had which is no one will want Druids in groups. Shamans will only be wanted if there’s no enchanter.

The only thing they get that truly sets them apart from the other healers is the bubble. But this is still a combat thing. They need buffs or debuffs or utility. Or a little of all three. Summoning food and hammers is nice but just doesn’t compare to what the other classes are getting in their kits.

I also think removing snare dead was a mistake. Since clerics are number punchers snare dead was the only way they could take part in small group play without trying to muscle through it. By kiting undead with a duo or trio. I genuinely don’t see why that was taken away.

And I think everyone is asking this. What’s the end of the holy strike ability mean? And how exactly does blessed work.

Rhul

We have one healer that wears heavy armour and now has block, you're teasing us with the potential of a melee healer gameplay option (even if it's intentionally not as efficient as sitting). Please just take that extra step ;-;

No paladin-esque combat ability, just a slightly-worse-than-medding auto-attack mana regen. Maybe some occasional very weak melee splash healing; not enough to matter, but enough to feel something. Entirely optional play style, sacrificing some efficiency for fun.

Merryhammer

Negatives. Removal of Oath of Protection, this spell allowed for huge control and utility and could save a pull or party member from certain death helping keep tempo. In addition to its out of combat uses. Removal of Oath of Freedom removed all snares and granted immunity for 10 seconds. amazing spell to keep the puller alive as well or allow a tank to reposition without having to spam cast dispel. Healing light did not scale before and Probably wont now. Blessed barrier line did not scale well as well at level 40 its about 250 damage that is unacceptably low for the mana cost especially when a heal at the same mana can heal 1000 hp. The hammer is an amounts to useless vestigial spell that should have become a direct buff like the new supplication line.

Mal

Overall good. Put back in Oath of Protection please.

Fidric

Here's an easy win suggestion for world interaction out of combat utility that is on theme and unique to healer role (and ignored by wizards as only one to get it)

Let clerics create LIGHT.

Either passively on an item (like wizard imbue staff) e.g. a blessing on existing self and ally weapon to proc smite damage or actively on players (halo) or locations (like a torch drop) or as conjured off hand torch items (like mage light) or as a conjured belt LIGHTSTONE

Throw another reagant on the pile if you must.

They are all the rage now apparently.

For cleric anyway. Not for precious druid.

Aikons

Clerics should be so holy that divine light shines out from them, giving them an aura that "blinds" all undead, providing their group with permanent IVU (when not in combat).

Arne

Seems underwhelming but will have to see values / mana costs and cast times etc.

I would hope it blows sham/druid healing out of the water with efficiency / throughput but I have my doubts.

Fidric

Arne and let's be honest one down ranked impart can currently do the job by itself while you sit on your butt for the most part, so more healing is just jangling keys while not contributing much else.

tuesday

Removing Oath of Protection was a Mistake
This is overall a nerf to the class, and I probably would prefer having Oath of Protection to having the new heals. Having a key spell like this removed from the class was my biggest fear with the rework.

