Hi! I'm Raemonah, and I've decided to finally make an ultimate cleric guide.
I've played PW as a whole since 2007, where my dad introduced me to it. I started with a venomancer but ended up learning and loving clerics right before the release of the Rising Tide expansion. (I also loved any class that could fly right off of the bat so I didn't have to wait until level 30.) Along with this long time span of playing on both official and a ton of private servers, I've seen many different setups and playstyles of clerics, most of which I will be sharing here.
Altogether, cleric is a great class to learn since everyone loves a priest who knows their stuff.
Clerics are a multi-functional class, especially after Morai and Primal skills were introduced to PW. They can heal, purify, revive, use shield-like skills, yet turn around and use different stances, debuff, CC and kill if used properly.
Cleric can be both one of the easiest classes to play as well as one of the hardest. If this is your type of gameplay, then Perfect World's elven priest is just the class for you.
Cultivation - Should I go sage or demon?
Sage clerics are known for their supporting aspects, the biggest being the channeling buff on their Magic Shell, which increases the target's channeling speed by 20% for 10 seconds, as well as a physical defense boost of 100% for 10 seconds on their Vanguard Spirit. This comes in handy, especially in Ultraviolet Dance, where you can't use heals. Plume Shell absorbs more damage, their AoE heal increases in range, heals are stronger, Purify has no cooldown, and their sleep can last longer.
Though they have great buffs and heals, their damage lacks a bit more than demons.
If you want to support, or want to be a hybrid cleric (like me) and both support and DD, sage is the best option for you.Demon clerics lack in supporting boosts but make up for that in damage. Spirit's Gift now has a 150% magic attack buff for 10 seconds, as well as increased damage on their DD skills such as Plume Shot and Great Cyclone. Also, Wield Thunder decreases the target's metal defense, making it much easier to kill with a metal combo.
Though they don't have as many boosts on their buffs as sages, their Stream of Rejuvenation gives a pdef boost and their Purify doesn't take any chi. Personally, I was demon up until about four years ago when I came to Epic since the damage is amazing and I liked the Stream of Rejuvenation.
If you want to strictly kill and DD, demon is the way to go.Gears and Setup - How should I set up my cleric's gear?
There are different types of clerics, meaning there is always more than one way to play and gear your priest!
Back in the earlier years of PW, magic classes such a clerics could opt out of arcane gear and instead stat themselves for light armour or heavy armour, which helped with tanking but decreased their healing and attack. Nowadays, most gears are class-restricted and that freedom of having a light armour or a heavy armour cleric is pretty much off the table, so those builds I won't discuss here.
Support type clerics make up a large percentage of Epic, and being a support cleric can be a very multitasking job since you have to keep yourself alive, along with your squad mates, and in most cases, help with CCing. Managing chi is important so you can use Purify and sleep/SoG. With this playstyle, there are different ways you can distribute your attributes.
The most common stat build is having enough strength and vitality in your attributes to be able to wear your R8 gears and support cape, with the rest being put into magic. This balances tanking and heal potency and you're able to wear your support cape. This is one of my strongest suggestions for just starting out, as you can take a bit more damage and still have great healing output.
You might try a full vitality build, which consists of putting enough strength and magic into your stats to wear your R8 gears and the rest into vitality. This helps you take more damage, allows you to wear your support cape, but makes your heals much weaker. I personally don't use this build since I prefer to have strong heals but there are a lot of clerics who play with this style and perform superbly.
There are also some clerics in Epic who go full magic: only enough strength in to wear your R8 gears and the rest into magic. This gives very little defenses and you're unable to equip your cape, but your heals are extremely potent. With this build, paying attention to defenses and position in squad PK is important. This build is easier to work with and play after some experience with clerics altogether, but is extremely fun and worth trying.
Remember that
your heals are based off of your magic attack, which is dictated by your magic, so having the most amount of magic you can is always the best choice.
This is the most common gear among support clerics:
- R8 set, but substituting your top with the dragon top. Since you aren't DDing, the extra +30 attack levels isn't necessary, and the dragon top gives extra rpdt and magic. Your pants and boots should have either full rpdt or rpdt, channeling, or a mix of both (suggested to get all three so you're able to switch around depending on what you need), and your wrists should have as much channeling as you can get, along with either magic, pdef or rmdt.
- Ascended Dragon Cape. This cape was made for classes that wanted to tank more and DD less. It gives extra defense. (With engraving, you want to focus on pdef, mdef, HP, vitality, strength, or magic.)
- Your normal arcane dragon helmet. The guild base helmet may have those extra defense levels but in using that, you lose rpdt, magic and HP.
