Beyond angry

[Zeralenn]

One of the best groups I was ever in, bar none, was two necros, a mage, a chanter, and two clerics. My cleric Milletoux was one of the clerics -- and she was MT while the other cleric healed her.

The best "balanced" group still only works well if people know how to play their class. You can even absorb a hefty amount of "unbalanced" in a group with good players who can be flexible.

...Zera

[kiztent]

The 40s are tough for druids. A 300 point heal doesn't really cut it when the tanks start to push 2k HP and stuff hits for low 100s.

Then again I just went 3-0 with a druid, necro, bard, ranger and me (and we picked up a BST for the last 2). Of course, the druid wasn't healing a lot. I'm not big on this healing stuff in LDoN. I parked my cleric in the oasis for rezzes, the necro burned a few EEs (since he MLed we told him to take the cost out of the split), the BST played shaman and everyone was slinging mana around like it was going out of style (7 mana for SP, 8 for BotN, 16 for pact of hate plus zevfeer's bite and mind wrack).

Add a ranger with crit heals o.O and theft of vitae and it was fun.

LDoNs don't really require perfect groups anyway - in my experience the clerics get so hung up on meleeing they forget to heal a lot.

Pact of hate. Whee. Love it.

[Kronepsis]

I say, screw requiring clerics. I'm perfectly happy with a druid, a beastlord, me (an enchanter), and any three other classes. Oh no, the tank might need a ress! He can't tank a mob that's slowed on incoming!

[Apolline]

Clerics + Ldon = Woo

I play a 53 Cleric on tholuxe paels, in good gear, and I havent had many complaints about my play style.


I cant say I've been in a ldon without a cleric, since Apolline is my highest and only character. 90% of the time I'm grouped with one of two druids, my best friends, and sometimes both..

With that said, I have to disagree and Agree.

A poorly played cleric is NOT better than a good druid.

However.. a good cleric is better in a group than a good druid, *IF* there are no other healers.

A usual group for me : Me (Cleric), Druid(best friend), Chanter (my ma, bleh), Ranger (Best friend's hubby), and with usually a melee of some sort to fill in last slots. Lately though it's been a necro who constatly feeds me like I need mana... Anyway..


With c3, I can pull. With c2 from the chanter, I can pull, but slower. All this is with FM 90% of the time. I've tried being Puller, MH, and Main Looter at once, but I'm a tad forgettful to do that, Druid friend is much better at it. I usually also melee between pulls, help the mob go down that much faster ( I hit for 30-50 with my soulstripper, and I bash for about the same).

This may sound like bragging, and well I suppose it is.. but perhaps the warrior in question had grouped with a cleric like me, and thought that most could handle the jobs? If needed, I could proably be crowd control too (root is our friend!).

It was wrong, in my opinion, for them to complain about not having a healer. If the druid knows what they're doing, they can be as effective a healer as a cleric (with dots and nukes and root to boot).

Now, regarding knights vs war and agro control..

This brings up the issue of melee balance, etc etc. A well played Knight can either keep or drop agro, and a well played warrior and do the same. Personally, I perfer a war, because it's one less person who I have to worry about's mana, and the hp and sheer ac usually make them great tanks. Well....that and barbarian warriors = Droolage.


OK I think I kinda got off topic and forgot what I was saying...but..I'll fix it later.

OH, and regarding cleric's pulling (seems to be a very rare thing, Have had monks freak out when leader says 'Ap's a pulling machine'). We can do it, if you have c3, brains, and good ac (Ultravision helps a lot, being able to see mobs in dark corners).

1) Bind self outside dungeon.
2)Mem these 3 spells : Gate, Strike(Yes, lvl 1), Pacify(or whatever is your highest calming spell)
3) dont just run through doors, stand outside doorframe, open the door, type /face, and drag the mouse around till you can see through the door and into corners.
4) To pull : pacify all but the one you want to pull first (Nearest to the right, then clockwise for me), and then cast strike on the mob to be pulled. Hit your inc hotkey ( 'I may be uber, but durnit, I AM a cleric! please remove Target' for me), and run to tank.
5) Incase of overpull : hit a hotkey that says something along the lines of 'Gating, Dont agro, or I'm so not rezing you for being stupid', and gate. If you keep getting interrupted, run back to group asap, or heal yourself and keep trying again. If it's only 2 mobs, and gate didnt get off the first time, I'd just run back to group anyway.. If it's more than 3.. You can rez yourself, and the rest of the group will live if you die.


