Smite clerics.. why?

[Lochlyessa]

Now, i'm new to forums and such, but I'm just posting this cos of a worrying trend i'm seeing on DAoC. An example: Your a lvl 50 cleric,running around partyless, with a lvl 50 armsman, who's also partyless and you come across 2 mids, both lvl 50. they both attack the armsman, leaving yuo free to cast as you wish. Now, what you've gotta decide is, do you a) smite for all your worth and ignore the armsman, in the vague hope that he'll die, and you'll get all the rps from the 2 mids, or, do you heal the arms, giving up a few rps, but pretty much ensuring the 2 mids die? Being a cleric myself, i'd personally, heal and stun, but a worrying amount of clerics i've seen just smite like egomanical gods, and completely ignore the poor armsman, who subsquently dies. Now, I realise smite is a cleric only spec line, but, in rvr myself, I've never actually managed to kill an enemy solely with smite. Now, you could be thinking - this is cos you didnt spec smite highly enuff, which could be true, but this brings me onto another point, which is clerics in pve. Too often recently I've seen groups with 2 and even 3 clerics doing witherwoodes, which in my eyes is pointless, all because 1 or 2 of the clerics have mostly specced smite, and heal worse then friars :\ I'm prolly boring ppl now, but i just wanted to say this, after all, smite isn't gonna kill anything with any sense, cos most mids/hibs do actually move around and interupt it and it's also annoying watching a group with 3 clerics get wiped out because 2 of the clerics carried on smiting instead of healing the dying tanks.Quite a few smite clerics who I'm not gonna name, haven't made friends with their lack of healing, but still i'm going on final point- smite is getting nerfed soon, so why not spec a bit of rejuv and try and heal your realm, instead of being greedy and going for rps

 

[Danya]

Put yourself in the smiter's mind for a moment... does he think. "Gosh two evil midgardians?! Ho noble Armsman, let us team up and vanquish the foul barbarians!" or does he think "Must... farm... RPs... OMG smite rocks!!". I'll let you decide.

 

[Krillin.]

well i posted a big post about the main problems for nerfing smite but instead for those you that want a interesting point of view this is a report by the cleric team leader used by mythic and can be found here;

http://pub15.ezboard.com/fglastonburyabbeyfrm11.showMessage?topicID=1.topic

bah just go the post and read it if u want as poeple are moaning :/

 

[Krillin.]

.

 

[Tabasco_LoE]

There needs to be alot of change in albion

Not only the Cleircs need to change behavior.
Me myself a cleric with a quite "even" specc are trying to adjust right now to the intended role of healer and protector of the weak (read casters).

I think it is a pity that Clerics will "loose" thier seconday skill in the realm wich is damage dealing.
Healers in midgard have Mezz, and Druids have the pet.
The main healers were never meant to be only buffbots and healers, they were ment to have a secondary skill also.
But I don't want to rant more about the coming nerf, many others have done that, I just want to point out that clerics need a secondary skill that is actually usefull for the REALM.

Since my 50th season I've been engaged in alot more unplanned RvR (mainly in emain) and I am getting so frustrated.
Albs are nowdays getting defeated by not only mids, but by hibs also.
The only way this is going to change is if we start play to the advantage of our classes, and start use the small advantage we might have.
What I'm talking about is fighting for the realm, not for your own personal RP farming collection.

Examples: at keep defenses, Shield tanks should guard Casters at the keep walls, Healers standing in the courtyard keeping them alive.
If you are an armsman inside a keep that is under attack (they are at the doors), don't get up on the keep walls and start fire your xbow, pick any unprotected Caster or scout and stick on him and put your guard on him. He will make 5 times as much damage to the enemy than your puny little xbow.
Smite clerics can only smite if they jump up on the walls, so why not get down on the courtyard and start healing those on the walls?

This is just 1 example, there is plenty more, but I'm taking that at a later moment.

Lastly: First rule of RvR is to know when to run.

 

[old.Immortal]

zz

 

[Krillin.]