- Vitality tome. This gives extra rpdt and movement speed, meaning extra survivability. Some support clerics use a magic tome to help with their heals or channeling.
- Physical defense ornaments. Pdef Puzzle Cube Badges (necklace) and pdef Warsong Barriers (belt) are staples in cleric gear. You should have a Dragon Magic Ring and your Emperor's Ring of Wisdom along with these. (With engraving, you want to focus on defense levels, rpdt, and magic, but vitality and strength are okay too.)
- When it comes to weapons for support clerics, some will use their dragon glaive or wand for channeling, some will use a full defense level R8 glaive, and others will use a purify and defense level/rpdt R8 glaive. It's completely up to you and your playstyle, though it's always good to have all three. (For shards, use -6% channeling.)
- For genies, you need a magic/vitality genie so it can use more skills when needed. Faith, Absolute Domain, Fortify*, Will Surge, and Expel are important, though on other servers, not all five are available at one time on a single genie.
- For cards, you want to aim for cards that give the most pdef, mdef, vitality, and defense levels. I use mixed cards but some clerics use full S cards for their liking.
- For starcharts, you want to get pdef, mdef and HP on yours, with pdef or mdef on fatestar.
Then, there are attack clerics. There aren't as many around as support clerics but trust me, they're still there and standing strong. Although with heals and buffs to keep themselves alive, along with an additional UVD stance that unlocks more skills to use for killing, attack clerics are surely underestimated. With this build, you want to put as much strength into your attributes to use your gear, then the rest into magic.
Some people don't like how weak this build makes their clerics so they put points into strength and vitality for extra defense and HP but I don't find this necessary since you want to do the most damage possible. This is the most common gear among attack/DD clerics (this gear is also useful to have on a support cleric for either PvE or hybrid builds):
- A full R8 set. The stats you want to aim for are full magic and channeling, as well as some rpdt or rmdt pieces to use as needed. If you're sage, you can opt out of a full channeling set and lean to more of the magic side of your stats since you have a channeling buff, but for demon clerics, you want to have more channeling. There is no need for the dragon top unless you want to tank or support a bit, but switch back into your R8 top for DDing.
- Ascended Supreme Robe of Dominance. This cape was made for everything that doesn't plan on tanking. It gives extra stats for damage. (With engraving, you want to focus on magic, or pdef and mdef, up to your playstyle.)
- Your normal arcane dragon helmet, or a guild base helmet. Either works-- the dragon helmet if you want a bit more support, and the guild base helmet for the extra attack, but at the cost of HP and defense.
- Magic tome. This gives extra magic and channeling. Or, you can always use a vitality tome if you want that extra bit of defense, although it takes away from your attack.
- Physical defense ornaments. You can use either a pdef Puzzle Cube Badge (necklace) or the Dragonchild's Scale (necklace, which has more attack stats than a Puzzle Cube,) along with your pdef Warsong Barrier.
Personally I stick with my pdef Puzzle Cube Badge since I can kill just fine without the extra damage of the DS necklace. Along with this, you want your Magic Dragon Ring and your Emperor's Ring of Wisdom. (With engraving, you want attack levels and magic, or you can stick with defense engraves such as defense levels, magic, vitality, strength, or rpdt for that extra boost of defense.)
- With weapons, you can use either a full attack level R8 glaive or a dragon glaive for channeling.
I see more damage from the attack level glaive and prefer it more, but if you struggle with a bit of slow channeling, then the dragon glaive is for you. Also, it's good to have defense glaives on the side in case you need to switch over. (For shards, use -6% channeling.)
- For genies, you can either use a magic/vitality genie or a strength genie. Magic/vitality genies are good for the same reason as said in the support build, but strength genies are useful for Occult Ice, used to keep your target still. On a strength genie, Occult Ice, Fortify*, Will Surge, Tree of Protection, Expel, and Absolute Domain are good choices.
- For cards, a full S+ card set is the best choice.
- For starcharts, you want to get magic attack and magic penetration, with magic attack on fatestar.
(* Fortify should only be level 1, as to save genie energy. Level 10 is not necessary.) I'm a hybrid cleric so I have both defense gears and attack gears that I switch between constantly, but I don't always switch attributes. I keep only as much vitality as I need to equip my defense cape (since I have vitality on some of my defense gears as well, I don't have to use as much vitality and extra can go into magic.) This is also important to keep in mind when I'm switching to DD without going to a full magic build-- I only switch to a full magic build for 1v1s and if I know I won't be supporting for the day and simply want to fully DD. To me, it isn't
that big of a difference, since I only have about 185 extra points in vitality for my cape that could be in magic. I usually don't bother with it, and the extra vitality helps with survivability when I have more than one person attacking me. Since when I DD I lack a bit of damage due to not switching builds, I make up for that with sparking, properly applying debuffs, making sure I use the right skills at the right time for the maximum damage possible, and always keep an eye on my teammates for buffing, purifying, and getting out of UVD to heal when needed.