Oath of Protection allowed us to do cool af cleric things
Having two DAs means I could jump off of things twice as often. More than once I almost died bc I forgot DA was down and jumped off of super tall things bc clerics were cool, and saved myself by remembering Oath of Protection. More importantly, I could help my friends jump off of super tall things and we could be cool together! Now I can't help my friends do cool things like jump off of tall cliffs? This hurts a lot more than it should. No shared cool is a bad thing.
Oath of Protection is why my static survived trains
Obviously not the only reason, as we were still codependent with other classes and this required coordination. My static was trained dozens of times as we were leveling, and because of Oath of Protection (and my friends being good), we only suffered a single death. We would quickly decide who was going to port us out and I would cast Oath of Protection on either the druid or wizard. This prevented the NPCs from interrupting the cast of the escape spell, and importantly would not guarantee anyone else's safety. Everyone else received barriers to try to preempt or react to damage, but this was not enough to always keep everyone alive. Clerics are now worse at protecting their groups from trains, which is bad for the pvp population. Protecting our groups is what we're supposed to do as clerics.
Oath of Protection allowed clerics to protect their friends in PvE
It was so nice having a spell that would literally stop the wizard who pulled agro from getting beat on (for 15 seconds, with a cooldown). Again, protecting our groups is literally our class fantasy. I have countless stories of acting as the badass savior thanks to this spell. We have one squishy dps type in my guild that does not like taking damage who notoriously gets worked up when she's dying (admittedly, dying can be stress-inducing). In comms she'd be like, "I need a heal. I'm dying. Help, I'm so dead!!" And I often got to be the cool badass that I used to be and calmly say, "No, you're not dying," hit her with Oath of Protection, and follow it up with a heal- a true savior for a single play session. To be fair, sometimes she still died if I was bad with my timing, too oom for a heal, or if there were simply to many things on us to survive. Oath of Protection was not a magical "survive all situations no matter what" overpowered ability that protected everyone always, but when it worked I felt incredible. Oath of Protection was key to clerics living their class fantasy and acting as the saviors we are supposed to be.
Oath of Protection was probably our best PvP spell
For reasons similar to the PvE stuff, obviously. Acting as a savior, doing the cleric thing. This was the main advantage groups had to picking a cleric instead of a druid or shaman in PvP. This change also has me worried for the inquisitor class, as it now seems you're poised to take their absolute best PvP spell away from them. Currently, melee classes are overtuned in PvP and squishy caster types die nearly instantaneously in higher level PvP. This spell alone helped balance that, and without it MnM PvP is actually worse off. The spell was balanced in PvP by still keeping targets susceptible to casting damage. It was not overpowered, and did not require a nerf. Those clutch af moments when this spell would actually work to save a group are the sort of thing that made me truly feel like a cleric, and I am a little upset that my favorite class has been nerfed so heavily in our rework.
This change alone has me reconsidering my class for EA
Changes like this have me scared for the longevity of the game if reworks are still happening after EA. When people are actually paying for the game and future reworks take away key abilities that made players feel useful to their groups, people may quit. WoW and other bigger MMOs can afford to lose people, but MnM losing people early in its post-launch life can devastate a game like this. I'm afraid to say this as the devs seem far less likely to consider my feedback when it's negative, but I think you should tell the remaining unworked classes which key abilities they are going to lose prior to EA so the bad news hits them before they have chosen their class and spent weeks or months leveling the class.

Oath of Protection literally never left my spell bar and was permanently one of my cantrips. This spell being removed was a massive nerf to the class, and I am unsure now if I even want to play the class in EA. I want to be fair and thoroughly test the rework before making this decision, but my initial thoughts are quite negative. I prefer the cleric class fantasy, playing holy paladin in WoW, and cleric in games like EQ and BG3. The druid class fantasy doesn't speak to me at all, but losing this one spell and all the attached cleric savior fantasy is making that class look very enticing to me, particularly with SoW being a necessity to even play the game. To have possibly my favorite spell in the game called redundant honestly hurts a little.

Fidric

tuesday +1 oath of protection loss is a real bummer and I don't see the logic at all with nothing meaningful in return.

Same for Oath of Freedom.

I would rather keep oath of protection and lose divine aegis flexibility wise and that's a huge sacrifice of flat power in of itself if I had to choose between the two.

I wanted more & scaling mitigation options across the board from a rework.

It is the only interesting mechanic cleric has.

We got less and from sound of it, no scaling of what left either.

prf

[unknown] at least you can still have everyone jump off the cliff, invuln yourself, and scrape everyone off the ground

Des

Been playing cleric 25 years across all the EQ games. I have to say this misses the mark, and I felt this way reading my entire way through it, before feeling reassured that I was not the only one who felt this way.

Really did not need more efficient healing, or alternate healing spells. Dont need a cone spell, dont need barriers. You said you removed redundancy but I am still seeing it all over the place. We still overlap with Necro and SK. IVU isn't special. Healing isnt going to be markedly "better" than the other two healers AND we still just give an HP buff.

In EQ, as clerics we brought the following, and you also decided none of this fit into the game for clerics (for now):

Mark of Karn ~ you gave this to paladin?
Earthquake ~ we have no trash AOE
Swarm Pet ~ No signature hammer pet /sad
Potent HP/AC line (Temp) ~ Temperance is famous
Pure HP line (symbols) ~ Rune line for pure HP costing a reagent ~ you have this in game only but way worse.
Pure AC line (Bulwark) ~ Meh but helped
Blessing when someone took fatal damage, they'd be auto-healed for a chunk of their HP.
Stuns ~ Multiple, evolving stuns that did not share CDs
HOTs/DOTs ~ Celestial Elixir line and undead dot line
Group IVU/Improved IVU (doesnt drop high level spell)
Self only AC/HP buff ~ very helpful for solo, similar to druid self DS.

We get no SoW. No evac. No feign. No slows, no snares, no ports, no group buffs to help anyone DO anything. No support for a group doing well. No win-more at all since our nuke line is still likely trash for mana:damage ratio. You didnt touch the melee. It looks like and holy strike still prob hits for 25% ratio damage which isnt worth putting on your bar.

Overall I am sad about it, but its a video game so whatever. I will reserve absolute judgement of this once I see actual values and decide if ill ever bother playing it again. Thanks for reading my ted talk.