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Healing is sub par. A good guideline is that you could probably do more damage than you could heal in one round, the enemy could do more damage in one round so therefore getting the enemy down one round earlier is more effective than healing someone.
That being said, healing is actually a lot less expensive than Raise Dead, so you just need to know when to heal. Most of the time that's when the battle is over. So just get a Wand of Cure Light Wounds when you can get one, and use those spells for things like buffs.
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In the Advice forum there is the Guide to the Class Guides that includes four different guides to building different types of clerics.
Clerics don't have to be healers, there are a number of different ways to build them out. That said, they can be very effective as healer, buff, and de-buff. It really depends on what you want to focus on.
Read through the four different Cleric guides and see if that doesn't give you some ideas.
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+1 to the Guide to the Class Guides recommendation. Very helpful.
Also, you may find THIS document helpful. It's a checklist I put together for some of my new players walking you through the character creation and leveling process. I actually end up using it myself a lot, too!
:-)
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Healing is NOT subpar: its just not sexy. Your calculations work well for 1 encounter, but with no healing, your party will not last much longer than that 1 encounter. Not having a healer in the party always sucks.
Specializing in healing is usually sub-par in PFS play. Being able to heal is very sensible and helpful. That said, I'm always happy to see a Life Oracle when one shows up at the table.
In PFS play most healing is accomplish Out Of Combat, usually with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds and/or a Wand of Infernal Healing. Those can be used by every character class (with UMD). A single Infernal Healing wand, used by a Rogue with UMD, is perfectly adequate to heal the entire party up to full HP.
I've played several Clerics in PFS. Healing is rarely your best option, but sometimes it's vital to saving a PC from death. My clerics usually get grumpy if someone needs healing because they were foolish, but will always emergency-heal someone who suffered their injuries through no fault of their own. A few fools have got critically wounded being idiots, then called for healing and didn't get it because my battle cleric was too busy ending the encounter.
Think of it this way: a battle cleric can heal 70% as well as a dedicated healer, and is also a front line combatant.
@OP: Definitely read the cleric guides. That's good advice. There are all sorts of ways to build a cleric. I'm currently having fun, in a home Kingmaker AP game, with a [highly optimized PFS-legal] 9th level cleric who specializes in battlefield control: negative variant channeling (Rulership gives a Daze effect) shuts down foes, versatile channeling allows healing the party with decent positive channels, Quick Channel allows both in the same turn, the Evangelist archetype (with extra effort) provides huge combat buffs to the entire party, and melee combat ability is over-the-top with the ability to inflict 250+ HP damage in one round without scoring any critical hits. The key is worshipping Horus for the Variant Channel(negative only, to harm), combined with the (usually sub-par) channeling feats. An Axe Beak Boon Companion with the Paired Opportunists feat pumps out melee damage just like a polearm fighter: maximum 5 regular attacks and 5 AoOs between the pair, for 10 possible melee attacks per round. All that, and the PC remains a full prepared spell caster!
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I recommend an evangelist cleric archetype.
Healing in combat is sub par unless it is to save lives. other then that it is better to control or stack the battlefield.
I recommend the domains: travel, luck, heroism, or feather (the animal companion one).
As a evanglist you want the feat lingering performance.
One every cleric you want the 11th level feat divine interference.
If you want to be a summoner the feats: spell focus conjuration, augmented summoning, superior summoning, and sacred summons.
If you want to focus on enchantment: spell focus enchantment, greater, spell penetration, and persistent spell.
I have played clerics for years and have a jaded opinion. Cleric who focus just on healing, channeling, or melee are wasting the potential of a full prepared caster. If im playing a cleric i heal after combat and use my turns to make my team stronger and more durable or to control the battlefield with summons or walls.
I'm not a huge fan of Clerics in Pathfinder; I used to play a lot of Clerics back in D&D 3.5th edition, where they were one of the most versatile and interesting classes, and moving to PF suddenly all the classes become cool enough that Clerics lose a lot of their appeal.
That said: Any good-aligned cleric (or neutral with spontaneous healing) will be an excellent healer, no matter what you do. So don't worry about the healing, and just figure out what else you want to do.
Read one of the guides on how to play a cleric; it's worthwhile. That said, there's a few directions you can go, that I've seen well—melee tank, support caster, or battlefield control.
First, you want a high casting stat (wisdom, or charisma if you play an oracle, which is a class of similar usefulness). You also want high constitution, since clerics do well being tough, and probably decent strength or dexterity.
A cleric can wear decent armor, and carry a shield; if you take a level in fighter, or the right revelations from the Oracle's Battle mystery, you get to wear heavy armor. (A first level dip in fighter also gets you some neat trait options). You lose out on movement speed, but you can be almost as tough as a paladin.
An oracle can take a few levels in paladin for massive save bonus, and a Lore mystery oracle with Sidestep Secret and two levels of paladin is incredibly hard to hit with spells, while also being able to use the best armor, making you one of the best tanks in all of pathfinder while also casting cleric spells.
Meanwhile, there are a ton of amazing cleric support spells: Resist Energy (Communal), Magic Circle Against Evil, and Blessing of Fervor are some of the best party buffs in the game, and you get those all at a low level. Divine Power and Righteous Might can turn you into a melee fighter on the spot, if that's what you're into. But spells are easy to change, if you're a cleric, and only the oracle needs to think about them at character creation.
Finally, I've seen cool things done with an archery cleric, too. You can get proficiency with a longbow either through multi-classing, battle oracle, or being a cleric of Erastil. With a bit of multi classing, or a racial bonus feat, you can get enough of the really useful archery feats to be decent at it (Rapid Shot, Manyshot, Deadly Shot, Precise Shot); adding a domain like Plant or Luck can give you some really useful spells for ensnaring or distracting enemies.
And domains can be really cool too. With the Animal Domain, you can eventually shift into animals and get an animal companion, like a druid. Plenty of other cool domain powers are out there, but I probably shouldn't list them all here.
The thing is, it's hard to do a cleric badly. Just come up with a basic concept, and then decide which bells and whistles you want to add on top of that.
(If you have a specific idea in mind, it might make it easier for people to give you advice)
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I suggest a evanglist cleric that focuses on enchantment spells. Also fill in some wall spells. You will be doing very well at buffing and controlling the battlefield.
You can use those e nchantments offensively. Fighter being flanked? Command a target to lay down...provoke AoO from your buffed up fighter. Oh and standing up provokes as well. Seems you just debugged them as good amount of HP and could p ossiably kill one from the fighters attack.
I suggest a evanglist cleric that focuses on enchantment spells. Also fill in some wall spells. You will be doing very well at buffing and controlling the battlefield.
You can use those e nchantments offensively. Fighter being flanked? Command a target to lay down...provoke AoO from your buffed up fighter. Oh and standing up provokes as well. Seems you just debugged them as good amount of HP and could p ossiably kill one from the fighters attack.
Enchantment is cool, but also extremely risky, if you don't know the campaign. Fighting mostly undead, constructs, or tough individual monsters? You'll never meet anything that can fail a will save.
I'd say, honestly, that the decisions you make with regard to domain and such can be based on who else is in the party and what sort of campaign it is. But as long as you've got a high casting stat, decent AC and HP, you certainly won't be a party burden.