Whats a Cleric?
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Whats a Cleric?
Admin on Sat Jul 18, 2009 2:18 am
If you have any experience with previous MMOs, the cleric is the well-known heal&support class. You have mainly healing and buffing skills, and as such your role in a group is standing back and healing your wounded party members while ensuring they are kept buffed and dispelled of negative effects and that dead members are quickly ressurected with less experience loss. However, you are also a potent damage dealer. You tend to have low resilience compared to other classes but make up for this with devastating long range attacks.
The neat perk of priests is that they have both magical (metal element based) attacks, and physical ones (which also rely on your magic power). This makes you incredibly flexible both in PvP and PvE situations (Is the enemy wearing heavy armor? Zap him with a thunderbolt. Is he a robe-wearing mage? Use a physical attack to exploit his vulnerability.).
Other noteworthy features are an interesting debuff tree which allows you to put your enemy to sleep, stop his movement or decrease his defenses. These can be used both offensively and defensively, adding an interesting edge over the common 'stay back and heal' role of a priest. Clerics can also use mana to shield themselves from damage for a while, and they have moderate area of effect capabilities.
As such, we are looking at a very fun and balanced class that can perform in both PvP and PvE situations, and both single and party based contexts. You are hands down the best (only) support class, and you can double as a damage dealer (inferior but comparable to a mage).
2. Why should I play a Cleric?
- Fun, balanced class.
- You can help out your friends and guildees.
- You will be sought after in dungeons and have no problem finding a group.
- The only class that can fly as soon as level 1 (others start at 30).
3. Why shouldn't I play a Cleric?
- Incredible money sink, probably the most expensive class to play.
- Gameplay can get repetitive (using the same skill over and over), up to the point where you don't even have to touch the keyboard (using a chanelled heal spell for hours on end; this might be a good thing if you're incredibly lazy).
- If left on your own, you will have trouble killing certain monsters (melee and especially archer types) which impedes your solo/questing potential. This can be overcome with creative use of your skills, and more often than not, a good group.
4. What gear should my Cleric use?
Your weapon will be exclusively a magic device (sword, wand, staff, or jewel quoit). Out of these, wands have constant, reliable damage, while quoits have the highest max damage, but also the lowest min damage, making them rather unpredictable. Swords and staves are somewhere inbetween. The choice doesn't really matter, but I personally favor swords (decently high damge, not too wild range, cool looks).
Your armor will be either robes or light armor. Robes are the classical caster attire, and will give you ungodly amounts of magical defense, while leaving you vulnerable to physical attacks. They also have little STR requirements which ensures your stat points aren't wasted. The second choice, light armor, evens out your physical and magical defenses. Defense has diminishing returns: if 3000 defense nets you 30% damage reduction, adding another 1000 won't give you another 10%; it will be a smaller number (maybe 8%). The next 1000 will net you an even smaller number (say 6%), up to where added defense will hardly be noticeable (as a note, these numbers are made up, just there to prove a point.). As such, light armor gives you the best of both worlds. However it requires STR and DEX, which leaves your character starved for stat points (generally your VIT will suffer). It's recommended that you start off as a robe build though; it's more straightforward and newcomer-friendly. You can restat to wear light armor if so you choose later on (provided you spend real life money). There are also experimental builds involving heavy armor or heavy armor mixed with robes; those are too exotic for the purpose of this article.
5. What stats should I invest in?
You get 5 stat points each level-up. You have 4 base stats: MAG, DEX, STR, VIT. MAG increases your mana pool and regeneration, magical damage, and allows you to use weapons and robes. DEX gives you a higher critical rate, evasion and allows you to wear light armor. VIT increases your hitpoints and hitpoint regeneration. STR allows you to wear items (physical damage is irrelevant to this class, as the physical damage spells rely on your magical damage instead).
To wear the best available magic weapon for your level you need to add 3 MAG points each level. Experimental builds might choose to downrank their weapon, freeing stats in the process, but that's not something a newcomer should attempt. This leaves us with 2 stat points each level. To wear your weapon/robes you need an average of 0.5 STR each level. We will hence spread out our distribution over 2 levels:
* Every 2 levels: 10 stat points
+ Barebones build. Minimum necessary stats for robes/weapon (not a build per se but you can do this to conserve your stats if you haven't made up your mind yet).
- 6 MAG
- 1 STR
- 3 free points
+ Highly offensive build. Very low survivability. High damage and healing power.
- 9 MAG
- 1 STR
+ Offensive build. Low survivability. High damage and healing power.
- 7-8 MAG
- 1 STR
- 1-2 VIT
+ Balanced build. Decent survivability. Mid-high damage and healing power.
- 6 MAG
- 1 STR
- 3 VIT
+ Light armor build. Geared towards using light armor. Balance of magic and physical defense. Superior critical rate. Minimal hitpoints but higher survivability when facing physical opponents. PvP versatility. Mid-high healing power, but higher overall damage due to an increased critical rate.
- 6 MAG
- 2 STR
- 2 DEX
As you probably realised, the only build that can wear light armor is the last one. All other builds use exclusively robes. Light armor build can also use a set of robes appropriate for their level if facing magic enemies (supporting two sets of armor will prove expensive). You might choose to downgrade a light build's armor to increase VIT. This is, however, experimental and beyond our purpose.
The best recommended build for a first time player is the balanced build (6 MAG/1 STR/3 VIT over 2 levels). It will ensure you have good damage/healing power and survive decently. The light armor build can also be attempted as starting monsters are mostly physical. Choose an offensive build if you have reliable friends and spend your time mainly in groups.
6. How do I heal?
You initially have 3 healing spells at your disposal:
Blessing of the Purehearted - high cast time, high amount of healing, decent mana efficiency.