Skills - What skills do I have and how do I use them?
Clerics have a large skillset and can do everything from healing, buffing, and CCing to debuffing and killing with two types of damage-dealing skills.
The good thing about having both physical and magic attacks is you can kill both magic and physical immune targets.
Heals- Ironheart Blessing: Stackable over-time heal, no instant heal effect. This heal is used to regenerate a target's health over a small amount of time.
- Soothing Pulse (Primal): Standard instant heal with no over-time heal effect. This heal is used to quickly heal a target for a large portion of their health and is a quick casting skill.
- Stream of Rejuvenation: A mix of Ironheart Blessing and Soothing Pulse; both a standard instant heal and with a heal-over-time effect. This is the most commonly used heal due to it's stronger healing nature and relatively fast casting time with a channeling weapon.
- Chromatic Healing Beam: Instant AoE heal with a slower casting time. This heal is only used when nobody in your squad needs special attention to stay alive.
Buffs- Vanguard Spirit: Increased physical defense. This skill and Magic Shell are both equally the most important buffs to keep on your target.
- Magic Shell: Increased magic defense. This skill and Vanguard Spirit are both equally the most important buffs to keep on your target.
- Celestial Guardian: Increased HP/MP regeneration. This skill is useless, especially with the use of HP/MP pots.
- Spirit's Gift: Increased weapon damage. This skill is great to keep on your squad members but not necessary enough to stress over while rebuffing a team member.
- Greater Protective Aura: Increases the physical defenses of your nearby squad members.
- Aegis Spirit: Increases the magic defenses of your nearby squad members.
- Exalted Renewal: Increases the HP and MP regeneration of your nearby squad members.
- Arcane Empowerment: Increases the weapon damage of your nearby squad members.
- Pantheon's Blessing (Primal): A skill that combines all of the squad buffs into one, making it more efficient to rebuff party members.
Support Skills (The skills that don't fall under proper heals or buffs.)- Purify: Removes all debuffs from the target. Very important for cleric gameplay.
- Revive: Revives a dead target. Also very important in group PvP.
- Plume Shell: Significantly decreases physical damage dealt to yourself and instead transfers most damage to your MP. One of the most important shields that a cleric has and can only be used on yourself. In PK where there is a class that deals physical damage around, make sure you always have your Plume Shell up when it's off of cooldown.
- Wings of Protection (79/100): A weaker version of plume shell that can be used on a target. Absorbs a small amount of both magic and physical damage.
- Guardian's Light (79/100): A self-shield that decreases damage taken by 60% and increases movement speed. One of a cleric's clutchest skills for tanking.
- Blessing of Immortality (Homestead): A temporary buff that doubles the target's HP and instantly heals them to full health. A cleric's ultimate skill in the Elysium expansion.
- Regeneration Aura (Primal): A standing AoE heal, also reduces the damage taken by nearby squad members. Not important to use unless your squad literally does not need healing whatsoever and you want to show off your pretty blue bubble.
- Heaven's Wrath (Primal): A standing attack boost, increases physical attack, magic attack, attacks per second and channeling time of nearby squad members. Not important at all due to it overriding any sparks of your team mates.
Physical DD Skills- Plume Shot: A spammable magic attack that deals physical damage. Used against targets with lower pdef than mdef, such as most arcane classes.
- Razor Feathers (Homestead): An AoE magic attack that deals higher physical damage than Plume Shot. Also used against targets with low pdef. With the Elysium expansion, it has no cooldown in UVD.
Metal DD Skills- Great Cyclone (Primal): A magic attack that deals metal damage. Used against targets with lower mdef than pdef, such as some light armour classes and most heavy armour classes. This skill has no cooldown in UVD, making it extremely important and useful.
- Thunderball: A metal damage-over-time attack. Used in a metal combo, but not something that can kill on it's own. This skill and Wield Thunder combine with the Elysium expansion into Thundercrash.
- Wield Thunder: A magic attack that deals high metal damage. One of a cleric's favourite attack skills. This skill and Thunderball combine with the Elysium expansion into Thundercrash.
