Ah, being a cleric. It's more than just pushing a button, no matter what
y'all are told.
Friday night I play regular D&D. The session goes on far too long - we keep
fighting a dragon who the DM refuses to play unintelligently and keeps doing
full move disengages to regenerate his hitpoints. And the terrain is such
that we can't corner the dragon or force it to stand still. It's
frustrating, though, because we're running out of spells. I play a
7th-level wizard in that game; I am now down to one fireball, one magic
missile, and one ice storm to try and slay the dragon with. We stop at
about 12:30am, because we are all people in our 30's who had just worked all
day and have weekend plans and just can't play D&D until 4am any more.
But I *can* play EQ until 4am! After I get home I log on and ask everyone
what's up. I immediately get a tell from an SK. She spent a long time
farming fingerbones in Veksar, and has enough to spawn the undead dragon.
She asks if I can come help, and I agree. I use the books to get to Firiona
Vie, zone into the Lake of Ill Omen, dive into the water, and zone in
Veksar.
I have no idea how to get to the dragon, but a wizard comes and invites me
and a mage casts Call of the Hero. I appear on a set of steps. In the
room, down in a small pit, is an undead dragon. I ask if anyone needs buffs
and buff a few people. It's a very mixed raid - people from several
different guilds - and we don't seem to have much of a plan other than,
"Attack! Oh, and heal, too!" We begin our attack. I heal as best I can,
but without any formal communication with the other healers I waste a lot of
mana. Then the tank dies, the SK dies, the 56 warrior dies, and we wipe
with the dragon at 34 percent.
No graveyard in Veksar, alas. I remember when Planes of Power first came
out; one of the developers mentioned that they were thinking of adding
graveyards to other, non-PoP zones. I wonder what became of that? Anyway,
the SK in charge of the raid manages to get a cleric down where our corpses
are. It takes a while, but we rez up. In the mean time, the call for more
healers is sent out and a druid and a cleric join us, along with another
mage and a wizard. The wizard was actually present for our first attempt,
but was literally asleep. He promises to be awake for the next attempt.
In the meantime, I decide we need to get healing organized. I tell all the
clerics to join a cleric channel. I ask them if they are all familiar with
a CH chain. No one responds, and I wonder if I've just insulted them. I
then set up the CH chain. People ask if we're using /pause or just
counting. I tell them to just count it out. I set the pause to two
seconds, which is slow by PoP standards but probably a bit fast for this
mob. We'll see.
We pull the dragon again and the clerics run the chain without a problem.
After a minute I quickly /assist the Main Tank to check on the dragon's
health, and it is already down to 70%. "We totally have it this time," I
comment into the raid channel. There are general exclamations of agreement.
The dragon dies without a death. There's a big sigh of relief - I
subsequently found out this was the fourth attempt to kill the dragon.
Loot drops, not bad stuff really. An earring with Aura of Health, a mask
with Extended Range. Someone comments in the raid channel that the SK
should get one of the drops and that we should roll on the other. Everyone
agrees - except for the SK. She feels terrible for hogging one of the
drops. I send her a tell saying that she shouldn't feel guilty - she spent
all the time farming the bones to spawn the dragon, and everyone here agrees
that she should be rewarded for that effort. Finally, she loots the
earring, and then assuages her guilt by having her current earring rolled on
along with the mask. One of the clerics wins the roll on the mask, and is
very happy. I might have rolled on the earrring - I have a really bad
earring currently that I need replaced eventually - but I don't roll on the
mask. I tell the clerics that they did a great job, then leave the channel
and the raid and gate out. I kill a few mobs in PoM then log for the night.
Sunday night I log on. I head to Fire and we kill a couple of mobs - the
spider and General Reparm. The spider drops a mask with FT2 and Extended
Range. My guild leader sends me a tell saying that I should go in on it,
but I tell him I already have FT15 and a Cloudy Steel Mask. Besides, I'm
saving myself for the next plate arms mold that drops because I still have
Heraldic there. (I forgot about these when I said in a previous update that
I'd rid myself of all my Heraldic.)
