VGOEmulator.net

My number one suggestion would be to not play a Cleric then Jakkal. If you don't like it, don't play it. Calling for class changes based on your particular dislike for how that class plays is the wrong approach. Not everyone is going to love every class. The most boring class in my opinion was either Nero or Sorc. I just don't like the playstyle as much as most other classes. Does that mean they need to be changed? No. That just means I most likely won't be playing them. And thats ok. There are still 13 other classes to chose from.

I'm not writing this for myself. I actually enjoyed my cleric. I would like to see the endurance regen disparity fixed, as I felt that was a bug.

But writing this as a former VG guild leader and a raid leader, people simply did not want to play clerics - and that is a shame. The majority of clerics at end game were either alts or buffbots. The class is /boring/. They get out dps'd by everyone. They get outhealed by discs and BMs. The only thing a cleric can do that sets it apart is buff and hit with huge burst heals.

And I'm not looking to change it to make it "special" in any way. I want the class to be fun to play for people who might not be determined to play a cleric.

And the only request I'm asking for is a minor dps boost so that leveling is not as painful and boring as live. (Which the endurance regen issue might fix). They can still be at the bottom of the barrel for DPS, that's fine with me. The reality is that groups will be even harder to find in the emulator than on the live game. Making any class group dependent will pretty much guarantee that no one is going to play it unless they're boxing. And even then, they'll just make the 1-key-macro to hot and burst heal, so they won't even know how to play it if raids do become a thing.

Playing a cleric is not difficult. It's not hard. It's not challenging. It's boring. I want all classes to be fun and challenging in their own way, and the cleric falls way, way short of that.

If you're talking about raiding specifically, then clerics and shamans are in the same boat. I'm not sure what exactly can be done to make it less boring to raid with those two classes. It's pretty obvious in that siruation why people would prefer to play BM or disc. They were able to heal with their combat abilities, so obviously they would be more entertaining on raids. My disc was a lot more fun to raid with than my shaman.
What do you do about that though? Do you scale down the healing effects of BM and Disc's abilities? I could see doing that for the Disciple, but that's really all you have as a BM.
But, would that even make a significant enough change? It would make disciples and BM's less effective on raids, but it wouldn't make clerics more interesting.
I for sure get what you're saying about clerics being not so fun to play on raids. But what does increasing dps output do for you in that regard? You will still be playing the same exact role in a raid. It seems like you're request is really solo play driven. I personally just don't see where this is an issue. You know you aren't going to mow through mobs as a cleric (I would hope). You know it will take longer to kill mobs, but the overall gameplay is much safer.
I personally found solo play on my cleric to be really fun. Maybe I'm strange. But I think it's a big stretch to imply that it's mind numbingly boring to solo a cleric.

I agree with you about clerics s at endgame, and in raids. But I think framing it as a dps or solo issue is a bad approach to that problem. I'm not sure what the solution to boring raid play as a cleric is, but a bump in dps to make solo play easier isn't it.

No, I'm not talking about raiding. Most clerics don't even hit the mob on raids except to use the weapon consecration heal or other buff type things. I'm talking about just levelling. Just regular old soloing.

In some ways Clerics can actually power level, using aegis and hots. But that's still boring. You just maintain aegis and tap your hot every 15-20 seconds or whatever it was. It was grass-grow boring. Once you hit level 20 you have the option of getting your specialization, and I really, REALLY enjoyed the peace cleric. But it too was grass-grow boring. Most people went with War or Death cleric, which gives them about the same DPS output as a paladin of that level. But it's really shitty to force everyone to go Death/War just to be able to kill stuff at a reasonable rate.

Clerics are MOST fun in raids and groups where you have to bust your ass to keep everyone alive and maintain your mana. But that very rarely happens, unfortunately. That's when they really shine, and it's really great. But if groups are sparse, clerics will be doing a lot of soloing.

Mostly I'd love to see a slight DPS boost at least up to level 20 so they can kill stuff a little bit faster. (Shamans should get this too because they're painful up until level 15 when they get their patron). I don't have any hard numbers on how long it takes to kill stuff on a cleric from live. I just know that it took about 2-3 times as long as the other classes I played unless I could get a group. I ended up boxing him a lot and playing another character mentored just to get him levels.

[quote="Jakkal"]Clerics are MOST fun in raids and groups where you have to bust your ass to keep everyone alive and maintain your mana. But that very rarely happens, unfortunately. That's when they really shine, and it's really great.[/quote]
Reading all this, I reflect on my game time with my (then) g/f who played a healing class in every game we tried out. She loved it. Exactly what you're saying above, Jak; the "your lives are in my hands muhahaha" excitement she had playing those classes. When I am reading this thread, I admit to thinking to myself, why is playing a cleric boring when people die all the time?

Then you said, But that very rarely happens, unfortunately. so I ask why? Why was the excitement taken from a healer in VG? Was it because everyone got so insanely powerful >50 that they could solo raid mobs without any effort? Or is this reflecting on the lack of population in the VG Live and [premature] speculation that the emulator will also lack population?

It's not so much healer as it is cleric. Each healer was very different, which was great. And each had their own challenges.

