Thadar Posted On 01/02/02 01:22PM

Alrighty, the time has come to get some cleric tips in this post.
I would first like to stress the importance of defense. This however is not just for you clerics out there. You int casters who have been slacking in this department need to take note. DEFENSE = FREE AC. This cannot be understated. More AC = Less damage. I dont care who you are, the more ac you have, the longer you live and for you enchanters and wizards out there, half a second that can be gained from having higher ac can be the difference between a successful Remedy and healing a corpse. In regards to you clerics, ac is VERY important. Please max this out early in your career. By lvl 40 you can get yourself up to 200 defense. That is 400 free ac points. Use it.

Nextly, Divne Aura, or DA, is not just for death situations. It is a HUGE aggro reducer. If your puller is getting hammered on the way back to the group, or if you get an add when the main tank is low on health and you need to throw a complete heal on him/her, then you are going to take that aggro off the tank. Sometimes it is very hard to taunt those mobs off of you when you just popped the tank with a 4000 point heal. In these situations, all you have to do is pop a DA and you are lowered down the hate list to almost the very bottom. I use this tactic all the time and it works.

Now, for those druids/shamans out there. I first want to state that I LOVE having a backup healer in my party. However, you must realize that clerics have a spell at lvl 44 called Celestial Healing. You will see something like this on the screen: "I am Celestial Healing %t." When you see this, he really is being healed. You will not see his hp go up for 4 seconds after Celestial takes effect. However, this heals over 748 hp over 24 seconds. This is extremely mana efficient and if you panic and cast a sup heal on the pc, you are wasting your mana and the cleric's. Not a good thing to do.

A good cleric will speak with all backup healers when he joins the group. Everyone needs to know their roles and every cleric is different. Some clerics dont feel they need any help. I am not amongst those and love to have some help in the backfield. However, you need to communicate with all your healers to make sure there are no overlaps or miscues.

Druids and Shamans, when you see the cleric start his CHeal a little late, dont be afraid to drop a "Greater" Heal on the tank. That little 250 point heal can be the difference between life and death. Also, watch the casters careful. The enchanter might take aggro when the cleric is in the middle of a cheal and the tank will die if the cleric ducks out of his spell to heal that chanter. In those situations it is your job to keep the chanter alive until the cleric can remedy him or the chanter can stun/mez it.

The last thing I will say for now is about symbol spells. I have seen and heard of too many clerics be stingy about giving these away. General practice should be this: When first entering a place with a new group ALWAYS symbol the whole group. Learn who is taking the damage and when the time comes to refresh that symbol, just keep those people symboled. The only exception is the enchanter. He may not be taking damage now, but he will. Never let that symbol fall off the enchanter. NEVER. =) The good groups will pay for your peridots in loot/coin. They should never let the cleric bear the cost of those babies. In fact, I have received a stack of peridots many times upon entering a new group. People know the costs by the time you are able to use them, so feel free to cast it and dont be stingy. You can make up for the loss in other ways.
Ok, this is getting long so I will sign off for now. Good luck to all out there.

"Never make an enemy of a high level cleric."



Thadar Lightbringer
51st Vicar of Tunare
Unbroken Circle of Valor

Thadar Posted On 01/31/02 10:59AM

Ok, Thadar here with Round 2 of my advice column. Again, this pertains to all healers, with special emphasis on clerics. RAID HEALING.

I will let some of the melee's describe how a raid should run in more detail, but to get the gist of my post you need to understand about MA's (Main Assist's) and how healing works when considering them.

On a raid with two or more groups you will, or should, have one tank that is dubbed the honor of the MA. As such, the MA is the first to attack the mob and continues to be the ONLY person to touch that mob until he/she feels he can maintain aggro when the others jump in. When the MA calls for attack, the other melees proceed to pounce on the mob. If this is done correctly, the MA will NEVER lose aggro and the healing will be simple.

First rule of raid healing: There will almost ALWAYS be more than one healer on the raid. As such, change ALL of your healing hotkeys to /ooc or /shout or /guild depending on who is in your raid and what is deemed the communication channel for the raid. This is especially necessary for clerics that use Celestial Healing, as should be the first heal cast on the MA as he begins to lose hp. The reason it needs to be announced is that clerics CAN NOT stack celestial healing. Now, that doesn't sound too bad, but it can be. Throwing a celestial on a tank that already has it is a waste of my time that could be better used elsewhere.

Rule Number Two: Watch the communication channel. Look for those healing comments. If you start your casting and you are behind another person whom started casting before you, the duck out of the heal and place yours somewhere more useful.

Rule Number Three: Clerics, unless you do not have a backup healer in your group (This is also related to rule four) then DO NOT heal yourself. By this stage in your career you should be able to take abuse for long enough for the backup to pump you full of life. Moreover, you should be able to cast through almost any beating you are taking. As such, your tank needs your life more than you do. Keep their life up and let the other healers worry about your own. You have too much to worry about already without adding your own life to the plate. Remember, raids are not for xp(Unless that is designated) but for a specific purpose. Rez will bring you back to where you should be so dont sweat a death. The MA is the main concern. Stick to him and let others worry about you.

Rule Number Four: ALL HEALERS. I generally have three different assist hotkeys. One is /assist MA, the second is /assist SA (Secondary Main Assist in case the MA goes down) and the third is just a plain /assist. Why the third you ask? Well for several reasons. Firstly, the MA, sometimes, no matter how hard he/she tries, simply cannot hold aggro throughout the fight. At that point it becomes necessary to /assist the mob to find his target and heal that one. Once the MA loses aggro to another, /assist will be hit more times than any other and give you carpul tunnel. The other reason is adds. Granted your MA is your main concern, but when adds occur, your MA will NOT budge from his target til it is dead. Unfortunately for the enchanters, druids, etc in the back line, the adds will not attack the MA. As a result, you need to use your /assist key to find out whom those adds are targetting and heal them back to full, then head back over to the MA.

There are many more things to say, but in the hopes I havent fried your brain already, I will stop for now with this recap.

1) Change hotkeys to reflect the raid communication channel
2) Watch that channel for other healing messages and be prepared to duck out if need be
3) Do not heal yourself unless you have no backup healer.
4) Make a /assist hot key and use it! It will save others lives.


Thadar Lightbringer
51st Vicar of Tunare
Unbroken Circle of Valor