Clerics can be one of the easiest classes to play, but mastering every aspect of it can be quite challenging for some. With supporting, it can be a very multitasking job since you have to keep yourself, as well as your squad, alive. Most clerics also help CC tanks and such around them to help their squad. Mostly, everything on here is pretty spot on--
purify, ironheart, and stream of rejuvenation will be your best friends and only use your AoE heal if nobody needs purified or extra attention to stay alive.
Always remember your plume shell and make sure to manage chi so you have enough for purifying and sogging / sleeping others.
And with being a cleric, you sometimes get squads that think self-sustainability is no longer important and depend 100% on the cleric to keep them alive while they run off and do whatever, so that's a bit of a struggle. Stay with your party leader and if anyone strays, don't chase them, that's how people start dying.
Gear wise, if you're planning to be a support cleric, the setup that Nea discussed earlier in the thread is solid and the most common support build. For ornaments, you always want to use pdef
(the only reason you should use an mdef orna is against a stormbringer and even that's not important) with defense levels / reduce physical damage taken / magic-- or if you're attack, use attack level / magic, although when I DD, I stay in my defense ornaments.
Otherwise, if you plan on being attack, you want to aim for channeling and magic on your gears. If you're sage, you may opt out of pure channeling for more magic since sage clerics have a channeling buff, but for demon, channeling is important. Also,
remember to use rpdt/rmdt gears as needed.For attack weapons, most clerics use either an attack level glaive or the dragon glaive for channeling.
But, there's a lot of information on this thread regarding sage support clerics but not much for any other type of cleric.
So, here a few tips to help
(that I use, not everyone does.) - When in a 1v1 against a fast channeling class
(i.e. wizard, stormbringer, venomancer, archer, another cleric) or aps class
(i.e. assassin, duskblade, also archer), it's always best to shackle since it kills most very fast and can kill through immunes if the target isn't careful. S
hackle is dependent on your magic attack and the target's pdef (soulburn for psychics work the same way,) so it's best to use your pdef debuff or mire to drop the target's pdef, and/or spark to increase your magic attack prior to applying magical shackle so it increases the damage shackle does per proc.
(Or if you're demon, skip out on sparking and simply use your magic attack buff.) Keep in mind that it's also not that useful to try and shackle dph tanks like barbs and blademasters, as their pdef is high and less hits = less shackle procs.
- When fighting a light armour class, keep in mind what ornaments they're using to fight you. If they're using pdef ornaments, shackle will not hit as hard but metal attacks will hit like a truck-- and if they're using mdef ornaments, shackle will hit significantly harder and plume shot will be your best choice.
(Don't be afraid of tossing in a few metal attacks like whirlwind to slow the target and elven boon to seal the target and heal yourself.) - With that said, it's common sense to also use physical attacks against arcane armour classes and metal attacks against heavy armour classes. Razor feathers is now spammable with the homestead update and hits harder than plume shot, and thundercrash combines two of your attacks so it saves time with casting skills.
- If you're demon,
always remember to use your metal debuff while using metal attacks, it helps a lot, especially now with thundercrash.
- Aurora blast, aurora burst, and elven boon are your best friends when it comes to killing since they heal you while you're in Ultraviolet Dance.
(Useful if you're a cleric who stays in UVD for an entire 1v1 or other pk.) Pious blessing is like deaden nerves for clerics. If you're in a squad with others, don't forget that you're the cleric of the group, you also need to be paying attention to others' buffs and occasionally switching in and out of UVD to heal and support.
- It's useless to DD in a dragon top unless you heavily outgear the target since you lose 30 attack levels without the R8 set bonus, I've seen some clerics try and use it for extra defense but lack in their damage.
-
Learn to survive in UVD. Don't depend on always switching in and out since sometimes you'll be caught where you can't exactly just switch out of UVD and spam heal yourself. Again, use aurora skills and elven boon to keep your HP up until you're able to switch out of UVD, as well as your buffs.
This is only really a portion of what I've learned about playing clerics. This is based off of
my own personal experience on both retail servers and custom servers and what I find to be easiest.
(Not every cleric follows what I've written.)Maybe I'll write more in depth if it's needed or if questions are asked.Hopefully this helps someone out there!! (Whether it be for learning to play a more dd-type cleric or learning to fight against one.)
