Well, first, head to the EQCleric forum here:

http://eqcleric.gameglow.com/forums/

Lots of useful information about being a "good" cleric.  Check the FAQ and
read some of the other posts for some good playing tips.

Just some general advice:

Pay attention.  Don't multi-task or watch television.  Be focused on your
party's health and be ready to heal them.  If you stay focused all the time
and actively respond to requests from your groupmates, you'll already be in
the top 20% of clerics serverswide.

Learn how to heal before you do anything else.  Once you feel comfortable
healing, learn how to do some basic crowd control like rooting off adds.
Don't focus too much on learning how to nuke and tank - those are bonus
skills, not primary skills.  You'll never get into an uber-guild by bragging
about your tanking abilities.  =)

That's it for general advice; if you have more specific questions, let me
know.

Since level one, Divine Aura has not left my spellbar, EVER. This can come
in VERY handy. Say the puller brings adds, or a train happens. The MT is
dropping fast- my CHeal hits when he is very low. All the adds decide they
want Cleric for dinner.

By using Divine Aura, I become invulnerable for a max of 18 seconds for
little mana and a fast cast. During that 18 seconds, the mobs leave me
alone, going back to the tank or whoever. This gives the tank a bit of time
to regain aggro.

If I need to heal before then, I click off the DA icon.

I judge that I use it once ever 3-4 sessions, but I have never felt that it
was a waste of a spell slot.

Also, heal over time is your friend. I use my cele's in a lot of
situations- healing a shammy after an unloved slow landed on the mob, for
example. These have an excellent mana/hp ratio, and produce a lot less
aggro than their one-blast equivalents. By all means, slap down a fast cast
for a chanter or something, but secondary melees can usually be cele'd.
This spell is also useful when you need to cast cheal but it will not land
in time- slap a cele down then start the cheal- the cele can buy you some
time to get that complete heal off.

Your first major investment should be a mount. I prefer drogmors, as their
head is not in my face. To get off in a hurry (say, to interrupt a spell)
use /dism. The mount means you don't have to sit to med, which means that
you med through the one or two ticks your cheal spans, and you med after-
never having to worry about sit aggro.

Your next investments should be focus effects. In my opinion the most
important is a mana efficiency focus effect, followed by extended
enhancement, then casting haste. Spending less mana on a spell is the same
as regenerating more mana per tick.

After these are accomplished, increase your mana pool with +WIS and +MANA
items.

Flowing thought items are nice- get them if you can.

Hope that helps!

~Empty

Make yourself an "Assist" hotkey (/assist). Now you can target a mob
and, with one key press, switch to the player it is beating on. In
most cases the player with aggro will also have the mob targeted,
so this same key will toggle your focus back and forth between the
mob and the player which it's currently attacking.

Also, make a hotkey to /target the MA (main assist) in your group --
usually the tank. This requires that you edit the social at the start
of each group to add the MA's name after /target, but it's worth it.

Now with two keystrokes you can target the MA and then the mob he's
working on. This way you don't attack the wrong mob in a multi-pull
and tick off your crowd controller by breaking mez.

--
Ray Rocker
rocker@datasync.com

Just don't roleplay a Rabbi cleric or the 'tips" you have to play tend to be
unhygenic. besides, if your thinking of playing with it then perhaps
roleplaying a Catholic Cleric would be more your style...

Now - is there anyone I forgot to offend?

I *google copied* this advise from Splendid One's response to *my* cleric
question regarding healing at level 53.  (It may be high for you now though...I
hope Splendid One doesn't mind the quote!!!!!) :

At your level, I had four heals memmed: Cheal, Remedy, Divine Light, and
Celestial Healing.

Cheal I used on the MT, tried never to use anything else on him, and
hoped never to have to cast any of the other spells at all.  All damage
should go to main tank and I shouldn't waste time and mana casting the
small heals on him.

BUT situationally, his damage rate would be too high, or he could use
topped off before  a pull.. so I'd drop Celestial on him.  This works
kind of like a slow, and has the advantage of not all being wasted when
a Cheal lands; the remaining tics of celestial continue to drop down
assuming he's still taking damage.

I'd try to use nothing but celestial on other injured people.  When
someone gains aggro and manages to lose it, there's generally no rush
about healing them up, and celestial is the most mana efficient spell to
patch them up unless their injuries are so large as to warrant a CHeal,
and most people that injured who aren't MT really need a rez, not a
heal.  Even as a patch heal, celestial would often be the heal of choice
as its cast time isn't bad and once it lands its the equivalent of
spamming a GHeal on them every tic; depending on what's killing them
this usually was plenty to keep them alive, and once aggro was lost
would finish out by repairing the damage taken before it landed.

In emergencies, Remedy was my heal of choice.  Its not as large a heal
as some, of course, but its blindingly fast; with BOF and a spell haste
III item (or mage summoned one) even more so (3 second cast time is
-just- at the limit for those two effects).  Casting something slower on
fragile robes often means wasting mana as the spell fails to land on
their dead bodies.  This is also a good spell for the "backup healer",
who might have to land something in order to help a tank live long
enough for a slightly late Cheal; by the time you realize the CHeal is
going to be late there's often no time for anything else.  Surprise
benefit of this line (and one I didn't realize until quite late) is its
range: substantially longer than other heals; I often used this to heal
FD'd monks who were badly injured and lying doggo out in the pulling area.

Divine Light, though, I cast least of all.  Slow casting, so not really
good in emergencies, mana inefficient compared to CHeal or Celestial,
which are the heals of choice if its not an emergency, I kept it memmed
for those situations where unexpected damage was coming in on someone in
big unhealthy chunks, and a Cheal would be too slow, a Celestial too
slow in its effects, a remedy far too small to be worth casting; big
chunky inefficient healing spammed out hoping things would be brought
under control.  Last Ditch Effort, usually followed shortly by a death.