After Fire, we head to Air to try Xegony. Instead of fighting our way up,
we have a necro camped on Xegony Isle to summon corpses. It's going to take
a while to summon everyone, so instead of dueling each other and trying to
rez within the eight-minute timer, someone runs out, aggros all the mobs on
the first island, and brings them to the zone-in. I stand smack dab in the
middle of them and they refuse to aggro me. In fact, I'm just about the
last person to die - they actually begin to walk away en masse before they
notice me and finally kill me.
Slight problem: I'm still bound in PoM. And somehow I have to get back to
Air to get my corpse summoned. It's actually not too terrible - I can zone
out of Mischief into Cobalt Scar and get picked up there. In this instance,
it's even easier: one of our guild druids is also bound in PoM, and he gives
a ride to PoK. I am the first cleric back in Air and subsequently I'm the
one the Necro uses his Essense Emerald to rez. I loot up on Xegony Isle and
spend the next half hour rezzing folks. One problem we overlooked is that
the mobs that wander through the zone-in. We'd killed one, but others kept
arriving and killing folks. Several people have multiple corpses and one of
the clerics is just about the last to be summoned so she can rez folks at
the other end when they get killed.
Finally, we're all here. We buff up and move into position. We've got the
Cleric Support Squad all ready - I'm grouped with three other clerics, an
SK, and a beastlord. I'm surrounded by necros and a mage. I have a mod rod
ready to use as often as possible. All clerics are on mounts, having been
convinced by my post on the guild boards detailing what a tremendous
difference it makes on mana regeneration to be mounted.
We begin. Xegony is incoming. The pull is tricky, because they have to
pull Xegony in manner so that she doesn't AE the clerics. While most of the
clerics are facing the MT, waiting to begin healing him, I turn to watch the
pull. The monk pulls in slightly the wrong manner and Feign Death's to get
Xegony to reset. Alas, she instead turns towards the clerics and begins
floating ominously in our direction. I am certain none of the other clerics
are aware of the Winged Death about ready to run them over like a freight
train. Fortunately the monk notices in time and reacquires aggro. Xegony
turns and chases after him. One of the necros comments, "That was close." I
nod.
Xegony gets pulled the right way, and the chain begins. Mid-way through the
first wave, the Main Tank dies. Xegony then eats the clerics and we have to
reset. We talk for a while about what went wrong with the healing. I
didn't notice any long pause in healing, but the Main Tank says my heal was
the last to hit, then he got eight hits in a row from Xegony. I talk in the
cleric channel about tightening up our healing, but overall we don't make
any changes to our strategy. One of the clerics wonders why we can't kill
Xegony more quickly, and we tell her that Xegony will spawn adds depending
on how low her health gets, and that we need to deal with each wave of adds
before bringing her down further.
Second time, and Xegony is pulled. Healing begins on the Main Tank. This
time we seem to be doing all right. We get through the first wave without a
hitch. The CC people come and help beat on Xegony, then run back when adds
are due to spawn again. Clerics keep reporting their mana and the necros
are twitching accordingly. I keep trying to use my mod rod as efficiently
as possible, clicking on it between heals so that I can get the mana just as
soon as the timer resets.
Second wave is dealt with, then the third. When the third wave dies and we
spawn the fourth, we are officially farther along in the event than we have
ever been. Cleric mana is going to be very tight - to my eye, if we keep up
this rate of killing, we'll be running out of mana shortly after the last
wave of adds is dealt with. Hopefully it won't matter then since we can
burn her down. We'll see; I'm getting nervous.
At 24 percent, the last wave of adds spawns. One of the guild officer warns
that this wave must be killed; you can't just mezz the lot. I wonder why
but don't argue. By our luck the turkeybees are the last wave, which is the
toughest wave. Still, we deal with the named pretty quickly, which gives me
hope.
Suddenly, the raid channel is filled with "Add". One of Xegony's guards has
aggro'd the CC folks. And the CC folks begin dying one by one. The guards
are practically mini-bosses themselves, and proc a slow. The CC folks are
having a terrible time trying to deal with it, since they are also mostly
out of mana and the tanks can't keep aggro because of the slow.
