It looks like you've made exactly the same mistakes the designers did when they overpowered the Cleric in 3.x
Your confusing "interesting" and "exciting" with "mechanically powerful or useful", and your forgetting that whats "interesting" and "exciting" is purely a matter of taste, whereas what is mechanically powerful is not.
You have hit on the actual reason why a lot of people dont like to play the Cleric. Its not because they arent powerful enough, and its not even neccesarilly because they are the "medic". Often times its either because the player dislikes the roleplaying connotations of being a "priest" and/or because generally when people want to play a spellcaster, they want to play a mage. Because Mage spells do generally look and feel a lot more interesting, mechanically effectiveness aside, and because people are usually wanting to emulate their favorite magic using characters from books and movies, and the Cleric doesnt generally fit most of those.
That aside, its purely up to you wether you find the Clerics spells and abilities interesting or not, but they are powerful mechanically. The Cleric is almost certainlly the most mechanically powerful class overall. The Druid is very strong too but I dont believe its quite equal overall.
Theres one big reason for this. The Clerics defensive characteristics and survivability are above those of pretty much any class, and their offense is at least as good as that of any other class. They have 1 less hit point per level than a fighter, and can wear the same armor. They have the two important saves as good catagories, and since Wis is their primary stat their Will save is going to be phenomenal. So even an unprepared Cleric has a high degree of defense. Then you add in Spell Resistance, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Resist/Protection from Energy etc and a Cleric with a little preperation is nearly invulnerable.
Now you are right that at lower levels their offense isnt great...although its honestly not that bad either since again they have enough HP, AC and attack bonus to melee a bit, plus Spiritual Weapon, Hold Person, Shield of Faith, Searing Light etc even at low levels. But then from about level 7 on it gets crazy. Divine Power turns them into a fighter when it counts. Righteous Might if theres time lets them exceed the fighter. Then you have Slay Living, Harm, Destruction, Implosion, Blasphemy etc, and for the swarms of lesser enemies, Flame Strike and Fire Storm.
Now that doesnt seem like many spells, and it isnt. But how many doesnt really matter. They work, quite well.
Once you choose a certain type of cleric, I feel that you become a "scripted" character.At almost every combat, you will do the same exact thing... righteous might, divine power, attack. etc. The cleric's imaginary versatility is at character creation, where you can choose to be a war cleric or an elemental blaster cleric or a rogue cleric. But after that selection, you will probably fall into a pattern.
Well as has already been mentioned, this happens with all characters.
Nextly, the versatility is not imaginary, nor is it at character creation. Its in the spell list which is in the end just about as broad in function as the wizards. Its in the fact that the Cleric has automatic access to every spell on that list, and more spell slots than any other caster save the Sorcerer to use them with. Its in the fact that a Cleric also has the option of meleeing relatively well, and with a single spell can melee very well if needed.
The Domains are just icing on the cake that add the ability to gain limited access (or unlimited access if your using the absurdities in Complete Divine) to some of those few effects the Cleric spell list itself doesnt have.
This isn't helped by the spell list, which I feel always has a "best spell" or "best two spells" at every level, so you constantly see clerics use the same spells over and over.
This has no effect on how powerful the class is, if the spells work. And again, its true of all spellcasters.
The cleric's imaginary versatility is at character creation, where you can choose to be a war cleric or an elemental blaster cleric or a rogue cleric. But after that selection, you will probably fall into a pattern.
This is not the case. Most of a Clerics capabilities stem from core spells on the Cleric spell list. So you can actually generally switch among these roles with little diffaculty. In particular, even if you take Domain like Travel or Trickery or Destruction to gain access to their spells, the stuff that really lets a Cleric melee is, again, on the Cleric spell list itself.
The utility spells also seem to not be as varied as a wizards utility spells.
Eh...Wizards have the full-blown Teleport spells, and Fly, and they have spells that make something out of nothing (major/minor creation, Leomund's Hut and Mord's Mansion etc).
But Clerics have Air Walk, which can give much of the tactical advantage of Fly (not all, but it gets you out of melee range if you want it) and Wind Walk is an excellent travel spell. Clerics are also almost certainlly better at overall divination. They are the only ones who can predict the future (Augury, Divination). Commune is better than Contact Other Plane in pretty much every way. Find the Path is incredible. The get True Seeing a level earlier than Wizards.
And...they can heal, which wizards cannot do at all. And they can remove pretty much any sort of status effect...disease, poison, transmutations, curses...whereas Wizards only have the Dispels, Remove Curse, and Break Enchantment.
Which is probably the reason I dislike them, since I prefer bard/rogue jack-of-all-trades types.
Within the context of combat, the Cleric is a far better jack of all trades than bard or rogue. The only thing a bard has that a Cleric doesnt is skills, mostly various social/RP skills, which doesnt come into play in combat. the Cleric is a better fighter and a better spellcaster overall, although ironically despite peoples insistence that the Cleric is a support class and most of their resources go to the party, the Bard is a better party-enhancer except in the area of defense against spells and supernatural stuff, which is the Clerics area.
So why do you (or others you know) love clerics so much?
I think a lot of what your seeing is people talking about and/or enjoying the mechanical power of the Cleric. Not the RP aspects, and not on a level of stuff thats big and flashy and fun. The Clerics offensive power isnt especially impressive in look or aproach, its just powerful.
Am I just missing all the cool things they can do? Am I missing uses for spells? Or is it just my personal play style that makes me dislike clerics?
All of the above I'd say. Although I think the last one is what leads to the first two to some extent. You dont care for the class conceptually and RP wise (I dont either) , and you look at the spells and stuff from the perspective of how interesting they are in terms of feel and concept, and your missing how powerful they are mechanically, especially when combined with the Clerics base class features.
