Well, the Clerics here are hyper-protective of their positions as being quite necessary for any major activity. There's been many efforts made to reduce the dependence on the Clerics support role in the past; all of which resulted in the Cleric players throwing massive tantrums, flaming, raging, trolling, sending hate PM's to anyone who promoted it, getting their friends to help them bully any supporters, etc. They've made it quite clear, that until the Dev's take the issue into their own hands, they will not allow a proponent of the notion that Clerics shouldn't be necessary or required will be ostracized from the community and made out to be a public villain.
That being said, the Developers have made recent changes on the Pegasus test server, where the Class buffs are significantly stronger than the Cleric buffs. Shifting Clerics focus onto healing and support, instead of buff slaving. The attempt was made in the past, however the gap between them was not significant enough to take hold. Players ended up simply making a 'stat buffer' character, which was only geared in the highest CHA items possible, and used to buff, and AFK. They have no combat role for the most part.
The new changes make it so that even a moderately CHA built char will out buff a cleric with high amounts of CHA. The difference is Clerics have All buffs, while classes only have a handful. This means you need multiple classes to get all the buffs, where-as you only need a Cleric for them, even if they're weaker.
So, changes are on the way. But the last thing I would say here is that you support the idea that Clerics shouldn't be required. The Clerics will attack you, call you out and harass you for it, and it's better just to save yourself the headache. Trust me, they've tried to do it to me 3 times now, even when 2 of the propositions or changes were not my idea, nor did I have any hand in the matter xD