Re: zz

Originally posted by old.Immortal

if you have nothing of importance to add then why not just stay out the thread instead of posting a response which brings nothing to the subject.

 

[SilverHood]

I 2nd that



Something constructive..... a cleric is a tank, is a healer, a buffer, a poor mezzer witha stun, and is a caster with good dmg

Tell me.... is that not too much?

My thane is a ok Tank and a below average caster... I cant heal.... I cant do cc... I can buff myself so I can up my damage slightly

At lvl 45, I have NO chance of taking down a smite cleric of even con

He stuns me, and smites me to pieces

Saw a cleric some weeks ago (genius).... took us 8 people 4-5 minutes to kill him.... and we we were all lvl 40-45.... he stuned some of us... bashed at our healer.... we started bashing him... when he was below 1/2 health.... isnta heal...... another minute of bashing while our healer stuns him and heals me.... he low on health.... another insta heal.... only smaller this time, but still
Then that damn stun again.... stand around while he bashes at me some more
Finally he died... after 4 minutes... only because he ran out of insta's


that cannot be right....

 

[Danya]

Originally posted by SilverHood
I 2nd that



Something constructive..... a cleric is a tank, is a healer, a buffer, a poor mezzer witha stun, and is a caster with good dmg

Tell me.... is that not too much?

It would be if they were all those things.
Cleric's can't tank (yeah non-spec weapon, real effective in melee!)
They heal, it's their job, so do healers and shamens.
Likewise for buffs.
Caster with good damage? A robed caster outdamages a cleric by a good amount, bear in mind the 4 second cast on smite and then when it hits it's not even as much damage as a fire wizard nuke.

When it comes down to it, Albion has the some of the weakest classes to start with and Mythic is weakening rest to bring them in line.

 

[Turamber]

Originally posted by SilverHood
Something constructive..... a cleric is a tank, is a healer, a buffer, a poor mezzer witha stun, and is a caster with good dmg

Tell me.... is that not too much?

The cleric can't be good at healing, buffing and smiting -- he has choices to make in the allocation of his training points. And as for being a tank -- please! The cleric has relatively poor hit points and can't learn combat styles. What sort of tank is that ?

Please do your homework on classes before doing your usual "Albion is overpowered" rhubarb!

 

[Nala Lionne]

When I used to play, I quite enjoyed healing in RvR. It's more of a challenge and you need to think who to heal, quickly. If you are a good RvR healer you can change the tide of a small skirmish quite easily. It's just not as easy to see the direct effects, as it would be when you smite someone dead.

Altho I say I healed in RvR, I also mezzed, smited and stunned as frequently as possible. However the smiting only came when there was really no need for the others.

A problem I found sometimes when no clerics helped to heal, and just went off smiting, is that more of Albions forces died, and so took up a lot of power to rezz them all. If they had spent some power on healing rather than smiting they could have saved some so we didnt all have to sit around so long.

Bah

 

[mercurial]

This is my first post to the boards, but this thread got me interested enough to register.

In reply to the original post;

Some good points made about RVR and the clerics role in it, though to be fair if the lvl50 cleric was worth his salt he would have stunned the enemy in any case, thereby stopping the arms getting any more aggro as you mentioned ( also ensuring he himself didnt become a target ).

As to the 2nd point, I'm not sure why it is bad to have 2-3 clerics in a withers group? 2 people are getting xp and that can only be a good thing. In fact before this patch 2 clerics was de rigeur if you were chain pulling (especially at Camp 3), both from the fact that if one cleric got agg the other could still heal the group and that the second could stun/smite therefore increasing the groups damage output - not forgetting to mention reducing downtime when out of power, for quick pulls. Why not have have rant about 2 theurgists? oh no, double pbt - same point to be made.

Also highish level smite can still kill if used correctly - though usually only in 1v1 encounters, though definitely with the help of instants, and your left severely drained at the end of it.

