The new classes are overpowered.

[jezer]

Geahs, them some nice ideas!

I'm quite surprised how everyone has tried to think of balanced solutions to help out the poor 'ol clerics.

sing 'brothers in arms'

[Guinex]

I say we give em the ability to push a canon around with them, slow their movement but give em a big punch!

[brand]

cleric prime works fine for me.
as a tip of the hat sort of thing why not add a new prime only skill.
just this once.
if cleric is the weakest prime solo class, it almost makes perfect sense to add a prime only skill.

now what skill....
i've always liked the name 'ultima' but that is just me.

brand

[ilic]

I just thought id post a reply for a change because its an interesting topic for me. as most of you know im a cleric prime and often seen wandering in groups helping and raising because thats what i enjoy. however because i live out of the timezone to most of who play this game i struggle to be in groups regularly this only leaves me the options of solo which i add is very very difficult. my only effective places are against the undeads and that is solely relying on my supplications whih with alignment changes becomes very difficult.
i like most of the ideas suggested i would just like to see prime clerics able to solo more effectively at the levels through to 5x40 it would help me out more and you would defitnely see me play more.

thanks

[Gimlet]

I disagree that clerics are viewed as the strongest class just because almost every classo needs it. It's just that-- a strong support class, not a strong prime class.

Even now, there are spells from other classes that more or less does most of what cleric spells do. Necros can infuse souls for heal potions that cost less than a cleric heal...not to mention wraithform. Druids have fluidity and fast regen, etc.

That said, I can see splorks dilmena. Making clerics a strong solo class woud basically make cleric prime have an "extra class" because it's supporting itself

i'm sure there's some way of playing clerics that we have yet to discover...
like restoring mobs instead of blasting them maybe?

[Hobbes]

I agree with most of what's been said. This maybe doesn't directly address the overpowered/underpowered issue but..

Medium sized groups can usually do fine healing with non-cleric primes(errr, cleric non-primes, err, you get the idea). Any caster with cleric in classo is almost by default part of the healo. They heal and the group goes. However, try tanking without a warrior prime, or stabbing/gripping without a thief/monk prime, and the group production is noticeably affected. So if any caster class can function as a prime healer when called upon, I agree that any caster class should also be able to function as a soloing class when need be. They shouldn't be equal in ability, but comparable at least. I don't know how to arrange that, but there have been some good suggestions I think.

[12345]

I have a warrior prime that I love to grip with... just not solo

As far as the any caster being a healo... at avatar levels, yes. When you have folks running around with 600 mana and tert cleric with restores, they can be a functional healo. The pro healers are still worth about 2 non-healers though. 350 point restores are an absolute godsend, not to mention the insane regen rates.

The only real quirk I've been seeing is that the old classo clerics simply don't have the mana totals and regen rates of the new classo clerics. That and dr/cl actually seems to make a better healo than a cl/dr... which is all kinds of backwards.

This is all for group play of course... However, I've been noticing that while leveling Bell up as a cleric and running 2-man, it's very common for us to drag down a 10-25 mil mob and watch more than half the xp vanish into the ether. Granted, I have a pretty good tank, but the stuff I could kill with a sub-40 cleric was pretty damned good. It's even better now that she's 1x40 and learning how to actually play a little. The other day we actually had to change areas because we were killing 30 mil mobs 3man and I couldn't see wasting the xp.

I'll be going back there on nocap day

[Hobbes]

Nod 12345, that is why I said medium sized groups(I meant medium level I guess). Before avatar bonuses kick in and before a player is capped on healbonus, mages, necros, and druids do just fine for healing. The groups running around BH the past couple of days have been without clerics over level 20 sometimes and been able to go to all areas. Anyway, my point is that other classes can fill in as healers much better than clerics can fill in as anything else. Seems a bit unbalanced.

Cheers

[Elsie]

hmmm, good point made by a lot of you but there seems to be an assumption you've all made that I'm not sure holds true.

That all classes should be of equal or equivalent power.

Why should they?

Surely as long as each class is of some use use to someone, theres a point in it being there. As an experienced player creating a new character understanding the relative strengths of the classes and how well they work together is part of the choice.
Why create and play a cleric prime if you know or think its underpowered for solo play, if you know that before you create it, why complain.

If you're a newbie creating a first character and you're going to keep it forever, you are, apart from being very unusual, not going to see the relative strengths of the classo you chose (which will have been a fairly random choice anyway) come into affect much before leaving valk, but you should have come to an understanding of what they will be.
By the time you leave valk you should have gained enough of an insight into the game to understand what you want for the long term depending on your playing style amount of grouping you do and whether you want to die tanking or cower at the back healing. At that point its really not to late to start a new character over with the sort of informed decision I mention above, and this time round you'll have all the gold, equipment, and area knowledge that will get you to the same point 3 or 4 times faster.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That all said my opinions on where classo strengths are 'wrong' are as follows:

Warrior needs some more -AC bonus, perhaps a -ac skill equivalent to iron skin at around level 35-40

Necromancer jujus are still just far too overpowered in comparison to other pets. I know the jujus sometimes steal the xp from the kills and they've already be de-powered blah blah blah, but they are just still too good for eq / gold harvesting.

Mage has no pets to speak of ... charm person and familiar are useful but not really fighting, there was some talk some time ago of mage golems equivalent to jujus but couldn't be used in conjunction with them.