I do recall working out the details for a Divine Light chain heal, as
opposed to the usual CHeal chain; the idea was that Cheal chains are
inherantly chunky; landing a very large heal at substantial intervals
(the more clerics in the chain the smaller the interval).  We were
facing a mob which had spiky damage output, and kept losing MT's because
he'd get lucky on the RNG and put two spikes in between Cheals; by using
a DL chain we could more than double the rate at which heals landed.  In
the end it proved impractical for most applications, but even long after
this, we often put people on spamming patch heals to supplement a chain
for the same sort of reason, and using the same sort of moderately fast
casting, large heal spells.

Superior heal was replaced Divine Light unless I'm remembering
incorrectly; even keeping 4 heals up at all times was cumbersome, I
can't think of a reason to hang on to SHeal (which was already in the
"least used" category) at this point.

Splendid One, 56 Gnomage, Firiona Vie
Bergh Brelltender, 65 cleric, Morel Thule

"This time: gonna do it RIGHT!" -- Bob Seger
Jennaii

Heal, then sit the rest of the time. Don't be a dopey cleric who beats
on the mob as well. If sitting most of a fight and standing to get a
heal off is not your idea of fun, be another class.

Also, correct people when there is another healer in the group and
they say "Ok, one of us nukes and the other heals." This equals death.
Say, no we are both healers so we both heal.

Make an alias short cut that says something like

Lesser heal on <t>

then casts the spell.

Mine is something like,

Healed <t> <r>  with Chloroblast

with my druid, I forget the exact way that <t> is done,
but that does something like thier name and race so its kind of
obvious.

The alias is to make it clear to the other healer you are healing.
Like my druid might be casting a heal but see the cleric saying they
are complete healing the person. Then I calculate and if its going to
be close AT ALL, my druid heals them once anyway. Chlorblast is WAY
faster than complete heal.

Even if a cleric is the main healer, my druid will still only put dots
on the mob and maybe damage shield the tank. Then I also sit until I'm
doing it again or healing. So a cleric should NEVER be nuking, even if
there are two or more. Having two or more clerics, then being oom and
still having someone die just makes you feel like an idiot. Then idiot
number one always says, "well, I was supposed to be nuking so it
wasn't my fault!"

Don't let the puller keep you under 20% mana. You should have plenty to deal
with an overpull at all times, even when there's crowd control handy. You,
the slower, and the cc should dictate the pull rate, not the puller who's
used to his uber buddies.
If the puller keeps chain pulling while any critical caster is saying lom,
oom, med break etc. use the old "afk bio after this mob" trick. He pulls it,
he can kill it.
If he promptly wears you out again, let the group know youre done with him,
pullers are usually easier to replace than clerics.

Dont be afraid of beastlord or ranger tanks, the ones who cant hack it
usually wont volunteer for the job.

Pls Pls OMFG Pls do something in addition to healing if you can hack it.
Your class has tons of cool options at its disposal. The clerics I like are
the ballsy ones, who do stuff like landing an 8 second stun on the mob as it
comes into camp, to give the war something to taunt his agro up with, handy
when the chanter would be pulling agro nearly evey mob with tash & slow. DPS
is king as long as you dont have to take a med break because of it, nuke
when FM, melee if you have yaulp 6 & your best armor. Root mezzes so you
dont have to rez the chanter later. Stun & bash healers. Put hp buffs on
pets if you have the mana. Dispel DS if you have a spellslot for it. Youve
got even more you can do, stretch your class to the limit, youll have more
fun.

   I see that you've been given lots of good advice so far, I'd take it to
heart.

  For my part I will say that the biggest favor you can do yourself is to
disabuse yourself of the notion that it is the cleric's job to keep everyone in
the group alive.  I know you've said nothing to indicate that you feel this way,
but from what I've seen so far most young clerics do.  I know I most certainly
did.

  It is your job to do the best you can do to prevent a total party wipeout
when things get rough.  In most cases, this means healing the main tank,
yourself, and the enchanter if you are lucky enough to be grouped with one.  If
the wizard should happen to get agro, don't blink an eye.  You can always rez
them back in.  The druid goes out of mana and is screaming for a heal?  Too
bad.  When things aren't rough, then by all means, heal the other members of the
party if you can do so with jeopardizing the tank, rezzer, or mezzer.  If
someone gets pissy because they died, let them know where they stand in your
list of healing priorities, and stick to your guns.  If they don't agree with
you, ignore them.  They will not make it very far into the game, or they will
learn to change their attitude.

   If the party does wipe, even if it was your fault that you could and should
have prevented it, don't beat yourself up too much.  Almost everyone makes
mistakes.  When the puller makes a mistake they might bring back 3 instead of
one.  When the mage makes a mistake, they might send their pet against a lulled
creature instead of the one that Main Tank has selected as the current target,
resulting in adds.  When you make a mistake, everyone can die.  Do what you can
to minimize mistakes, of course, such as not watching tv or or giving your kid
brother his very own homemade tattoo while you are also on healing duty in a
rough situation.  

  I've know a couple of young clerics that have re-rolled over these issues,
and it saddens me when I hear of it.  We really do play one of the bestest, most
funnest classes in Norrath.  

  Just for the record, I still consider myself to be a young cleric also.  I'm
pretty sure that my currant level is an oversight that will be corrected soon as
Someone realizes that I'm not in my 30's.  

--
Annie

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Currently playing:
Teapray-- 51 High Elf Cleric on Firiona Vie

Teamort-- 16 Dark Elf Necromancer of Lanys T'vyl

Lentea-- 33 Ogre Beastlord On Firiona Vie

--
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