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Umm, sorry for the newbness but what is 'Dot?

If I were that cleric I would charge DKP points each time I hauled the
stick out and consider it a "long-term investment".

I agree with most of what you had to say, but, a cleric is far from
integral to a good group, "standard" or otherwise.  I've been in many an
excellent group with the standard, healer, slower, tanker, crowd control
that have included no clerics, druids, warriors, or enchanters, with
nonstop pulling, no stopping for medding.  Yes, this does include PoP
groups, in a variety of zones, including BoT.

But...you don't whine, Jennaii. :P

Tracey

OK I got the K and the M and the A, but what do the two Rs stand for?

I've seen this on message boards and in game as well. I think there's a
lot of reasons for it, some valid, some not. The main problem is, as
usual, that a few bad apples can spoil it for everyone.

On the valid side, there seems to be a lot of bad clerics out there,
though probably they're about in the same proportion as bad players in
every class, when the cleric is bad it's more noticable than some other
classes. I've also known clerics back in Kunark days who used to
basically demand every gem that dropped in Sebilis while grouped there,
and one cleric who refused any camp he knew didn't have a decent gem
drop rate. Of course, I've also seen warriors who looted every corpse
before it hit the ground but again, the cleric is usually more noticable
in their greed than other classes. On Tarew Marr, when I started my
cleric, I noticed clerics seemed to have pickup group members so
trained they automatically tried to hand me every gem that dropped
after I hit the level where I was using peridots. I'd usually take one
or 2 to cover the costs of my dots and the fact I wasn't getting up to
loot mobs between fights then refuse the rest.

Travelling from zone to zone offering to rez for a large price also
gives other clerics a bad name and was common back in Kunark days.

On the invalid side, back when people were happily offering to pay
50-100pp for kei, when enchanters with it were relatively rare, they
were offering to supply the dot for a cleric to cast aegolism on them.
This undervaluing of the cost of the spell was one reason I never, ever
considered trying to play spell vendor. When asked for a buff in PoK
now, I usually just tell the asker I'm too busy atm to help them unless
I'm in an unusually good mood in which case I just cast it for free.
If I was in a group where the tanks are power looting every mob I'd
usually leave early, though once or twice I'd point it out just to see
if they stopped. Once in my upper 30's in Overthere I actually found out
that the tank who was doing it was under the impression that autosplit
was actually fair and didn't realize he was taking the lion's share of
the loot. He was quite apologetic when the group explained to him how it
really worked.

    !!!!!!

    Clericing is NOT easy.  Stressful usually.  Tedious sometimes.
But NOT easy.  You have to pay constant atention, you have to have your
timing down perfectly and that timing varies with each group and zone,
you have to watch messages - who's poisoned?  who's diseased? - and swap
spells in and out...

    Why do you think being a cleric is easy?  The only easy part
is that it's easy to get a group :-)

Have to agree with wharf rat on this although I have little exp 3
people screaming diesesed, heal pet, root the mob chasing me, heal the
tank. In a dungeon where people are easlily separated and collected
adds - sorry did that last nite several times and nearly gave me a
heart attack....but enjoyed every second of it.

That's true, although "cleric hate" varies a bit. Usually people who
have played a cleric to high levels themselves are fairly considerate.
The cleric role in raids is no bed of roses either - it's a pivotal role
and the clerics often get blamed for failures when the problem is really
elsewhere. (Please mister tank, stay in range of my CHeal, as when I
cast it my feet are nailed to the ground...)

And of course cleric soloing ability is very poor - cleric DPS is low,
so we solo by out-surviving the MOBs. That translates to very slow
experience. So if nobody needs a cleric right now, you might as well
switch to an alt.

I don't really know to what extent this is true as my main is a cleric.
There are a lot of botted clerics out there, and botting a cleric is easier
than doing it independently. That may explain it to some extent.

I get told occasionally that I play fairly well. Since I don't think I play
all *that* well - I do get party deaths occsionally during moments of
inattention - I probably have to agree that there's a fair number of
poor clerics out there.

I have to say this assertion boggled me. The only classes with stress levels
comparable to that of a cleric's usual role as main healer are bard and
enchanter.
In both cases because botched crowd control can lead to a party wipe.

A cleric's role is to keep the group alive. As main healer, you usually
have to watch health bars one hundred percent of the time. Ninety percent
does not cut it, as during the remaining ten percent the group gets an add,
damage to the MA increases, and you *have* to cancel that CHeal to start
spamming fast heals or the party will wipe. If you miss it the party
frequently dies.

So basically you need an attention span on the order of *hours* to play a
cleric well. You can't go AFK during that interval; while you're AFK, the
group typically shuts down. Your downtime is their downtime.

You also need to balance health vs. mana consumption of course. If a cleric
can call a med break whenever they like the job would be much easier.
However,
in practice your most mana efficient heal is Complete Heal, and to make the
most of it you have to cast it when the MOB DPS times ten plus a reasonable
buffer equals the MA's current HP.

You need to know when and how to avoid grabbing aggro (which is usually) and
when
you *want* to grab aggro (usually when your CC person is being beaten on).
You need to watch out for poison/disease effects and be ready to cure them.
If there is a multiple pull, you have to know who to heal and how, in order
to avoid deaths - toss a HoT on the tank to keep them alive, spam fast heals
on
the chanter to keep them alive and pull MOBs off them, keep your back to a
wall
to cut interrupts.

You need to know when *not* to heal, when to let somebody die because
somebody
else has to stay alive, or because healing will pull a swarm of MOBs.

You need to watch out for caster MOBs and mem stuns well in advance. (The
61+
cleric stuns have a 60 second recast.) But don't stun too readily or you
will
draw aggro... Similarly you learn to recognise the MOBs with damage shields
so you can cast Mark of Karn/Kings when they are incoming.

If you're doing the battle cleric bit - which at 56+ you should probably be
doing,
as it's your most mana-efficient form of damage - then you also need to know
all the things that a melee knows, get your positioning right *and* cover
healing
and perhaps some nuking on the side.

If your mana isn't keeping up, you need to know when it's safe to sit
(and where to sit - i.e. close to the MOB - if you *do* draw sitting aggro).

Having managed to do all this, 90% of groups will give you exactly the same
split as everybody else in the group. Never mind that you paid 20 or 60 plat
to buff the group up front, plus whatever recasts were needed during the
life of the group. As such the assertion that clerics are "well rewarded"
is... thin. Very thin. In my mid-50s I was routinely farming green MOBs for
loot to cover my peridot expenses and on occasion turned down groups because
I couldn't afford the peridots to buff a group in a loot-poor zone.

Now there *are* loot-whoring greedy clerics around. No denying it. In some
cases it's a reaction against the classes who are loot whores but don't
have to cover costs. In others they're just plain greedy... there are
bad apples for every class.

There are also clerics out there who think that their only job is to punch
their CHeal key when the tank hits 40% HP. But a competent cleric is doing
a heck of a lot more.

Try playing a cleric non-twinked, non-botted, starting at level 1. Then tell
me it's a task that's stress-free and easy.

/rant off.

       ...Ronny