Bards don't seem to actually have a great deal to me thats at all useful ... nice gods of war/lion at fairly low levels, and I'm sure I'll love charm of sidhe in a few levels but I don't understand why no-ones crying out for bard to be buffed up ... perhaps my lack of undestanding though.

(Bear in mind I'm prejudiced by being a Wa/Ma/Cl/Ba and get narked at lower level Ne+juju combos that walk into an area I'm patiently cycling and kill everything before they have chance to notice I'm there)

All of this just food for thought, personal opinion etc.

Elsie

[Avatar]

That's a good point...err, 12345. I forget what your name is, heh! Anyway, that was exactly Splork's point. Cleric makes a great support class. On the other hand, send Bell into that area alone and see how she does against a 20 mil mob. Or, since that was 2 man you could see how she does against a 10 mil mob. If she's a 40 prime cleric, you might as well see how she does against a 1 mil mob. The results will likely be the same.

Noone denies that cleric is a great support class, either in part of a classo or as part of a group.

I don't really like the idea of using heal spells to damage evil/undead/negative energy creatures. Typically, people will just assign the normal points that would be healed as damage to the creature. That would mean a heal spell inflicts 100 points of damage, but it's 42 mana. That's an expensive blast for not so much damage. Later, even with 350 hp restores you're spending enough mana for 2 and a half winds on that restore.

It would be interesting to have more supps that are useful during groups. We all know (and love!) the chan chu, but some other group supp options would be a welcome addition.

Weasel, cleric primes do get a certain bonus to heals. The 3 spells heal, gheal, restore all cost a few points less mana. Restore costs 59 mana instead of 62. I don't remember for sure, but heal is a point or two cheaper. The bonus to raising is some amount of xp for the cleric if a cleric-prime raises someone. I think the theory was that its a fraction of the xp carried by the character being raised. I don't know what to say, it's a nice touch. It's not a whole lot of xps, but it would add up over time. During a quest like last night's, it probably added up rather quickly

Regarding using evil supps, I agree that they are more useful during a fight. Again, the real problem with supps is the alignment system. Clerics get a bonus for fighting certain types of mobs...dark dreams can be nice if you hit hard and carry a big stick...err mace, which procs nicely against evil mobs. Also, you can dispel evil and turn undead there, if you don't have a high str or a bunch of attacks. If you cycle there, though, or if you fight vs any evil mobs then you can't use the evil supps - at least not for long. It's odd that an evil character that goes on a killing spree might become angelic for causing that bloodbath. The two useful abilities that an actual clerics gets (dark mace / evil supps) work against each other.

[Avatar]

[quote:39mwknb4]hmmm, good point made by a lot of you but there seems to be an assumption you've all made that I'm not sure holds true.

That all classes should be of equal or equivalent power.
[/quote:39mwknb4]

I don't think that's really the point. Noone expects clerics to be able to solo like a Th/Ma or like a Ne/Mo. The scary thing is when you want to be a healer and you're better off choosing dr/cl rather than cl prime.

I guess the test would be to see if clerics make up 1/8 of the active community.

[brand]

how about a thing such as...
darkshield
that maybe has damage reduction attached to it.
and ac of course

[Zing]

Thief primes should have a reasonable chance at stealing from mobs. A unique talent for thieves.

Clerics primes should be the only class with restore. A unique spell only for primary healers.

A new piece of cleric prime eq would also be nice. Maybe something like the "Staff of Hermes" or a different item with a caduceus on it. The effect might be that aggro mobs aren't aggro if you are wearing or holding the sign of the cleric prime healer. Like a flag of truce. It would be useful for ambulance type work as well helping with scouting.

Zing - Cleric Prime (totally unbiased

[Krok]

Hi, guys, I'm finally back and happy to see that clerics are flaming :)

Ok. So I have a 5x40 cleric. My 2 cents are:

- I have 88 heal bonus with all ingame eq (cap is 90), so I don't know why people are bying drachma heal eq or why do they want more regular heal eq.

- as an attuned 5x40 I have 430 hp restores, and that's enough for healing in a group, but I really liked an idea to make our self-heals a lil bit bigger :)

- to be honest, clerics receive the real power only at 5x40 when they finally get the cute pit fiend, but that's only about the old classos, who are really under-powered compared with something rocking like cl/dr/ne/ba. So what I want to see is more supplicates, or additional supp's powers for cl primes. Some supps that could be useful for groups, if you consider cleric a support char. Maybe a supp who would rarely heal all group-members for 100 hps or so - nice additional chance to avoid a CF, etc.

- and about old school cleric primes. We have little mana compared to the new classes, so the ideas about some cleric prime eq is nice, I'd say we need some basic regen eq, but with a lil bit more mana. Dskin +2-3 mana, additional mana on neck regen items and so on. That can make up for the lack of regen and mana and help us to heal in groups.

- flame off, but I still think that everyone can be a nice soloer, that doesn't really depend on a classo, but on your brains. But yes, I have to agree, that clerics are not the best option to solo.

[Elsie]

new cleric skill idea:

Devotion:

As the cleric makes kills of either good or evil aligned mobs his devotion increases, if he starts killing e.g. evil mobs for each evil kill devotion goes up if he then kills a neutral or good mob devotion resets to zero.

Devotion once reached a certain level (needs to take a lot of effort to get there say 1500sac points worth) can be traded in for an act of god ... similar to mages fortune (but always good?) or perhaps traded for a mana regen / whole area heal, i.e. all of a groups mana & hp restored (perhaps thats a bit too much? or too groupee orientated) perhaps could be traded for some other power up that would make him solo strong for a limited time.