Cleric Deep Dive Discussion!

Nazgrimn

Foojack No, you have that option or you can sit and med and heal like the old cleric.
this new melee change is pretty incredible and loving it so far though I'm still very low lvl. ripping it up in AC at the moment.

Merryhammer

Circle of Healing is a cool idea (and should be kept) but in its current form it is completely impractical and is horrible trade for Oath of protection. 636 mana for circle of healing 3 which is a lvl 36 spell heals all members of party for 342 (unboosted) (513 with 100 wis). That Seems amazing right? At lvl 43 with 100 wisdom. Each point of wisdom adds 9 mana to my pool so if I had full +7s in every slot (19) plus my 28 starter wisdom I would have 161 wisdom without enchants. This would give me 2,285 mana at level 43 with full endgame gear. Currently at lvl 43 I have 1736 mana with 100 wisdom with fair gear in most slots well above my current level. Which means its utility is almost exclusively in between pulls. If a bad pull occurs and I am at 75% or 1302 mana and I cast this spell I would have 666 mana left leaving me with 2 casts of exceptional heal or promise of mending, or 2 shields. This spell does not change incoming damage change aggro or provide any other form of mitigation its just a quick heal that byes at most 3 to 5 seconds to balance the ship. Unless the pull is weak this leaves most healers in a precarious position without any fail safes to ward the group against further danger. In actuality as a cleric your only option at this point is to continue to spam heals hoping your team can pick up the slack. Indeed at this point all a cleric will be doing in every combat is hitting holy strike on cooldown, and pushing prary of mending repeatedly. If a break occurs we have no other tools to affect the outcome other than spamming heals. We are now Just a proverbial hammer and everything is a nail.

In addition I think 75 percent mana is generous as well most grps are pulling around 50 percent mana on most healers. Baring a random proc of piety I am out of mana and unable to affect the outcome of the battle any further. Love the idea of the spell but if its going to be useful on a 5 min cooldown needs to have its mana cost halved maybe more. Also Bring back Oath of Protection. This spell ate least gave us some flexibility. And with no utility to speak of was the only this that gave us even the slightest edge against other healers.

Arne

Im not noticing any piety or wrath procs when using holy strike or prayer.. im assuming these would show up on my buff list?

Foojack

Nazgrimn No, you need to spam prayer of the faithful if you're not meleeing as well, for the mana regen proc. Also pretty bad to not use the melee ability it's a lot of free damage.

Spongeemcgee

Currently 24. Love the high damage rng procs off holy strike. It feels like a prayer has been answered by the gods. The random nature makes the big damage fine and makes me want to holy strike on cooldown to play the rng slot machine. I am using max rank prayer then spamming rank 1 even though it doesn’t stick to proc the attack or mana buff. This is very powerful but also feels spammy. Think they need to do a /prayer command that locks you for a bit while you pray. Maybe 5 sec to see if you get the proc or not. Spamming rank 1 prayer fishing for piety has eliminated my need to sit. Think a “time tax” by locking clerics in prayer feels appropriate and adds some risk.

Arkamedeez

Spongeemcgee Spamming rank 1 prayer fishing for piety has eliminated my need to sit.

Do you believe this is the intended design of the ability?

Ensi

Now level 44 cleric and really loving the update. Feels a lot more 'fun' - healing your group is still very strong and the new buff is nice (ending bonus heal is neat).

I don't fully understand how the Piety or Wrath buffs proc, but man is it fun to get a 'smite' and suddenly you God has buffed you 🙂

All in all really enjoying the update 🙂

tuesday

Got all my spells and messed around with them finally. Haven't actually played still, just nuked down in duels to test spells and such.

