Cleric Bot versus 2 Healer Mercs

[eqman22]

Hey guys, I have yet to tinker with Cleric bot. I usually have 2 mercs in my group and box a toon out of group. However, I am getting tired of dealing with this setup, and as such, I am looking to consolidate a bit. Do you think cleric bot can heal as well as 2 tier 5 mercs can? If the consensus is yes, I will focus on working on a cleric.


Thanks!!

 

[fraggyfrank]

Personally I have found that the real benefit from having a cleric is when the going gets rough I can play it manually and have the epic click/divine arb and healing power at my disposal. I haven't really found *my* bot cleric to be that much more useful than a cleric merc when it's on autopilot, but that probably has more to do with me being lazy and not setting up the macro in detail hehe.

 

[supertimmy]

my cleric bot does a decent job but i think the problem is in the macro. it's a bloated pig that has functions for debuffing and summoning shit and nukes and debuffs and maybe making tacos.

i'd give a kitten's soul for a clean cle macro that just cast light, yaulp and divs. and maybe i'm wrong, but i have to believe that it would run faster than the other options out there.

tl;dr ...

a real cle dominates the mercs. just for places you can take them, how many you need, switching to actually play them when you need it, their greater mana pool and regen, and the greater heal power they have.

 

[tealeaf]

While mercs heal very well, nothing beats human intelligence and instinct. Even as a bot, I am sure you can switch to the cleric in a tight spot and take over. Mercs heal their owner FIRST, as their #1 priority. I have nearly died multiple times on my alts because of this, being saved only by running around the healer merc to prolong my life, while the tank continues to get heals even though he doesn't need them. And I know for a fact that a human wouldn't have let this happen (I normally play a cleric).

Eh, maybe I am old fashion and have a thing against mercs of any kind...

 

[eqman22]

I really appreciate the feedback everyone. It looks like mercs are the way to go unless it is a situation where I am playing the cleric for the human touch. Thanks again!

 

[zdozbou]

IDK man, when UF first came out I was having a rough time doing much of anything with 2 healer mercs in group. I took over a friends 85 / 1000 cleric, tossed that in my group on a macro and have been blown away by how well it does. It basically just casts light / group heal as needed, keeps auras up, uses epic / div arb etc if my tank falls below 25%. Very fast reaction time on it. It's mana pool lasts 10x longer than mercs also.

 

[Chase369]

1 real cleric using a mac is way better then 2 cleric mercs. I have personal experience with this. Im a big fan of AFCleric.mac its simple. I just have it spam Devout Light on tank if it drops below 90% and anyone else in grp if they get below 75%. You can adjust the settings and spells easily. And the bonus of being able to play manually if needed.

 

[eqman22]

Hmm. Guess I will need to try to get me a working copy of a cleric mac!

 

[devestator]

Just wanted to note, if you are referring to my clericBot being bloated, you are right it is somewhat.

I'm going to be writing a premium version soon, but in the meantime if you are using my clericBot and want to make healing as fast as possible, just disable the other stuff.

In [General] set DebuffAtStart=FALSE, and anything else you don't need it doing set it to FALSE as well. You will want HealAtStart=TRUE and HealCheckTimer=0s. Also if you have any Group Buffs set make sure none are set to GroupBuffCombatN=TRUE, if you have any combat buffs it will spend time checking peoples buffs in combat.

The healing routine in that clericBot itself is still not the most efficient routine, but I can't see it delaying by more than a few tenths of a second on a heal. I don't really play in the high end game anymore, haven't even ran a group with a cleric in UF so if a few tenths of a second is to slow then yes my free clericBot is going to be inefficient at the job. The premium version I release in the next week or two should have about 3x the reaction speed of the current free clericBot.

 

[JimJohnson]

AutoBot or ClericBot or Zbot (most know I hate this one) are better then mercs if you take the time to actually configure them.

1 85 cleric with group gear and 1k AA blows away a Merc. 2 Mercs would probably be better just simply because you can heal twice as many people at one time. But you then lose two slots in your group vs 1.

Better getting a real cleric macroing it and putting in a dps merc.

 

[cudacuf]

I can sum up why cleric toons are better than merc clerics in two words. Healing Focus. Mercs get absolutely no benefit of any focii and heal for the base amount, while cleric toons get the benefits of worn focii.

 

[bob1870]

personally a real bot over a merc. while i know my mac is a bit hoped up using most of the healing benifits aa and etc, if set up right 1 real bot can perform better then mercs and i would say some intances 2, mercs heal loop is very direct there is know verying when it heals and how it heals so your stuc. with the the way uf tight quarters are finding it hard to keep merc were u want them to stay and not die and running fuly atomated this makes it very diffeclt not to have the merc run of and do there own thing. before all the nerfing i would say that the mercs used to hold a toe with the real ones. now not so much. they make good patch healers but personally if u want o get somewere in this game a real cleric is the way to go. perfect example of that is the 25k ae or what ever form rockmancer if u pop gift of life or whatever its called and pop group heals your group heal is like 10k or something like that keeps the group floating along with out a hitch.