- Thundercrash (Homestead): A skill that combines Thunderball and Wield Thunder; instant high metal damage with an additional metal damage-over-time.
- Elven Boon (79/100): A fast-casting metal damage skill. This skill heals you and has a chance to seal the target. Very useful in PvP.
- Siren's Kiss: Short distance AoE metal damage. Can also immobilize nearby targets, but not used all the time in PvP due to it costing 1 spark.
- Tempest: A high metal damage yielding AoE skill. This skill can do pretty insane damage sometimes. Used in PvP very little due to it costing 2 sparks.
Debuffs- Elemental Seal: Decreases the target's magic resistance. Useful while using metal skills or dropping the target's mdef for your squad members.
- Dimensional Seal: Decreases the target's physical resistance. Useful while using physical skills or dropping the target's pdef for your squad members.
CC Skills (Keep in mind that clerics are the only class so far without a proper stun.)- Silent Seal: Immobilizes the target for up to 15 seconds at the cost of your 50% of your magic attack.
- Chromatic Seal: Puts the target to sleep for up to 30 seconds at the cost of 40% of your movement speed.
- Seal of the God (79/100): Completely freezes the target for 15 seconds, but reduces the damage the target takes by 90%. Faith and Purify cannot remove SoG, and a mystic can bypass the 90% reduced damage taken with their Absorb Soul and kill the target.
UVD Skills (These can only be used while in Ultraviolet Dance.)- Ultraviolet Dance (Morai): Your attack stance. Being in Ultraviolet Dance allows you to use all of the skills listed below, but disables all healing skills.
- Pious Blessing (Morai): A skill that is very close in nature to an assassin's Deaden Nerves. For the next 12 seconds, if you are hit with a fatal blow, instead of dying you will recover half of your HP. Extremely useful if you're a cleric who enjoys staying in UVD or need to survive until you can get out of UVD and heal yourself or others.
- Mark of Weakness (Morai): Increase the target's chances of taking critical hits. This skill does not increase your own critical hit chance, it only increases the chance of the target taking a critical hit from any attacker. One of the most important skills in a cleric's PvP.
- Aurora Blast (Morai, upgraded with Homestead): A long distance single-target debuff that cancels a certain amount of the target's HP regeneration and healing effects. This skill also heals you. Stacks with itself and with Aurora Burst.
- Aurora Burst (Morai, upgraded with Homestead): A short distance AoE debuff that cancels a certain amount of the target's HP regeneration and healing effects. This skill also heals you. Stacks with itself and with Aurora Blast.
- Magical Shackle (Morai): A debuff that lasts a minute and has a chance to deal damage to the target each time they use a skill (including genie skills.) The damage per tick is dependent on both the target's physical resistance and your magic attack. Dropping the target's pdef (either dimensional seal, mire, or both) and increasing your magic attack (either sparking or using a demon's Spirit's Gift buff) before applying makes it hit significantly harder, and this skill ticks even through immunities, meaning that if the target isn't careful, they can die through AD or sutra/ironguards. This skill also cannot be purified or Faithed off, and is unremovable once applied. This is by far one of the most important skills in a cleric's attack skillset unless fighting a heavy armour class.
Masteries- Flight Mastery: Increases natural fly speed.
- Metal Mastery: Increases damage done by metal skills.
It's important to have your skillbar setup as efficient as possible. I put all of my supporting skills (heals, buffs, other support skills) on my F1-F8 keys and my DD/CC skills as well as pots on my 1-9 skillbars. This is not necessary but it's what I find to be best for how I play and how I like to group my skills together by what they do. Play around with the setup of your skillbars until you're fully comfortable with reaching and using everything.
PvE - What can clerics do in PvE circumstances?
Due to having both physical and magical AoE skills, clerics are one of the easier classes to PvE with.
Clerics are fairly easy to PvE with, though there are some things that could be easier with an aps class, such as duskblades, assassins, barbarians and blademasters. You're pretty much able to kill any and all mobs, regardless if they're immune to physical damage or magic damage. Also, you have at least one spammable physical attack, one spammable magic attack, and AoE skills for both.
If you plan to farm, I would recommend being demon for this, since they yield higher damage and can tear through mobs a lot easier. Sage is good too, but I prefer demon.
Skills that make farming easier: Elemental Seal, Dimensional Seal, Mark of Weakness, Plume Shell, Great Cyclone, Wield Thunder/Thundercrash (demon), Razor Feathers, Siren's Kiss, Tempest. (Sparks, Spirit's Gift (demon), Magic Shell (sage), and Extreme Poison are all very useful as well.)PvP - What is my role in PK?