Any tank worth their salt should be able to get the mob off a pulling cleric, strike is the least agro-inducing spell that you can pull with, for almost no mana, and casts quick. With c3, and tanks with good hp/ac, a cleric can almost chainpull, tossing the heals when needed and medding during fighting if needed.

For the record.. I've only lost 2 missions where I pulled (1 was a collect before they were fixed, 2nd was due to massive ld'ness )

[Silound]

Most LDoN groups I take my cleric into, I make it clear that I don't care how fast you can pull or how many you can tank till I have to CH you, if I call a med break, we are STOPPING. That being said, I can't remember many times where my cleric went OOM. With a 3500 pool at level 40, I can generally handle even the worst tanks/groups.

Many times though, if we are heavily DPS oriented, I will ask druids or shamans to take heal duty on other members so I can focus on tank. Thus we can pull and mow down mobs like candy. My cleric's best adventure was a s8 slaughter in under 20 minutes. We simply mowed through with pulls up to 5 or 6 at a time. Pity, dungeon booted us before we got to named...

[Iannyen]

Itek:

AE2 is soooo teh r0x00r. You'll love it. I set mine up on a hot key as:

/tash
/pet attack
/pause 30
/slow
/slow

<-- lazyest Coercer ever.

[Heartsong_Steelsoul]

My main is a (now, yay!) 53 warrior. On the flipside of things, my husband and I were trying to claim the last two spots of a group Looking for Players, but they "only" had a druid for healing and needed those spots for a cleric and an enchanter.

Granted the group I eventually got had a cleric, but it didn't have an enchanter (or bard, or necro, since it was MMC as well), so just root parked or off-tanked stuff.

There is NO perfect group.

[kiztent]

Re: Clerics + Ldon = Woo

Originally posted by Apolline
This brings up the issue of melee balance, etc etc. A well played Knight can either keep or drop agro, and a well played warrior and do the same. Personally, I perfer a war, because it's one less person who I have to worry about's mana, and the hp and sheer ac usually make them great tanks. Well....that and barbarian warriors = Droolage.

Technically speaking, warriors and paladins don't have any way to drop aggro. They can avoid taking it in the first place, but paladins are notorious for having chips on their shoulders and taking it from ANYONE, and warriors get locked into this "must have aggro" mindset ("you mean a blade of carnage isn't a DPS weapon?") they can be just as bad about not taking it.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Not get aggro? But but ... that means I can't use all my toys

But aye, neither paladins nor warriors have much in the way of losing aggro, other than just turning off attack and waiting. Paladins do outdo warriors via Divine Aura, which can give 15 seconds for someone else to get aggro if the reason the paladin isn't tanking is because the mob would eat him

[Melinia]

I've been in several groups and adventures with out a cleric and have it be a 100% success. Both with my main (52 enc) and my alt (29 bst). I have run into druids tho that say "I cant be main healer becuase my heal isnt the greatest." Its called playing smart! watching the pulls & aggros, and no touching the boxes.

[eniamn]

hehe. much love for druids. duoed with a couple for many levels now. tried to get an ldon together and had to have cleric. finally gave up in disgust after an hour of we need cleric. tried to get druid but no one else wanted. not even the pally. i can do a dang good job on my wizard. stuns and nukes and cc. limited by spells but use what i've got to full advantage. 6 second stun in melee hevy groups is awesome. no parry, dodge, riposte, or hitting back. does more damage for less mana than me nuking them. druids just have to be smarter than clerics when the rest of the group is stupid. normally though if the druid can't save anyone then the cleric couldn't have either and someone else was stupid to wipe us. love druids. /hug

[EQDewshine]

i play a 59 druid as my main, and i still have a hard time finding groups sometimes. I have a pally friend that i duo with a lot.. we already have MA and healer.. all we need is DPS or slow.. seems a good tossup. With enough DPS packed into the group, mobs drop too fast for slow to even be messed with, even WITH a slower in the group. And my guild is always more than happy to have me in an adventure. I learned the art of healing while doing 3 and 4 man groups at the flies in PoD.. *before* i got my CH. i stayed FM then, i pretty much stay FM now.