Personally, I've never met a cleric that hasn't healed, too often in rvr people (especially tanks) do not realise the limitations of the range of our heals and go running off without saying and then expecting a heal when out of sight or range, and ignore you when you get aggro, and expect a heal - heals do take time to cast and if your getting hit it just doesnt happen.

Final point - smite is getting nerfed. True. And you will see a lot less clerics in RvR because of it. Good job tanks can get a RA to heal isn't it . Then we shall find out how "little" smiters actually healed <evil grin>.

As to Silverhood, by your post, it shows you have never played a cleric at least to a high level.

Clerics tanks? LMAO, so i'll ignore that (no styles don't you know so therefore pitiful damage).

A healer yep certainly clerics are that, but to do good damage you must forego high level healing. A caster, sure, lot less range than a clothed caster, and more importantly a much higher casting time. As well as a smaller mana tank. Oh and a insta mezz you have to be in there faces to use and is often used as a last gasp and is resisted 4 out of 5 times.

And Genius must truly have been incredibly lucky, blessed by God and your group all conned grey and all had full frontal lobotomies, and been stood VERY close together. To take out 8? mids and live for 5 minutes.

Well Mythic must have agreed with you to turn a pretty balanced class into one nerfed to hell and back next patch <ho-hum time to move on>.

Said enough now, sorry for the long post.

Edit for typos/grammar

Mercurial Lazarus
Lvl50 soon to be gimped to hell Cleric
Lionhearts http://www.mumer.com

 

[scunn]

Hmm

Well i am not going to criticise smite clerics at all tehy choose teh spec line tehy wanted but it can be annoying when u have two clerics in a group and when necesary teh smite cleric does not back up the other cleric.

I think many clerics want more of the RvR which is why they smite i did at first. But remember the cleric is a support class we are there IMO to support our fellow albions.

It is a tricky job and not always teh msot exciting but when u make a cleric thats what u have to expect. I have often wanted to try smite specing but i chose to max rejuv and minor in enhance and i find the base smite fine.

So in thsi case i have to agree with most of what Loch said.

 

[old.Dugald]

Nice1 Turamber

and nice 1 krillin for the report link. i read it all the way thru and feel like retiring Dug now before the pain kicks in and i aint even smite specced

 

[- Pathfinder -]

If 8 of you people took 5 min to kill one cleric, you suck. Live with it

 

[Krillin.]

aye when you read the report link from someone who actually knows his class it makes you wonder what is going on?

its more than a smite nerf and this recent nerf makes albion as a realm weaker. You only have to look at the state of our own server with more or less every char under level 30 being a scout infiltrator or minstrel. Mythic have pushed stealth too much.

Their main argument as well for clerics insta mez nerf was it was being used as a source of crowd control in which it was never designed. Well if mythic looked at the fact that at present albion has less than 6 level 50 sorcerers - 2 of which i know prefer playing their alt. A minstrel AE mez that is tricky to cast and fairly unreliable. This then puts albion as having no CC at all really. Seems my friend in USA is true, with the recent nerfs albion becomes the weakest realm out of the 3 with yet again an over hard nerf to classes. :/

Also interesting that people yet again are misinformed about clerics. I know for a fact that in 1 on 1 melee i will very very rarely win. I do 43 damage to a yellow con maybe 70 if i have my cleric dmg buff on and am lucky.

Hear in 1.53 that in an attempt to balance things out alb tanks are now going to use wooden sticks and wear string vests

 

[Krillin.]

Originally posted by SilverHood
I 2nd that



Saw a cleric some weeks ago (genius).... took us 8 people 4-5 minutes to kill him.... and we we were all lvl 40-45.... he stuned some of us... bashed at our healer.... we started bashing him... when he was below 1/2 health.... isnta heal...... another minute of bashing while our healer stuns him and heals me.... he low on health.... another insta heal.... only smaller this time, but still
Then that damn stun again.... stand around while he bashes at me some more
Finally he died... after 4 minutes... only because he ran out of insta's


that cannot be right....