Most healers were disciples because they were so much easier to play. You hit 1-2-3 and heal everyone in the group and the MT with a burst heal (or yourself because discs inevitably pull aggro). And if you were a cleric with a disc in your group, you weren't doing much.

The biggest problem is that those challenges rarely presented themselves. Most dungeons weren't difficult enough. You didn't really have to pull your weight as a healer. The cleric could usually just get away with putting a HOT on the tank and forgetting about it. Unless someone accidentally pulled several mobs, the "oh shit gotta HEAL!" was rare.

It was generally only in the 50+ content that I felt the "oh shit" moments. I can't think of a single moment in leveling my cleric that I felt that oh-shit moment. And I did most of the big dungeons: TK, Tricksters, Dargons, VT, RI, Greystone, etc.

The other problem is finding a group. Thankfully if you were a cleric, it was easier for you to find a group (They all need healers) but you're pretty much just along for the ride in most cases. It wasn't until I started raiding and doing high end content that I felt the pinch. Grouping was great for the cleric though, because other people are giving you free XP. That's all you really get out of it.

Another thing was that the cleric was really hard to kill. So you'd just kinda be sitting there forever hitting aegis and hots waiting for the mobs to die. I think the cleric would be more fun if the DPS stance (Yes, it actually had one) would make the DPS go up a little more, but drop their survivability a bit more. I can't remember what the numbers were on live, but I think the dps stance made their attacks increase by 15% and their defense drop by 15%? Whenever I used it, I never noticed a difference in either my DPS or my survivability.

Sorry, I thought that when you brought up being a raid leader and how clerics compared to Disciple and BM that you were focusing a little more on raid content.
I just have a different view of class disparity than you do. Maybe it's because I did play a good bit of old school eq. I know you don't want to hear about it, but this is a spiritual successor to eq1.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for classes to feel completely different in terms of gameplay. I really think that is a strength in game design. You keep saying that clerics were torture to level solo. I didn't have that experience. Yes, I went War cleric. Yes that's the easiest to level solo. Yes, that's the whole point of having three affinities. The point t is that they realized that clerics were going to be either impossible, or boring to solo with, so they diversified the class to give it internal balance. I think it is a great move.
If you're worried about soloing specifically, then go War cleric. Does it sucking that that is your only choice? No, I don't think so. It's a choice. You have three of them, you chose the best one for your needs.
Like I said, I found Sorc and necro's the most boring of all the classes. Not that I didn't have any fun playing them, but they were definitely the least interesting for me. But that does t mean there was anything wrong with them.
All your actually doing if you increase the dps of a cleric is allowing them to kill things a little faster. I don't see how that would actually make them more interesting by you criteria of having a thrilling or suspenseful gaming experience. It would actually move the bar in the opposite direction since they are already nearly unkillable. It would only make things a bit faster. But that doesn't really equate to being more interesting.
As far as your point on making 1-20 faster for a lot of classes, I disagree (I know, big surprise). 1-20 is when you learn your class. If you can learn to play a gimped version of a class, you will really start enjoying it even more as you start to gain some real abilities after 20. If you speed up 1-20 it takes away the learning curve. And Vanguard actually does have a learning curve for most classes. You can't just button mash and face roll through 1-20 for the most part.

[quote="Glenzig"]You keep saying that clerics were torture to level solo. I didn't have that experience.[/quote]
I played a cleric as my main from launch, soling post 25-30 got really drawn out.
[quote="Glenzig"] Yes, that's the whole point of having three affinities.[/quote]
I think there were five-
War, death, peace, pres, purity IIRC

Out of those purity was the one I enjoyed the most playing in undead areas. THAT is the feeling I want from the other affinities. an actual specialization that went beyond tacking on some somewhat OK finishers and attacks.

The biggest issue I had was that while the affinities helped, they still didn't really make a huge difference in most cases. I think if there was cleric oriented gear to support the offensive affinities it would have made things a lot more enjoyable. Purity was the exception to this. That was a blast.

Endgame PVP was the same. IIRC was able to gear up using warrior/rogue gear and get a pretty nasty war cleric (with a crit I could usually 2-3 shot most people), but once that initial burst was spent that was it. I was effectively done offensively thanks to cooldowns, and totally unable to heal. I tried my hand at death cleric gearing, but couldn't get the spells to stick 75% of the time. Was not too bad for PVE though. In both cases I was not even half as effective as a palladin or a sorc/necro, but I was giving up 80% of my heals. Not a good tradeoff. As a heals cleric, normally people got bored trying to kill me and left or kept me busy for the 5-10 minutes it took backup to arrive.

Might be that like other games cleric just gets a bot written for it and thats that. /shrug

I have a hard time following the shifting arguments in this... we seems to all agree that the most fun with a cleric, and why we chose to play that class in the first place, is trying to keep people alive in difficult situations. Then you want to make the class less boring by giving it more DPS, which wasn't the reason you chose the class to start with.
One solution (note that it's just one solution and not the only one) to the boredom the you say some people felt, although I never felt it on any of my 3 clerics, would be to give everyone less DPS so the fights would last longer so you would actually need to heal, which was the reason why you chose the class.