The requirement was removed for various reason, the main ones being that they were the bottle neck of matches starting, when you had enough players by count to be able to initiate them otherwise.
The issue behind why it's being asked for is for "fairness" that each side have a Cleric, but forcing a Cleric to be on either side still doesn't guarantee that fairness is going to occur. The Cleric could be a battle build, or some other variant without the "necessary buff" to be identified as a support build.
If you want to have a Cleric on your team, group one, call in friends, clannies or recruit off the street, however you do it, you have the power to control a bit of who's on your team so try to make good use of it!
As for the reason why Clerics are so highly coveted, is because they have the one thing no other class has, healing. No other class has that ability at current, and it is something we're working on, so there is less reliance from Clerics as a whole for the role of support. We're working on designs and plans to help spread some of that responsibility in unique ways so they are less needed by name, but rather they can become an option for support for many who would care to take that role of support, but not take the time to play or create a support Cleric.
Through much of the efforts of skill and class balances, game play has shown to be evening out greatly over time, however as mentioned that aspect of providing healing for support is still locked down to one class, which places a high importance on that class, currently. Look for the coming updates as we begin to put effort behind this issue.
Again, sort teams by class type. It would ruin being able to group with clannies, but at least it might make the teams a little more even(obviously skill comes in there before).
So, this was never a problem before..this clerics being insanely necessary. It was never this bad before.. People played without a cleric all the time pre-Game arena--having a cleric certainly put an edge on war(clerics didn't stand there and spam heal, they had to move around to help their fighters), but people did it without them without crying. They still went out and fought in uw(after buffing themselves of course). No one(besides those darn leechers) sat in the spawn waiting for their clerics to spawn so they could get buffs. Its got nothing to do with them being the only ones with healing, and everything to do with how you've redone the skills and how buffs have become so important. I used to be able to throw some buffs to those who didn't have int clerics--with lower int.. and they would still be satisfied and have survivability. They didn't care so long as the got a few buffs. Crafters used to make buffpots that some were better than lower int cleric buffs(that would be how you spread out the need for a cleric before... but you got rid of those to make cleric more 'important') But now, charm buffs.. the curve between low charm far surpasses the curve between low int and high int used to. But sure, its the fact that the clerics have heals that makes them so coveted. The only thing wrong with cleric right now is the amount charm effects things(because you were striving so hard to change our main stat so charm wasn't useless?) and how we have far too many party heals(because you wanted to make heal spamming a thing?). This is me begging you to stop trying to take away from our class and give it to others because you think its the problem. You already did that with buffs. Do you know what happened because of that? I rarely see TG wars. People won't come in unless they have 'full' buffs which includes 4 full stat buffers because you gave other buffs to other classes. People *will not* even try to war without stat buffers because the differences in buffs are *EXTREME.* The in game cost of these buffers 30b+ per character. You're looking at 120b worth of gear event/item mall gear to fully buff your characters. I don't know about other people(and despite what people think I might have) I can't even afford to fully gear a cleric.. I could if I really felt the motivation instead of the resentment I have towards charm, but I know other people won't do it because they just are not as good at making zuly. Hell, a lot of the people I know who have full charm buffers-- spent a lot of real money to get them. Remember when you nerfed boosters because people didn't like the pay to win? This is similar, but costs lots of extra money, making it harder for the average player to achieve. Rerolling sucks. So, as you can imagine, your average player can't afford buffs. So if the person in your clan who *might* have all the stat buffers isnt on, or doesn't want to buff, then TG wars don't happen. Do you know what happens because of that? People like me get super bored after being online for 10 minutes. I know you're probably thinking, I don't care if she plays or not, but people like me used to spend a lot more on the item mall. Last time I bought item mall was 30,00 01/26/2014, if I remember correctly, that was for a friend. And before that? 10.00 07/20/2013. And then another 3 month gap. Compared to the year before 135.00 spent in January 2013. 150.00 in July 2012. And that was normal every month. I bought stuff for me and friends. Why is this relevant? Because I could probably tell you that there was a good handful of people in the clan I was in at the time, who don't play for similar reasons to what I've listed.. Who I would tell you that I pale in comparison to when it came to item mall spending. Why bother telling you this at all? Because I don't actually want to see this game fail. I loved this game. And I don't care what anyone tells me, the game is clearly losing players by the buttload. You can always tell by the number of shops in junon.
I know you don't like to hear the negative crap, but you seriously need to play to fully understand. Because when you say stuff like this, i do not think you even come close to understanding how clerics are being used--or any of the classes for that matter. Its like you're watching us, through a funnel, from a hundred yards away.. And then making judgements from there. Please stop using the "WoW model" for the game.