Prayer of the Faithful
I'm assuming that spamming the level 1 version to get procs of things is unintended so I won't be testing that one at all. Gotta say, the random procs of wrath/piety/whatever that can happen while I'm medding with spellbook open are literally a jumpscare. Might be good that we randomly get these buffs even while not in melee, but please don't make this stand me up or close my spellbook when I'm medding. Maybe make it less of a jumpscare somehow, too. The sudden spell sounds with the standing got me every time so far. The mana regen is great, unsure about the melee stuff yet.
New Spell Icons
New icons are super pretty, but it's hard af to see when things are on cooldown and when they're ready to use. Not a graphics artist so idk what can be done here, but something is needed.
Healing Light/Healing Radiance
Healing Radiance III is actually in a good place in terms of mana efficiency, but the spell still heals enemy players and requires you to position yourself correctly. This spell is 100% not worth memming in its current iteration, with the possible exception of specific boss encounters.
Circle of Healing/Circle of Restoration
This spell is close to useless. As an emergency heal button, it drains literally half my mana. The super long cooldown would maybe make sense, but the ironic thing is that in an emergency situation it's very likely I wouldn't even have enough mana to cast this. No room on my spellbar for this spell as the spell is. And if this is what is supposed to replace Oath of Protection, I am absolutely decided against playing cleric for EA.
Heal Line
This is probably the best change that was made to the class. It was honestly so painful needing to wait 10 seconds each time I cast a heal. Part of this might be due to me not having any wisdom jewelry, but it feels like you could reduce the mana cost on this some. Great change, good job devs.
Barriers
Barriers need to have their mana cost further reduced if they are supposed to be used alongside heals. In PvP, healing generally can't be preemptive as you don't know who the enemy is going to target until people start taking damage, meaning to effectively heal in PvP you need to quickly barrier and then heal. Two buttons, two spells, to accomplish the one thing. Barriers are very fun, but mana cost is prohibitive.
Hymn Spells
Yes. Absolutely yes. If the heal line is what the devs did best, this comes in second place. Buffing classes have buff fatigue hard, and this is a step in the right direction. Devs could capitalize even harder on this win by making the spell last 2, 3, maybe 4 hours.
Blessing Spells
No. Please, no. Hymn made it seem like the devs wanted to address the painful issue of buffslop, but then introduced another buff that only lasts 40 minutes and is yet again single target. I don't care what the reasoning is, this is awful and I do not like it. Please introduce a group version, and increase the duration to 2 or more hours. Make it require 12 reagents for the group version, give me a debuff that makes my bank permanently drained of money, I don't care. Just don't make me cast a brand new buff 6 times every 40 minutes or I might actually cry lol.
Inhibit Pain
There is still no room on my bar for this spell. Its duration is too short and cooldown too long to be a contender in most situations.
Resist Spells
These need to be group spells. Or combined into a single spell. Actually, please make these into group spells that are combined into a single spell and then make the buff last 2+ hours. I'm so tired of the buffing.
Buffing in General
I saw a vod or something of Shawn's podcast thing where he mentioned liking mechanics that made players "slow down," presumably to enjoy the atmosphere of the world and eat sandwiches, chat, or smoke pipes or whatever. The buffing system as it is now has the exact opposite effect. I feel a constant anxiety, repeatedly considering my groupmates to see if any buffs have fallen off, checking my buffs to try to determine how long I have before I have to cast spells, trying to remember what order I buffed everyone in, etc. It is stressful gameplay, and not in the fun "this is a challenging encounter!" sort of way. It's mentally exhausting. When I'm unmemming all my spells to fill the bar with buffs I'm not enjoying the scenery so much as staring at spellgems wishing cooldowns would hurry up and trying to remember the order I had my spells in prior to buffing so I can reduce the time I have to spend staring at UI elements to get back to baseline "ready to play" mode. Buffslop is a problem. Please, please address it. It is an issue for all support classes.
General Thoughts
While I appreciate the good additions to the class, like making melee worthwhile, without Oath of Protection I have officially decided against cleric for EA. It's the class fantasy I most enjoy of the current available classes, and I was always okay with being the least desirable healer. Now the class is the least desirable healer without the super fun emergency save my friends from the evil bad guys, maybe, for 15 seconds, if we're all super lucky!! button I fell in love with. If the game released tomorrow I would either make a druid or take my chances with the shaman rework. Now I'm curious to see how the bard, shaman, paladin, and inquisitor remakes go. Since the devs felt Oath of Protection was unnecessary for cleric I'm assuming the best inquisitor PvP spell is also out, sadly. Maybe the bard changes will make that class great? Paladins seem like they'll be good PvP healers maybe, though I'm imagining they'll oom fast. With druid at least I would never be without sow. Starting now, I would like to advocate for buffslop reduction for the shaman rework please <3

Waffle_Goblin

I do think they should add spell lists we can save.

Spongeemcgee

Arkamedeez No. That is why I suggested the /prayer command idea to lock you in for a short duration. I like the idea of appeasing to a god and them answering but should come at some sort of risk. Risk here is unable to do any actions until the prayer is over. It's like a strange consume / canni in a way (shaman mana back ability). Shamans risk life total and cleric risk action if something bad happens like the tank life dips. Mana back may be too good on piety, but this is from the perspective of a lvl 24 so no idea if higher lvls it becomes less effective.