Wellspring Surge - low cast time, low amount of healing, low mana efficiency.
Ironheart Blessing - very low cast time, high amount of healing over 15 seconds (regeneration), best mana efficiency
The neat perk of priests is that they have both magical (metal element based) attacks, and physical ones (which also rely on your magic power). This makes you incredibly flexible both in PvP and PvE situations (Is the enemy wearing heavy armor? Zap him with a thunderbolt. Is he a robe-wearing mage? Use a physical attack to exploit his vulnerability.).
Other noteworthy features are an interesting debuff tree which allows you to put your enemy to sleep, stop his movement or decrease his defenses. These can be used both offensively and defensively, adding an interesting edge over the common 'stay back and heal' role of a priest. Clerics can also use mana to shield themselves from damage for a while, and they have moderate area of effect capabilities.
As such, we are looking at a very fun and balanced class that can perform in both PvP and PvE situations, and both single and party based contexts. You are hands down the best (only) support class, and you can double as a damage dealer (inferior but comparable to a mage).
2. Why should I play a Cleric?
- Fun, balanced class.
- You can help out your friends and guildees.
- You will be sought after in dungeons and have no problem finding a group.
- The only class that can fly as soon as level 1 (others start at 30).
3. Why shouldn't I play a Cleric?
- Incredible money sink, probably the most expensive class to play.
- Gameplay can get repetitive (using the same skill over and over), up to the point where you don't even have to touch the keyboard (using a chanelled heal spell for hours on end; this might be a good thing if you're incredibly lazy).
- If left on your own, you will have trouble killing certain monsters (melee and especially archer types) which impedes your solo/questing potential. This can be overcome with creative use of your skills, and more often than not, a good group.
4. What gear should my Cleric use?
Your weapon will be exclusively a magic device (sword, wand, staff, or jewel quoit). Out of these, wands have constant, reliable damage, while quoits have the highest max damage, but also the lowest min damage, making them rather unpredictable. Swords and staves are somewhere inbetween. The choice doesn't really matter, but I personally favor swords (decently high damge, not too wild range, cool looks).
Your armor will be either robes or light armor. Robes are the classical caster attire, and will give you ungodly amounts of magical defense, while leaving you vulnerable to physical attacks. They also have little STR requirements which ensures your stat points aren't wasted. The second choice, light armor, evens out your physical and magical defenses. Defense has diminishing returns: if 3000 defense nets you 30% damage reduction, adding another 1000 won't give you another 10%; it will be a smaller number (maybe 8%). The next 1000 will net you an even smaller number (say 6%), up to where added defense will hardly be noticeable (as a note, these numbers are made up, just there to prove a point.). As such, light armor gives you the best of both worlds. However it requires STR and DEX, which leaves your character starved for stat points (generally your VIT will suffer). It's recommended that you start off as a robe build though; it's more straightforward and newcomer-friendly. You can restat to wear light armor if so you choose later on (provided you spend real life money). There are also experimental builds involving heavy armor or heavy armor mixed with robes; those are too exotic for the purpose of this article.
5. What stats should I invest in?
You get 5 stat points each level-up. You have 4 base stats: MAG, DEX, STR, VIT. MAG increases your mana pool and regeneration, magical damage, and allows you to use weapons and robes. DEX gives you a higher critical rate, evasion and allows you to wear light armor. VIT increases your hitpoints and hitpoint regeneration. STR allows you to wear items (physical damage is irrelevant to this class, as the physical damage spells rely on your magical damage instead).
To wear the best available magic weapon for your level you need to add 3 MAG points each level. Experimental builds might choose to downrank their weapon, freeing stats in the process, but that's not something a newcomer should attempt. This leaves us with 2 stat points each level. To wear your weapon/robes you need an average of 0.5 STR each level. We will hence spread out our distribution over 2 levels:
* Every 2 levels: 10 stat points
+ Barebones build. Minimum necessary stats for robes/weapon (not a build per se but you can do this to conserve your stats if you haven't made up your mind yet).
- 6 MAG
- 1 STR
- 3 free points
+ Highly offensive build. Very low survivability. High damage and healing power.
- 9 MAG
- 1 STR
+ Offensive build. Low survivability. High damage and healing power.
- 7-8 MAG
- 1 STR
- 1-2 VIT
+ Balanced build. Decent survivability. Mid-high damage and healing power.
- 6 MAG
- 1 STR
- 3 VIT
+ Light armor build. Geared towards using light armor. Balance of magic and physical defense. Superior critical rate. Minimal hitpoints but higher survivability when facing physical opponents. PvP versatility. Mid-high healing power, but higher overall damage due to an increased critical rate.
- 6 MAG
- 2 STR
- 2 DEX
As you probably realised, the only build that can wear light armor is the last one. All other builds use exclusively robes. Light armor build can also use a set of robes appropriate for their level if facing magic enemies (supporting two sets of armor will prove expensive). You might choose to downgrade a light build's armor to increase VIT. This is, however, experimental and beyond our purpose.
The best recommended build for a first time player is the balanced build (6 MAG/1 STR/3 VIT over 2 levels). It will ensure you have good damage/healing power and survive decently. The light armor build can also be attempted as starting monsters are mostly physical. Choose an offensive build if you have reliable friends and spend your time mainly in groups.
6. How do I heal?
You initially have 3 healing spells at your disposal:
Blessing of the Purehearted - high cast time, high amount of healing, decent mana efficiency.
Wellspring Surge - low cast time, low amount of healing, low mana efficiency.
Ironheart Blessing - very low cast time, high amount of healing over 15 seconds (regeneration), best mana efficiency
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