Cleric Heals in PVPFollow

Not terribly.

At low levels they have some survivability, but they trade that for all of their dps. Even then they really can't stand up under that much focus fire.

At later level though I've been hearing massive complaints from clerics. In addition to classes having access to a plethora of 50% healing reduction debuffs which used to stack (they still might), meaning it was possible for someone to be unhealable (100% healing debuff), there were also voidnights and dominators who would just drain away literally all of the clerics mana in a few seconds. Even suriving that, the cleric still had to sit out much of the warfront to simply drink and regain mana.

I've used my healing build in warfronts as well as went up against healers with my pvp builds. Honestly, it's all about how well someone plays their class and what else is going on imo. As a healer, I've been stomped to the ground in less then 3 seconds by one player and have stood with 5 people beating on me for a few minutes. Going up against a healer, I've had both happen as well.

I think as more people unlock their pvp souls we'll see a better balance happen. I really hope they do not do what wow does and kill pve abilities based on what is going on in pvp. If they want to change how something functions in a warfront, great. But it is disheartening to have something that works as intended in pve get changed to the point of almost unusable because it was considered too op in pvp.

So, now being in the level 30 bracket and having participated in a considerable number of warfronts, a few things seem to stand out.

1. RuEInd has spoken some degree of truth. Wardens are incredibly durable. As a Warden, if I choose to get reckless, I can easily find myself at the top of the damage taken chart while still doing a lot of healing.

2. Any bard of competence will easily top the heal charts, and there is nothing a cleric can do to beat them out. They can't put up teh single target healing a cleric can, but they constant, mana free, aoe heals will keep every singel nick and scratch at bay.

3. Dominators and Voidknights wreck casters hard. There is almost nothing any caster can do to stop this.



I've drawn a few conclusions from this. Conventional wisdom in RPGs is to kill the healer first, but this is only half true in Rift. WArdens can withstand quite a bit of focus fire, and even through stuns and silences can have hots ticking away. If you're a DPS, you should probably ignore them. The far better target for DPS are bards. Bards contribute a huge amount of healing to the group, but are fairly bad at direct healing, especially when stunned or silenced. They should be much easier for the DPS to take out, and that will enable your team to put more pressure on the enemy due to the lack of solid aoe healing. Wardens, other clerics, and casters should be taken out by voidknights and dominators. It really is OP how quickly and easily they can destroy mana. My friend is a voidknight, and with me keep him up and decursed, our win rate tends to be proportional to the number of casters on the enemy team. In black garden, when there was 6 casters, it was a total shut out for us. None of their clerics ever had mana, and neither did their mages. There was nothing they could do about it either because he was a a durable tank build and had a pocket healer.

I'd be fine with a durability nerf to clerics if it meant they weren't hard countered by voidknights and dominators.