Will Storm Legion Fix Cleric DPS?

The simple answer: no. Without violating the NDA on the beta, I’m just chocking it up to my utter disdain for the worthless moron Zinbik. Never before have I seen such an absurdly stupid person in charge of such an important role, and I’ve seen some pretty massive incompetence. I’d imagine he’s only slightly below average for Trion, since there’s a collective groupthink that “melee dps should be higher than ranged dps” solely because of one thing: disconnects. I didn’t think such incompetence and inability to think was possible of such a large group of people, but apparently it is.

In essence, Zinbik has constantly made terrible choices, failed to listen to the community, even the ones who’ve basically done his job for him. This is abundantly clear just by reading the forums and looking at patch notes since the game launched. There are a huge number of issues that should be addressed, to which very good solutions have been proposed, and which are still not corrected to this day. When you have a guy who’s solution to “fixing DPS” is a bolt-on additive flat damage % increase when there are thousands of posts decrying how bad it is (even with evidence from the PTS) and at least 10 very good alternatives that are even less difficult to implement, you should NEVER expect him to get anything substantially right, ever. Never. A lot of people are expecting some MASSIVELY EPIC improvement in the state of the Cleric in SL, and you’re setting yourself up for the biggest disappointment ever. You’re making a HUGE bet on a guy who’s been consistently (if anything, he’s consistent, I’ll give him that) letting people down for the past year. You’re making a HUGE bet on a guy who has yet to come up with a single good solution to any problem. You’re making a HUGE bet on a guy who can’t even get the reveal of his work scheduled before it’s publicly available. You’re making a mistake.

Instead, realize that Clerics, given Zinbiks prior work, are probably totally fucked. With that realization, since you’re given the opportunity of a gear reset, it’s a great time to pick another class. Warriors have consistently had broken levels of damage, so that trend is likely to continue. Mages have consistently been epicly versatile casters, and now they have a melee soul (and since all melee damage is to be higher than ranged damage, by Trion’s own public decision, you can expect it to be competitive with Warriors). That’s a really good choice if you like healing and having epic DPS but don’t care much about tanking. And then there’s the rogue, which is supposedly going to be a pretty solid tank (as per the unveil video), and which has consistently had pretty competitive DPS. It can also heal and provides an invaluable raid position as a must-have-support. Further, it has that awesomesauce which is stealth that EVERYONE qq’s about, and some broken tools for PvP, like the ability to completely ignore CC. So if you want to tank: 2 choices. If you want to heal: 2 choices. If you want to DPS: 3 choices (1 probably better than the other 2). If all you ever, ever, ever, want to do is heal, you might be OK playing a Cleric, but that’s about it. It’s pretty clear Cleric is an unnecessary class, and given that the most incompetent person in Bay Area is the one making decisions about it, it’s far better to consider one of these other well designed classes. You’ll suffer less from terrible changes, and you’ll enjoy the game more and therefore feel less cheated about your monthly tithe. Win win. Join me and plenty of others in leaving the Cleric soul behind. It’s time to play the rest of the game and time to end our suffering under Zinbik. Hopefully either Trion deletes the calling altogether and makes it clear why they haven’t attempted to make it competitive or they eventually fix it after realizing it’s so bad that nobody wants to play it. Either way, the game can still be enjoyed regardless of what happens to Clerics, so move on!