I've been playing cleric for quite a few years in pretty much all the possible types there were and are. So I can say that I got quite an insight on the cleric job, so the reason why I'm making this topic would be the current play style in the game: after the last (big) patch everyone (that plays PvP) would agree that the cleric population got quite a huge increment on their numbers, whether people like the increase on their population or not is up for a debate but that's not what I wanted to discuss.
· - Since the last skill update heals have suffered a great deal as most of them became HOT with, in my opinion, extremely LOW values compared to the damage increase as a result from the critic system and how with no sense investment what so ever you can still manage to deal a 9k critical with a single target skill with ease.
o Suggestion: small boost into the rough healing amount or take a relook at the critical rating
· Those "heals nerf" so to speak are in some way covered by the OVERPOWER flames 10% healing with a cool down of 2,5 seconds. With such a little mana cost allows for that INSANE spamming in PvP/PvM games. It's not difficult to end up in a game where clerics just rush under the crystal to spam their flames and cast heals on them which result easily in 25 minutes fights where no one dies in any side due to the nonstop healing coming from those flames.
o Suggestion: nerf on the healing ability from flames, as well as an increase on the cooldown to avoid the constant 24/7 flames spamming
· - Another concerned point would be the current "smooth" hp transition: as I mentioned before it is not difficult to find yourself in a situation with multiple characters attacking you (specially as a cleric) therefore keeping track of your own hp and the ones in your team is CRUCIAL, with the current hp bar this task is nearly close to impossible. I've encounter situations when for example a raider attacks a member of my team let's say it's a champion: I see the animation go and I can see the damage on the group hp bar being made but not on the character itself which makes it not only confusing but extremely hard to keep track of "priority healing targets".
o Suggestion: coordinate the hp so both group hp bar and the character hp bar show the same…
· -As for keeping track of your own HP with the current smooth transition, seeing how if you receive let's say a 3k hit followed by a 7k hit your hp will continuously drop, as in oppose to before where you had 2 hp drops that allowed for a exact HP tracking and allowed for precise use of a potion or a heal, or to know when it's time to retreat! At the moment with the huge amount of different DOT's there are, as well as the criticals, AOE damage… All that damage combined with the smooth transition doesn’t allow for the player (despite what job they are) to keep track of the situation and results in a pretty chaotic environment.
o Suggestion: go back to the old hp bar and drop this smooth transition nonsense.
We are heading into a direction where build variability doesn’t exist, we went from a broad skill tree (who doesn’t remember those hybrid mages with heals and offensive skills, or those war champion builds that could use any weapon they really wanted, or the gun/Launcher bourgeois!) to a really narrow option with pretty straight forward skill trees that most people share due to that.
We lost the option to change gears mid fight to respond to different scenarios when we couldn’t change gears mid fight: which once again resulted on most people using 1 set for everything instead of the old gear switch to perform best at different scenarios.