In group play, you're the support! You're tasked with keeping your team members alive and kiting any damage being dealt to you, as well as helping with CCing others. This includes using Silent Seal, Chromatic Seal, and SoG on either tanks or whoever your squad members instruct.
Self-sustainability is something that every person who participates in PvP should have.
Always stay with your party leader-- if any teammates stray too far away from you and your party leader, leave them. Chasing after them will only give the other team time to pick off your squad mates while they don't have a cleric paying attention and healing them. It's always best to focus heal whoever needs, rather than trying to keep everyone's HP at 100%. Keep your Vanguard Spirit and Magic Shell buffs on all of your teammates at all times to help with their resistances (keep channeling buffs on your magic classes, such as wizards, mystics, psychics, venomancers, stormbringers, and archers, it helps tremendously), as well as your Spirit's Gift to help them kill. Also, don't focus on using your AoE heal until you're confident that nobody needs purifying or extra attention to stay alive; it's slow to cast and isn't worth it in most cases.
Kiting is an extremely important thing to learn, whether it be sleeping that pesky barbarian who keeps knocking you down to running away from assassins who try to sneak up and aps you. Always keep your Plume Shell up every time it comes off of cooldown and remember to keep yourself buffed, especially with channeling and pdef buffs.
In some cases, you might find yourself being an attack cleric in a squad for PK. If you don't support, at least make sure you're keeping your squad members buffed and purified, and make sure to AA. Kiting will be extra important here since you wouldn't have all the defensive freedom as a full support cleric, so
pay attention.
Skills that are most used in supporting: Ironheart Blessing, Soothing Pulse, Stream of Rejuvenation, Vanguard Spirit (sage), Magic Shell (sage), Pantheon's Blessing, Purify, Revive, Plume Shell, Blessing of Immortality, Silent Seal, Chromatic Seal, Seal of the God.When it comes to 1v1, it's all about how well you can balance keeping yourself alive and dealing damage to your target. It's also dependent on if you know how to fluidly perform your combos, and if you can pay attention to what type of gears you're up against.
Fighting arcane classes can be easier for a cleric, since Magical Shackle will be your best friend. Stormbringers, wizards, venomancers and psychics will usually crumple beneath Shackle ticks due to their high channeling and the amount of skills they can crank out in a short amount of time, therefore increasing the chance rate of Shackle procs. The best way to fight these classes is by dropping their pdef and increasing your magic attack before applying Magical Shackle, then using physical skills such as Plume Shot and Razor Feathers to finish them off cleanly.
Classes with extremely low pdef such as stormbringers and psychics will usually kill themselves with your Magical Shackle and as long as you're paying attention to your debuffs and purify properly, it should be a little bit harder for a wizard and venomancer to kill you since they depend on a high amount of debuffs to kill you.
Fighting light armour classes can be quite easy to do as well by using the same methods since they usually have low defenses, but switching up your usage of physical and metal skills depending on the ornaments your opponent is wearing is important. If they're wearing mdef ornaments, simply use your physical damage skills, and vice versa. If you're up against an aps class, it usually plays into your cards, especially when you're wearing a purify weapon. These targets will usually die off of Shackle ticks as well. Just
make sure you remember to use your Plume Shell every chance you get, and utilize your entire skillset.
Fighting heavy armour classes can be a pain, but it can be done flawlessly as long as you have the right setup and know what you're doing. These classes include the tanks: seekers, barbarians, and blademasters. Seekers can be a pain to fight since they can Quid your Magical Shackle back onto you-- but then again, it's somewhat useless to use Shackle against any tank due to their high pdef. For these classes you want to depend on keeping them at a distance, keeping your plume shell on, and using metal attacks (if you're demon, always use your metal resistance debuff as well) to kill them off quickly.
Learn to survive in UVD! There will be times where you can't always switch out of UVD and you need to survive for a moment so you don't die trying to get out and spam heal yourself. Pious Blessing can keep you alive even after you've taken a fatal hit and your Aurora skills, along with Elven Boon, heal you up a bit.
Hopefully this guide helps those who are looking to learn how to play cleric, wanted a bit more information,
or simply wanting to learn how to play against priests in PvP!
I'll more than likely end up adding more to this guide since there are always things that I forget to mention.
If there is anything that my fellow clerics would like to add in this thread, feel free to do so!
Disclaimer: This guide is based off of information I've personally learned, experienced and researched in my years of playing this class.
This guide mostly relates to Epic PW but most information I've shared here can be used in cleric gameplay on any and all servers.