Genius was a rejuvenation cleric so either your group was just bad or your telling lies. His mez would have been extremely short as mez is a spec line in smite not a rejuv line. I suggest you go to this link and actually read up on the cleric before making anymore mis informed quotes.
http://copland.udel.edu/~trevor/camelot/albion/cleric.shtml

at the end of the day it seems a shame that so many hours spent getting to level 50 have resulted into leaving my cleric logged in a PK as a buff bot. Way to go Mythic thats a great idea :/

 

[Balbor]

OK here's the fact; clerics are Albions secondary AOE nukers. If a cleric chooses to go for smite then they should not be looked upon as some kind of useless stableboy. I'm not stupid, I don't fire off AOE smites during battle after the enemy has been Mezzed.

Used corrected a smite cleric could deal with the original scenario more effectively than any healing cleric could. Ok 2 mids attack and cleric hits instant mezz as they go for the Armsmen. Both mids now zzzzing for next 25 sec (using my Cleric for example). Now, as armsman move to attack 1st mid cleric casts 8sec stun, then does a DD hitting for 150-200 then stunning again. First mids will probably take 3-5 hits without hitting back and won't survive long enough to inflict any real damage on armsman. Now turn to the second Mid and repeat healing instead of smiting if need be.

As for tanking well I hear of cleric soloing Red undead, not many tanks can do that. I've soloed a L50 mid stealther at L41 with some sneaky tactics, and never been killed by a same level thane 1on1. Remembers we have a very good weapon buff and our instant heals can make all the difference, especially when End hits 0 and your enemy can't use weapon styles. We Albions need to use our smite clerics as thanes that can heal. I've seen too much dependence on mezz, with people blaming everything on the enemy not being mezzed. We need to learn to adapt and start using DOT and debuffs seeing as we don't have the AOE stuns of healers.

Why don't you get off our backs, Frieres get 1.5 spec point per level but no one minds if they don't spend a single spec point in Rej. I'm taking my Rej up to 23 to get the first Group instent, then 21 in Enh and 44 in smite.

 

[old.Vae]

I've certainly solo'd very high orange undead before but this has taken superb play and use of both instas to survive thus absurd downtime. Low to medium orange undead are like yellows though so easy

 

[SilverHood]

Genius was a rejuvenation cleric so either your group was just bad or your telling lies. His mez would have been extremely short as mez is a spec line in smite not a rejuv line. I suggest you go to this link and actually read up on the cleric before making anymore mis informed quotes.

What has that got to do with anything?

Ever been a lvl 40 tank hitting a lvl 50? I did something like 60dmg (-10 or so for chain) and he hit be back for even more
Thats 50 dmg... and I was highest lvl tank at 43.5

And his rejuv prolly explains why he took so long to kill - all those buffs

he must have had something in the league of 1500 hps or more.... try hitting for 50 each time and calculate how many hits it owuld take him

And our group was fine... we did kill him, and only our runie died, but the time it took, and the way he trashed us the first time round still makes clerics very overpowered

 

[Krillin.]

I really do suggest you read that link i posted.

Rejuv line has nothing to do with buffs.

 

[Turamber]

Originally posted by SilverHood
the way he trashed us the first time round still makes clerics very overpowered

No, it makes you look very silly. For (1) getting "trashed" by a rejuvenation cleric, (2) for continuing to show you know nothing about a class yet standing in judgement of it & (3) for making sweeping class judgements on one incident.

 

[old.Chavez]

I hate to say it, but clerics are too overpowered.

I'm not complaiming, hey, they are on my side

I do however see the points of the other realms looking at the cleric. Here we have a character walking around in chain armor carrying a shield and HUGE amounts of hitpoints (we're talking close to TANK lvls here)

They nuke (for something like 80% of a wizard DD if high smite)
They CC
They stun
They heal
They insta heal
They buff
They Rez

I would NOT like to run into a enemy with those abilities neatly wrapped up


The problem is, albion needs the smite clerics - he's our only REAL good RvR class (with the exception of the minstrel and infil perhaps) and does alot of our CC on the battlefield.