As a druid, i potc those that want it, myself included, group regen, and use my biggest DS on the MA, then park my butt, snare when needed, and wait to see how the mana falls before i take on anything else. Sure, dots and nukes are great, but if i'm spending a lot of mana healing, im certainly not going to blow through it.

Today i had my first set of deaths in my group, and i generally don't take in another healer, we usually don't need one. We had a monk breaking mezzes this evening.. chanter bit it *sniffle* and then we had a bad pull in another group, another dungeon. Tak is a pain with all those hollow trees everywhere. Someone popped one on accident, and here's 3 adds on top of the 3 that were pulled, one of which was a named. No cc. Pally bit it early, but miraculously, he was the only one. I had a shaman with me on that trip, but unfortunately, we were in a room with one of those stupid AE stun rock things. Suck.

I also have a 56 paladin that i LDoN with.. when i'm not playing the druid. And frankly, i've ran into enough dungeon crawl inexperienced clerics, i'd rather have the druid. Most druids have SOME clue what they're doing, although admittedly, some have NO clue, but they're generally easier to pick out. And in my experience, any healer that *starts* the dungeon tanking has some issues, or has grouped with practically every member of the group but you. I, and most of my friends as well, prefer to wait a few fights and see how the mana is going to fall, if the tank is a mana sponge, you're probably not going to have time to tank.

anyway, just my 2cp worth =P

[Darknyss]

Where are all you good players on Drinal... I'm dying out here...

Froglok Cleric (won't mention names no matter how tempting), would wander around setting off poison traps while low on mana instead of staying in the safe area. He actually LET the Enchanter die of poison because he wasn't paying attention. I told him to start curing the poisons, and he didn't KNOW that he had a line of CURE POISON spells since LEVEL 1... ARRRGGGHH...

And what is it with these Rangers that think that the best thing to do when there's an add and the Enchanter gets some aggro is to go over and start whacking on the mob... I swear, I've had more mezzes being broken at this lvl (56) than through most of my EQ career.

and ROOT for gosh sakes... I still don't understand why I see DoTs and nukes flying when there's an add and no crowd control, and why the rest of the melee still stand NEXT to the rooted mob, no matter how far away I try to pull it back.

Finally, in terms of aggro, I feel I must speak on behalf of some ShadowKnights... Now it's understandable to lose aggro to a hasted, Greenmist-weilding, sexy Iksar like myself, but when I bring out the slow rolling big 2hs, stop casting, stop taunting, hell, even stop attacking (yes Riposte has kept me high on the aggro list many a time)... we do get frustrated when the higher level or HP/AC'd Paladin or Warrior cannot maintain aggro off me, or lose it to the casters...

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Darknyss
Where are all you good players on Drinal... I'm dying out here...

I had to leave the server because my then wife was being stalked.

Try looking up the people in Divine Intervention, I seem to remember most of them not sucking.

[Grimina]

*looks shocked* People, please... this is NOT supposed to be a cleric bashing thread. There are just as many stupid druids, or rangers, or shaman, or warriors, or paladins, or etc...as there are stupid clerics. And each one of them can be as big a detriment to a group as a cleric. The CLASS doesn't make a person stupid.

Clerics ARE the best healers. If there is a druid there for your group...go with it. But if you HAVE a cleric...don't turn them away so you can wait for a druid. Don't be so set in being a rebel that you turn away "the perfect" group just because a different setup "can" do well. Yes druids CAN do well as main healers...but they just aren't as good as a cleric as main healer. And just because you've run across bad clerics in the past doesn't make the entire class bad...I still group with enchanters even though I've had my fair share of bad ones in my groups. The CLASS is still great even if those other people were bad.

In closing: My husband has close to 6k hps. For the DRUID'S sake..I don't want one being a main healer for him in an LDoN. Sure they could keep him healed...but that's gonna be ALL they'll be able to do since they'll have to be starting their cheals at 60-70% and druids have so many other things they can be doing to make fights go better rather than spending all their mana on heals. I consider a druid spending all their mana on heals rather like a cleric spending all their mana on nukes. Sure we can--our nukes aren't terrible--but we aren't as good as wizards and we'd spend all our mana just trying to match what a wizard could do on half the mana. My point? Don't take away what clerics do best or you risk us acting like wizards =P