I do applaud the team for breaking the cast, med, cast cycle with a few active things that also make the cleric feel like a divine conduit of their god.

Nazgrimn

Foojack no you don't. You can sit there and med just like you've always done but now they've added a more involved form of contribution.
Coming from playing a Shaman, I'm used to always casting something so it doesn't feel that alien to me but it's cool that I can just sit/heal when I want a more relaxed experience. They aren't pigeon holing you into a play style.

Nazgrimn

Ensi you can get the procs from Holy Strike but you can also get them from spamming your self buff.
I have been playing around with wearing all Dex jewelry and it seems that I get more procs from Holy Strike, and our 5 stack haste buff seems to proc more though I haven't noticed wrath or Piety procing more from the self buff.

Neltera

Always felt weird to me that design gives clerics clubs ... the historical reference from reality is the argument, that if they fight they are not allowed to spill blood.
Are there holy symbol styled clubs to make me feel more clericy? XD

I accept and arrange myself with the heavy armor theme hoping there is a difference between plate and heavy armor, kneeling down in plate armor is torturous. XD
Giving the strongest healing class access to high armor could possibly make it kind of difficult in regards to content design balance, because danger through healing aggro will most likely have to be massive dmg, cause high armor and high heals in one class.
There are advantages to having a de facto holy mage as cleric in regards to content design.
I will enjoy heavy armor and heavy healing a lot and will learn to utilize it fully.
Will remind me probably of how i enjoyed holy paladin in wow making off tanks obsolete.
Who needs Paladins in Monsters and Memories anyway right?

This kind of stuff is important to know for me.

Looking forward to Early Access and hoping for better Linux launchers and will most likely love the game regardless of my silly nitpicks.

Fidric

0.27.0.2 - Beta Patch 8 Hotfix 2

August 07, 2026

Cleric
Added Snare the Dead at level 8.
Updated Fear the Dead to unlock at level 8.

will we get any further dev cleric clarifying communication on mechanics, features and feedback?

Neltera

[unknown] This idea about meaningful dps as a healer comes from ffxv probably always hated the way they had raids and everyone was a dps everyone was the same in essence just different dressing. it actually did not matter who you brought for healing there either oh and you had to do dps ... if i want to play dps i play a dps class.

Foojack

Nazgrimn The reward is too good to not do it, like your argument is that I can just autoattack on a rogue if I want to play that way but the incentive is to NOT DO THAT. And the game rewards you for not doing that. By the same token I could say, "You could always melee with cleric if you wanted to before the changes, and not sit and not get very much mana back, you could have chosen to play that way". That was always an option, but that wasn't good enough.

Now the incentive is to med dance piety 1 until you get a mana proc then sit, which is magnitudes more button mashing than the previous mana buff which required cast sit once per minute.

Arne

Arkamedeez this isn’t very fun gameplay imo

Brightforge

Appreciate the continued work and opportunity to give feedback. Just to summarize and add to the points I agree with in this thread:

Tower shields should be usable by clerics. They are a plate wearing class. I fail to see any negative coming from this logical addition.

Make the summoned hammer better, or, by Haradrel, at least make it do more damage vs. undead! Maybe even make it do more damage against fear/snared undead? Or more damage against stunned targets or targets that have recently been rebuked. Something.

Combine undead fear and snare.

Some sort of “turn undead“ aura that affects MOBs differently, depending on their level difference with the cleric.

All-party heal may need tweaking to make it better and/or more usable.

What I didn’t see hit on in this thread as of yet was the benefit one gets from devotion to one’s deity. My hope is that the utility that so many are seeking lies there. And I hope against all probability that such utility would be unique depending on which deity one follows.

Regards,

B. Brightforge

Spongeemcgee

Brightforge

Brightforge What I didn’t see hit on in this thread as of yet was the benefit one gets from devotion to one’s deity. My hope is that the utility that so many are seeking lies there.

I really hope they get around to adding some special perks for worshiping each god. Domain spells or abilities. Even unique looks to fit the theme of the god. It is asking for a lot at this point as they are pushing to reach EA within a few months. Implementation of this would make this old DnD/ EQ fan happy though.

Maggnus

Brightforge

Agree strongly with all of these points. Big fan of the anti undead aspect of the cleric. and feel it needs a bit more. I'd like to see the DD damage go up,

As far as healing and utility go. Res, best heal, ac buff,, hp buf , damage bubble and youre done. I would also take ac and hp buff off other two healers . Druid and Sham bufs should be more stat and other augments as well as debufs .

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