 

[old.Sohawen]

We can only wait for the respec =(

Then i change char to my alt minstrel ... so sad...

 

[Turamber]

Chavez, what a load of rubbish. You should stop reading the anti-Albion rush propagated by some people who don't know their classes.

Clerics can't do all of the things you list well, try rolling one and see for yourself.

For the most part rejuvenation or enhancement clerics will only pick up realm points from their group, they can only solo if they come across seriously retarded grey enemies!!

What are you going to suggest next - Paladins are overpowered because they rez and wear plate?!

 

[old.Chavez]

No need to get aggresive here lol

I'm trying to look at it objectively, OF COURSE albions would HATE to see the smite cleric nerfed as it will weaken the realm...

Clerics can do aLL those things i listed well enough to give them the edge over most other classes. They get baseline buffs which isn't great...but they aren't terrible either. Try asking the average midgard player how often he recieves as many buffs as albions, or any at all.

Now, toning down the clerics offensive abilities is just 1 step mythic needs to take to balance this game. These are (imo) :

Remove ALL insta CC from the game, period.
Remove all spell based stuns. Shield stuns stays.
Cut CC duration down to a max of 30 secs across the board (before resists)
Increase pure tank Hitpoints with 500+


For the record I played a cleric (lvled him up with a friend, was a shared acc.) on u.s. servers for over 3 months as well as a melee char both 40+

 

[old.Revz]

Originally posted by old.Chavez
Here we have a character walking around in chain armor carrying a shield and HUGE amounts of hitpoints (we're talking close to TANK lvls here)

I am probably one of the best equipped clerics on the server (thanks to Legion drops) and I still can't get within 400-500 HP of our tanks when equally buffed so that just simply isn't true. With augmented con 2, toughness 1, capped con from items and capped +HP from items along with an extra 10 points in con at creation I have 1842 hit points maximum when I am self buffed (with 31 enhance). Some of our tanks who aren't even as well equipped are breaking 2200 HP when buffed.

Yes I have a shield but I can't spec it so my blocking chance is pretty poor.

Originally posted by old.Chavez
They nuke (for something like 80% of a wizard DD if high smite)
They CC
They stun
They heal
They insta heal
They buff
They Rez

You can nuke and CC at the expense of healing and buffing. You can heal at the expense of nuking, CC and buffing. You can buff at the expense of nuking, CC and healing. Clerics only get 1x points per level spec and the abilities you have listed there are from all three spell lines. You can be effective in one at the expense of the other two but not in all three at the same time as many people like to imply.

 

[SilverHood]

what about baselines?

I have 1842 hit points maximum when I am self buffed

Have you checked a lvl 50 Thane's HP? Alb tanks have the highest hp in the game (maybe bar dwarf warrior)
At lvl 46, I have 1100 hp.... fully buffed I can get an extra 300 hp..... thats still no where near your hp.... maybe it's because I'm not lvl 50, or because Thane's have shite hp, but 1800 hp IS NOT LOW

 

[old.Revz]

That's not to say that I don't think toning down smite and increasing heals is a good thing because I do I heal more than I smite in RvR anyway so making my job easier by adding range and power to my heals is great. I only have 35 smite so it's not as if I lose much especially once I respec.

The thing that does bother me is going 35 smite for the 20 second mez gets nerfed too and I use that a lot. I don't like to see people (especially from Albion) bashing the cleric because it is one of the more effective classes. Each realm has its decent classes you see a lot of (or should we call them non-broken?) but by removing them all from Albion you just hurt the overall game balance.

 

[old.Chavez]

I don't know what equipment or passive abilities your tanks got but i can guarantee you most tanks when buffed by the average (smite) cleric when going into battle will have around 2k hitpoints and thats about it.

Im carrying epic armor and +HP (100+ pts) items and thats where i land regulary - tell me thats far off from 1800 ?

This HP discussion reminds me i got 9pts of con to buy back, doh!

Anyway this cleric discussion has already been beaten to death by the u.s. players - it's a dead horse, the nerf is a reality..let it sink in