JRRNeiklot said:
"If you ask a random D&D player what a cleric does, five out of six of them probably say, “A cleric heals.”
Wow. That's so far removed from what a cleric is it's not even funny. It's like saying a car's purpose is to play loud music. Sure, it can do that, but that's not why you buy one. A cleric is a warrior of god first, a healer 2nd.
This doesn't strike me as a very constructive critique. The next four paragraphs don't talk about what it means to be a cleric, they talk about the role of healing in D&D (the cleric being only the most relevant launching-off point, given that they were the exclusive character class who had access to healing magic throughout most of D&D, and the iconic one even when there were others).
In fact, the next paragraph seems the most relevant:
WotC_Bruce said:
A simple enough statement, but the cleric’s ability to cast cure light wounds and similar spells injects a bit of tension into the game, which essentially boils down to how much of her own resources the cleric should expend to heal a friend at the expense of doing something else (such as attacking the monster with her mace or casting a searing light spell).
In 1e, healing was expensive, and risky. In 4e, healing is cheap and expected. Bruce's question isn't about the story vs. the mechanics of clerics, it's about the nuts and bolts of how combat healing should work in your ideal D&D: where on the chart would you prefer it, risky and rare and expensive, or easy and expected and constant, or somewhere in between?
I personally like the idea of a continuum, where healing is easy for minor problems, and takes more for more significant heals. A few HP might only take not-even-a-turn. A big chunk of HP might take your standard action. A disease, or a curse, or a raise? That's probably going to take a ritual -- a long period of time.
If your primary idea of clerics is as warriors-for-your-deity, I'd guess you'd be closer to the 4e side of things: Healing is something they can do, but not something that they are very defined by, not something that takes away from their role as divine warriors anyway. That way, you could spend your normal actions being all warrior-esque, and if you healed, it would be as a side-effect, not a major purpose.