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I know, har har, funny topic.

I wasn't sure where to put this, if it belonged here, but I'd like to talk about Cleric DPS.

In that it really sucked. It REALLY sucked.

And I understand why it sucked because they're the best burst healers. But when you're soloing, I would argue that it's more fun to pound rusty nails into my eyes than try to kill anything. My cleric pretty much had to hitchhike with others just to gain levels at a reasonable rate. Now, yes they get aegis of blades and that does help them kill a lot of things in a short amount of time, but it's still A. boring, and B. the slowest of all the classes, and I mean unreasonably slow.

Clerics get a DPS stance that reduces their survivability and their heals a bit. But it's so useless that I don't know of any cleric that ever, ever went into that stance. And they can go say, war or death cleric which helps a little, but it's still super painful. It would be really nice if Clerics could get a DPS boost at least at the lower levels to help them gain said levels. I think Shamans could possibly benefit from this as well.

Since we're all going to have to start over at level 1, just the thought of leveling my cleric makes me cringe, and I know it's going to be a necessary task. Just think giving them a little help would be nice. Nothing major, they can still be the lowest of all the DPS. But really when you look at most parses, even when the cleric isn't healing, their DPS is around 1000 while everyone else is hitting 10k or up.

What would be really nice is putting those turning points to good use. Right now it's only good for "Turn undead" which, lo and behold, only works on undead, still hits for a measly amount, and by the time that 2 minute timer was up, you had all your turning points back anyway so it was a useless mechanic.

Lol I would tend to agree with you Jak. I loved my Cleric but I didn't solo her or play her much as a main, she was power levelled in my 4 box group with me playing the DK and dragging her along with my mentored Bear Shaman to buff/heal.

Raiding with her and messing around with some solo content showed me how underpowered the Cleric class was if you picked a peaceful affliction, I went with preservation cleric.

I have seen some War? Clerics do some awesome Dps (I am basing that from Lavy in Exile on his War? Cleric named Rosehip), so with good gear (dps gear and not healing much if at all) and the right affliction Clerics have the possibility to do ok dps wise but he was probably one of the best geared clerics in game, so it's hard to judge all Clerics based on 1 very good one.

I would be in favour of a small dps increase when the team got around to class balancing and implementation, as I am sure others would too.

Yeah, I don't ever really want to see Clerics doing really well DPS wise, at least not like say, Discs who switch off between DPS and Heals. I feel the raiding cleric should really focus on heals more than anything else.

But leveling up, god was that the most painful thing ever.

My shaman could out-DPS my cleric by a large margin, and it was still slow soloing my shaman. My cleric ended up brotherhooded with my DPS classes and got drug along in the background. When I did pull him out to heal, his gear was so far behind his level it was embarrassing. In the end, I ended up parking my cleric for good and focusing on my shaman, who could at least kill fast enough to finish a few quests in an evening, and run fast.

I honestly agree. Cleric was one of the only classes I couldn't bring myself to level. It was just... Too slow, too painful. Sure, you never worried about dying but I think you bored your enemy to death as opposed to actually beating them down.

Easiest way to mitigate this would be to improve the aggressive stance they get. As it is, the penalty to healing is pretty damned substantial, so it wouldn't be bad to bring up the boost to offence while in it.

As for Shaman? Shaman do great DPS if you build them for it. The only point in the shaman career that's a bit lacking is the point before you get your patron. I agree that maybe those early level abilities could perhaps be tweaked up just slightly (maybe a 5% increase?). This is of course, discounting bird shaman which apparently got shafted pretty hard.

Launch clerics were ridiculous. They could dps, heal, and tank (used to pull so much dps/heal aggro). Totally think they should bring those back

Maybe with a slight nerf.

