clerics are never great damage dealers (well they do ok against undead I guess); but they have enough hp to be in the front row edge and they are (imho) required for healing which they do quite well. I'm not a max/min player so i'm sure someone else who has explored the system better will comment but I played into the 20's (level) and 'cept for a few specific battles where i found the bard stun effective that and thief class were the ones I would most likely either drop or adjust when i restart (waiting for full content before restarting). perception/picking/trap are useful skills so if you drop the thief (not your question) someone has to pick them up.
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Mages were really good was tempted to have two of them when i restart 'cept at some point i had a fight with something high magic resistance the mage was worthless and that has me thinking some danger in going with two mages.

Clerics are one of the most important classes in the game. Sure mages are great at damage, but clerics can buff defense with divine armor, heal, cure bleeding, cure wounds, cure stun and can pray to get more spell points back. He is often completely overworked fixing up the party and he even does double damage against undead with his light ray. He is amazing. He is just really good at healing and defense rather than damage. I would never go without at least one cleric in the group. Sure the paladin can heal and buff, but his fixing up skills are way more expensive in terms of skill points. Nevertheless a paladin is a great complement to the cleric because of his mass armor and mass heal spells. Sometimes defense can be just as important as offense.

it just depends on HOW you play the game really. furthermore if you want all party members do to big amounts of damage why take support classes?

personally i take a cleric and let it PURE heal i don't care about what damage he or she could do. she just needs to heal the rest while the rest ACTUALLY does ALOt of damage it's a choice you make at start of the game

and at high level the CLERIC can cure curses so if your into that ;-)

cleric, rpg no brainer, nuff said

Always found a cleric to be an essential pick. Speccing a paladin for healing by itself is very expensive in terms of skill points and just not efficient. That said, lower difficulties you can get away with the weird party setups.

I never use the cleric (after i realized they were bad). I find that the mending skills people keep mentioned are often times better handled by items. The cleric is just one more person that isnt doing dmg and that not acceptable. I roll out with a Tank-adin and pump AOE heal to the max then ONLY heal in the entire party save for the divine summoners heal bot.

Long story short, aoe mends would completely fix this, something like esunaga would be wonderful. but with out more utility shes just a bad healer.

my cleric only casts buffs and heals ( also he has mass heal on higher levels (near 28) ) and he is essential( old-school ). Also he stays in second row and on levelups i add him only speed and energy ( mage too )

Well later in the game you get the ability mass heal, which at max lvl heals around 170health to all. And you also get the Divine healing which heals around 600+ life to one member... Well you can potentially get the same skills with paladin, but it's much later than the priest... I'd say the mass heal spell would need to come in an earlier lvl to make priest more viable. But i gotts ay late game, it's a must, you got the aoe resistance buffs, and the aoe heal, which will be essential to a lot of battles.

Originally posted by Eraija:

I never use the cleric (after i realized they were bad). I find that the mending skills people keep mentioned are often times better handled by items. The cleric is just one more person that isnt doing dmg and that not acceptable. I roll out with a Tank-adin and pump AOE heal to the max then ONLY heal in the entire party save for the divine summoners heal bot.

Long story short, aoe mends would completely fix this, something like esunaga would be wonderful. but with out more utility shes just a bad healer.

agreed, In my first run I also did not have a cleric, but I got paladin and summoner for healing.
I have paladin for her mass heal spell (at lv 1!!), everytime I hit by a trap, just one click of her mass heal and everyone is fine.
and summoner max Nalaet for her AI auto-heal: mend bleeding, wound , poison .. which is a no-brainer fight.

cleric is support. keep in the back row and you are the party healer mainly, and buffing. You will be effective late game because of the undead you run into and the cleric can damage those very well, not very useful early game. Just stick a stunning pole weapon so they can actually attack and give a little stun if you aren't healing someone or buffing. Mostly speed and energy for casting, once in a while some con for health (carry) and strength for a little better armor never hurts either.

Of course, you can also play Cleric mainly as a support character, but for me she only unfolds her full potential as a frontline character with a mace, in order to have better synergy effects with other frontline characters at stuns. Actually, no party can afford to put a character mainly only for healing, otherwise many fights have to be fought with one character less, which is extremely unfavorable on the highest difficulty level.

Therefore, if possible, the Priest's weapon skill (Mace) should always be increased as you level up, although of course 3 points are very expensive for this. In the beginning, you can save on the spells, although many healing spells are completely sufficient at level 1 at first.

At the beginning of the game, the Cleric is still very susceptible to dying, so she should get a place on one of the sides in the frontline and not in the middle position. First, in addition to Speed as an attribute, CON should first be increased for more hitpoints and after a few levels STR for more damage and the possibility to wear heavy armor (increasing armor skill is too expensive).

From about level 8 to 12, the Cleric can then use Divine Prayer (to be learned at level 8) to get better and better on herself and, in combination with the strong spells in the middle and late game, become the strongest class in the game in my opinion.