Cleric overview I

A Simple Cleric Guide

This is written just form my experience, if you disagree with something fell free to comment, and add your own views. I am only really writing this as I haven’t seen many cleric guides about, so thought a rough one would be better than none at all.


Ok So you have decided to play a cleric, great you have chosen the most sought after class in the game when it comes to party play. Now the first thing you must decide upon is what armour you use. Here you have 2 choices, Light armour or Robe.

Light Armour

Light armour offers more (physical) defence, and as such it is likely you last longer in it. It also unlocks some additional self buffage of your defences in your spells (the charity line). Light armour is a good choice for those who are either new to the party work, healing etc. and don’t have a good understanding of how aggro works (tho I do sometimes myself get confused by Joymax). Or if you plan to do a lot of solo play, where you will be taking hits yourself.

The down side to light armour is that you will loose some mana – or rather you gain mana through wearing robes.

Robes

Robes lack the defence that you get from physical armour, however apart from looking better (at least in my opinion) they also unlock some spells effects that reduce the mana cost of your abilities (Faith). The additional mana saved may not be much, but that extra heal you can get off may save you and your party. If you feel confident in your own abilities, and or you know you will be working with a good tank (a warrior who understand taunt) then Robe is the choice for you.

So you have chosen what armour to use now to decide your build. Personally I feel clerics should be full int, but I will go over all options here.

Full Int Build

This option will provide you with the maximum mana, as well as stronger attacks. Early on in the game you will very rarely find yourself low on mana and as such wonder if you should have gone for a hybrid build. However later in the game the demand on your mana increases and you will be thankful for the extra mana you have in this build.

The down side to this is you will have low HP. This shouldn’t too much of a problem, in party play you should never take a hit (if you do, slap your tank). And although your HP is low it should still be ok for most solo play (more on that later). However if you are worried, or just want the extra HP then as long as your magic balance stays above 90% you can invest in some Str points as you lvl, whilst your mana should still be sufficient. Also remember to add Str and Stamina tablets to your gear, that can really help boost your life.
Hybrid

Ok So your insisting on having more HP, fine, I still wouldn’t go for more than 1 Str point for ever 3 Int points, this will give you more HP, whilst your mana pool will still be large enough to cope with 80% of situations. If you plan to mainly solo play (then why are you being a cleric??) then this build might be for you.

Full str

Just Don’t! – you will suck.

whilst we are talking about builds i will quickly mention alchemy. Being a cleric you need both mana, and to stay alive to use this. Use Stamina and Magic tabs (and if you can Str and Int ones too), if you can afford it then from D5 onwards try and put Str, Stamina, Int and Magic tabs on all your gear, fully pimped this can easily give you nearly 1000hp/mp more at these levels (for a full int build thats more than 50% more HP). However pimping all your gear like this will cost money, so as a general rule i just try to add Str and Int to weapons shields, and Stamina/magic tabs to maybe 3 peices of armor (Head, Chest and legs sell best - so more likely to make your money back if you use them on these items).

Now down to the nitty gritty, Spells!

Spells!!

Ok Lets go over the easy ones first. You Must have you must have Heavenly Rage, Faith and Charity, HR is needed for when you have to deal damage, and you will sometimes. The other two are passives needed to use other spells.

Buffs – Get them all there are only 4, and they make a lot of difference. but be aware both mental blessing and force blessing require you to have a cleric rod in your hand at all times, and can not be cast on yourself. Also although they stay on other people when you change weapons Soul and body blessing do not last on yourself when you change weapons (dont get a cleric subclass if you just want buffs).

Ok that’s the easy ones done, now here are my must have spells, you may disagree with some of them

Early on in the game you will want to get Healing, Group Healing and Healing division below lvl 30 these will make up the backbone of your spells.

Along with these grab resurrection and Bless Spell, Bless spell is an amazing ability which you will grow to love… and want its babies. It’s a 45 second buff that increases your party defences by a LOT – you wont die when its up.

At Level 30 you get Healing cycle this is the first HoT (heal over time spell) you get, and it rocks. In a good group you can just keep that spell on the tank and that’s all the healing you will have to do.

As you approach mid game you need to start thinking about the Recovery series, these 3 spells are amazing, but have flaws. Recovery and Group recovery are stronger versions of Healing and group healing. I personally stopped levelling up the Healing spells when I got Recovery’s (keep Healing division). However they use more mana, and have longer cool downs, so be careful.

Recovery Division (RD) is a spell you get at lvl 40. And it Rocks. It’s a 5 min HoT that heals the person with the Lowest HP% every 5 seconds if you have a good party, with a good tank you can just cast this spell then go afk, coming back every 5 mins to recast it (I wouldn’t recommend it, but you can do it.) – With a good party, and a s/s warrior u can even fight party giants just using RD to heal.

The Problem with RD is it requires either a small party or a well organised one to be effective. If you have an 8 man party with 5 people trying to tank stuff then RD wont work that well, as too many people will be taking damage to often. Also if this is the case I would leave the party, you don’t need the extra pressure of having noobs not working togther.

Now attack Spells, you only really got 3, Trial Cross, Over healing, and Offering. Cross is your basic attack spell it will (with a full Int build) do about 50% dmg to a normal mob of your level. Overhealing is a fixed damage spell, its good aginst mobs with very high magic defense, or in combo with cross for rapid fire, but it generally is weaker than cross.

Offering – this spell is a biggest Nuke in the game however remember it takes 95% of your HP to cast, so DON'T ever use it when you have aggro, and always have a Pot ready to use right after. You get the spell at lvl 40, at that lvl with lvl42 weapons it deals around 8k dmg to a creature of your level, I feel although that is good damage it perhaps should be more, the only reason being it is only 2x as big as a wizards standard nuke (fireball) and at a cost of 95% hp I would expect at least 3 times. Also this spell is AOE so don’t aggro extra stuff by accident

Now I feel thats all the Spell you need, tho you may want more. The status spells (holy ward and innocent) are nice, but by the time you notice they got a status problem its usually been auto cured. That being said i do have them, and they dont take a lot fo SP to maintain, and when fighting mobs that you knwo will cause status problems, they are nice - but not vital.

The bind spell is nice for PvP, but by the time you cast it you will probably be dead already. It sucks for PvE.

Group reverse and reverse oblation I feel are a waste of SP, resurrection may take longer but does the job just fine.

To get all you spells you want you may need a 2 gap, if you have a subclass you will want even more (more on that later).

On all the spells (offenisve and healing) you will notice there is a reflect value, a number in brackets.
I am not 100%certain on this but i believe that this means the spell will deal the dmg (or heal) the smoutn stated plus the percentage of you magic attack power shown in brackets, so, as with the image, Recovery lvl 3 heals for 1379 (300%), so if you had a magic attack power of 100 it would heal for 1379 +300, so a total of 1679, tho i havnt fully tested this theory, and if anyone knows for sure then please confirm this for me.

Ok. So you have your spells, now how to kill stuff…

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