I think this is going to be a similar situation to dragon/drunken monk and the bear/wolf/bird shaman option. I rolled a preservation cleric several years ago and I came to the same conclusion that clerics just can't kill anything at a rate faster than mold growing, and promptly deleted that toon at level 20. Then I rolled my war cleric about a year ago, mostly soloed him to 48 when I dumped kiting xp into him, eventually putting him through PotA/epics. The war affinity specific abilities and stance were a HUGE difference and gave him enough bite to actually feel like I made progress on a mob's health bar. A little more oomph wouldn't hurt, but I think a majority of the issue is going to be a matter of picking an affinity that is more conducive to pre-50 then switching to something else more accommodating to the 50+ change to more healer focus. It's similar for monks and shamans since there's always a style/patron that people recommend for leveling then switching to another style/patron for endgame grouping/raiding.

Another thing about Clerics and Shamans that I found suspect. I did some testing a couple of years ago in regards to endurance regen. For some reason, Shamans and Clerics regenerated endurance at half the rate of all the other endurance using classes. I realize that Clerics and Bear Shamans get a buff for endurance regen - but I always felt this was a little unfair, and also contributes to the "God this is taking so long" problem of killing things.

I don't know if this was a bug or intentional, but I feel like clerics and shamans should regenerate endurance at the same base rate as the other endurance using classes.

Here's my post about it from the original forums when I did the testing:
[quote]Well I went through all the melee classes, at level 1, on the isle of dawn, killing the same mobs (Gataro Podlings). All of these toons were the same race. The only anomaly was the Shaman, as it doesn't get an endurance based attack until level 2, which is 24 endurance but it didn't seem to change anything. I tested: Rogue, Bard, Ranger, Monk, Dread Knight, Paladin, Warrior, Cleric, Shaman and Disciple. All of these classes have an endurance starter attack that uses 20 endurance, except the Shaman as mentioned above.

All melee endurance using classes got 20 end per 3 seconds except: Cleric and Shaman, both of them got 10 endurance per 3 sec. So a 'tick' is 3 seconds. Both Cleric and Shaman get endurance regen buffs, so I don't know if this is how they 'balanced' it or if it's an oversight.[/quote]

[quote="Jakkal"]Another thing about Clerics and Shamans that I found suspect. I did some testing a couple of years ago in regards to endurance regen. For some reason, Shamans and Clerics regenerated endurance at half the rate of all the other endurance using classes. I realize that Clerics and Bear Shamans get a buff for endurance regen - but I always felt this was a little unfair, and also contributes to the "God this is taking so long" problem of killing things.

I don't know if this was a bug or intentional, but I feel like clerics and shamans should regenerate endurance at the same base rate as the other endurance using classes.

Here's my post about it from the original forums when I did the testing:
[quote]Well I went through all the melee classes, at level 1, on the isle of dawn, killing the same mobs (Gataro Podlings). All of these toons were the same race. The only anomaly was the Shaman, as it doesn't get an endurance based attack until level 2, which is 24 endurance but it didn't seem to change anything. I tested: Rogue, Bard, Ranger, Monk, Dread Knight, Paladin, Warrior, Cleric, Shaman and Disciple. All of these classes have an endurance starter attack that uses 20 endurance, except the Shaman as mentioned above.

All melee endurance using classes got 20 end per 3 seconds except: Cleric and Shaman, both of them got 10 endurance per 3 sec. So a 'tick' is 3 seconds. Both Cleric and Shaman get endurance regen buffs, so I don't know if this is how they 'balanced' it or if it's an oversight.[/quote][/quote]

I agree 100% Jak and I can say with a ton of experience that my Epic raiding Bear Shaman felt every bit of that slow endurance regen compared to playing any other melee class.

That would need testing of course but I think even raising that to normal levels would bring the dps up a nice amount (for melee anyway), then maybe a small tweak to spell damage to balance the rest of their dps.

I'm 99.99% certain that it was intentional. The endurance regen of all the healer types is lower then the endurance regen of offensive fighters. I think it was there to hinder them purposely. The "you're a healer then heal" mentality. I believe the same applies for Energy regen across all archetypes. Healers and caster had more natural regen then tanks and melee dps. I also believe that all healer melee type abilites cost more endurance to use as well. I remember on Nicolynn all her melee attacks were like 25+ endurance whereas the bard's was like maybe 15 endurance.