Over the years Clerics have often been regulated to stand around and spam heals. However in VG I notice Clerics wear heavy armor does this mean they can do more than spam heals or are we once again a heal bot? Thanks
Clerics are best when up front next to the tank. They are the strongest vit healers and they can also offtank if they have to and are specced right. Several reasons you want to be in melee and not just standing around: 1. Your mana regen melee strike. Your heals cost a lot of energy and if you're not constantly using your ability that gives you mana you'll run out pretty quickly. 2. You have melee abilities and finishers that cast group buffs. These are really great buffs that will add damage to your group. 3. You can offtank. My level 37 has even been MT a few times in places like VT 4. I like to use "Strike Down" whenever it's up because it's off GCD and has a chance to stun, and also seems to have an increased chance to crit. One of your finishers is a stun, and sometimes I can chain stun a mob which prevents a mob from damaging the tank
Depending which path you choose, there are a few different playstyles. While the cleric is still the most standard of the healer classes, it is certainly able to be played as much mroe than jsut a healbot (althoguh they can be used for that if you want ).
Muya wrote: In addition to #1 in your list, they added a Mana recovery component to the Healer stance that procs 10-20% of your mellee hits, and a new change mentioned in the Test Server Forum Auto-attack delay from ability use may get removed. This will make it more important to be up close. Auto-attack thread http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/p...?topic_id=58516