This delay proves fatal. I mentioned how tight cleric mana was going to be,
and so it proves: the clerics begin running out of mana. One heal is
missed, the more. Then the Main Tank dies. Another tank manages to step in
and acquire aggro, and we get a couple more rounds of healing in on him.
But with the CC folks still unable to kill the add, it's hopeless. We wipe
with Xegony at 19%.
As discouraging as this is, it at least gives us hope. We seem to have the
strategy down now; it's just a matter of keeping the guard from aggroing.
We'll get her next time, I'm sure.
It's pretty late, about 11:30pm, and instead of going after Xegony, we
decide to try Fennin Ro, who has just popped. We gate out and reform at the
picnic tables, minus a few people who have to log. In fact, we're down to
four clerics. We begin clearing our way towards Fennin Ro, and the tanks
die a lot. See, us clerics are used to having half-a-dozen or more clerics
healing the Main Tank, so we don't usually have to constantly spam heals
during the clearing. This time is different; I have to pay full attention
to healing the Main Tank as we clear. This gets me summoned more than once,
and a tank in my group helpfully comments, "Monual is sure dying a lot."
Just as we get to the point where we're clearing the counsellors, two of the
clerics have to log. That's devastating, leaving us with two clerics. We
do have a few bot clerics, and a couple people have the login information of
guild clerics and log them on. We also get some druids to join. So it's
me, another cleric, two druids, and a few people playing cleric bots in the
cleric channel. The other cleric - our senior cleric in the guild - begins
organizing everyone into a chain. This requires more of a walkthrough than
normal. Some of the bots have to be walked through setting up a hotkey. I
have a very bad feeling about this. Fortunately Fennin Ro is relatively
easy for us. We'll see.
The chain begins when Fennin Ro comes. It's a shaky chain at best. The
Main Tank is getting lower than I'm comfortable with, but he's staying up.
Then it happens; the druid who is after me in the chain runs out of mana.
When I call out her name, she simply says, "out". And the cleric bot who is
after her doesn't heal. The chain comes to a complete halt. The other
cleric tries to spam a few heals, as do I, but we end up wiping with Fennin
Ro at 9%.
We try again, but this attempt is even worse. It's not just clerics we've
lost, but some other classes; our collective DPS is not good. A necro makes
a valiant attempt at twitching the druids, but we're still missing heals.
One of the druids gets AE'd when Fennin Ro is pushed a little too far
forward. She doesn't adjust her position to compensate and gets AE'd again
and again, and then dies. The chain simply cannot adjust for the missing
heal and again is reduced to just spamming heals. At 57% we wipe again.
The officers call it then; it's too late, and we're too tired.
The other cleric and I commiserate. She'd actually done a fantastic job
organizing folks as well as she had. But it just goes to prove that being a
cleric is more than just punching a button.
I had three separate experiences with CH chains. One with a bunch of
clerics who I'd never worked with before but were familiar with the CH
chain. That worked really well, everyone doing their job and keeping the
Main Tank alive throughout the battle. Then I worked with my fellow guild
clerics in an intense raiding situation where you simply could not miss a
heal over quite an extended period of time. There we worked perfectly - for
example, if Divine Intervention dropped on the Main Tank, one of the clerics
would say, "SKIP ME" in the cleric channel as they re-cast DI, and the chain
would seamlessly compensate. And I worked with a bunch of bots unfamilar
with the CH chain. The lack of experience really showed up in our inability
to keep a coherent chain.
Being a cleric is no more difficult than playing any other class. But you
*do* need some experience with it. You just can't pick up a 65 cleric and
go to town; you really do have to learn how to do your job in various
situations. That point was brought forcefully home in our Fennin Ro
attempt. No matter what people tell you, it does indeed take some modest
skill and experience to play a class.
Me, I'm not a bot cleric. I'm a full-time multi-faceted
soloing/grouping/tradeskilling/raiding cleric. Whatever kind of cleric you
desire, I can become. =)
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Archon of Rodcet Nife
Silent Tempest
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This page is Copyright by Skaarak; Everquest (TM) is property of Sony Online Entertainment
All stories and art work are Copyright@ by the origial owner/writer.
Most, if not all stories, were taken from newsgroup alt.games.everquest (AGE), I recommend that anyone who gets a chance to read it should!