Cayeon's Guide on Full Attack Clerics

Riyuko, the build you're describing is, unfortunately, not possible to do before level 80-90. To be good at something, you always have to sacrifice something else - until you have enough SP to master all skills. Even as Full Attack, your SP are so short that you have to go without your most needed debuffs until much later (level 55+), to be able to skill your nukes and buffs in the first place. Imagine how long it will take you when you throw in the heals, as well. This is the reason that the clerics' PvP potential only starts to show very late in game, and therefore you have to be very selective when it comes to choosing your direction. An all-round support cleric will be rather bad at PvP until level 75 at least - and that's the time when most people have already quit the game.

As far as your post goes, you seem to be most focused on PvP, which excludes the possibility of making a support cleric. However, what I could recommend to you, is that you can more or less follow the guide, with the exception that you skill Ironheart Blessing right from the beginning; and that's as far as your healing powers will go. Ironheart Blessing is by far the most useful heal for all clerics, and it enables you to take a semi-supporter role in most dungeons. It is also quite useful in PvP once you have your sleeping debuff, so you can regenerate yourself while the enemy is immobilized.

The rest of the heals is not really necessary, and would be a waste if you still want to keep your attacking potential at the maximum. Later, at 70+ or so, you can skill Regeneration Aura to satisfy all requirements of a healer in a party. But as I stated earlier, you will sacrifice some of your PvP potential that way, and have to postpone it until much later. The skills for your build that I can think of, that you don't necessarily need neither for PvE nor PvP, are:

All party buffs, Celestial Guardian's Seal, Thunderball, Razor Feathers, Siren's Kiss, Tempest, Revive (level 1, not higher), Purify (level 1, not higher), Silence Seal, Blessing of the Purehearted, Wellspring Surge, Soon the Light, Stream of Rejuvenation, Regeneration Aura and Heaven's Wrath.

If you have all other skills, it should be okay for both a decent healer and PvPer. Remember though, this is not a Full Attack build, and you might get drawn into the supporter role too much by hearing things like this all the time: ''Clerics are supposed to heal, why are you concentrating so much on damage if you're not even Full Attack?'' Another thing is that you shouldn't try to skill a little of everything, because then you'll just be bad at everything. Pick only a very small number of skills that you really need, and keep them at the maximum all time. I know it can be difficult, but especially the debuffs are worthless until they reach level 7-10.

And that brings me to my next point. Caiyue, for PvE, a solo heal will be much more effective than a debuff. The reason is simply that debuffs don't make a big difference in PvE, especially not in the low levels. Plus, you can can only really use these debuffs on mobs that you attack magically, but not get hit magically, or that you attack physically, but not get hit physically: the debuffs reduce your own defense by the same percentage as the mob's. So yes, debuffs are pretty much just for PvP. There is only one heal that qualifies as a worthy solo heal though, and that's of course Ironheart Blessing. Don't keep it at a too high level though, and don't waste your SP on any other heal than this.

About the difference between a cleric and a wizard. They indeed play very similarly in the beginning, but their differences will get bigger over the levels, especially in PvP. Wizards do always have the same strategy through all levels, which is pretty much ''nuking until dead'', while clerics develop a more strategic way and control the fight with their debuffs and heals.

Raemi, a Full Attack Cleric is, after the Venomancer, by far the best soloing class. In the later levels, archers come close (if they wear a hiero), and sometimes it can be difficult to survive when aggros gang up on you as a cleric, but overall, I always found my soloing ability very fast and effective.

Cayeon. When you solo. Do you AoE or pick monsters 1 vs 1?

1 vs 1. That's the typical solo grinding style. Of course, you can also solo AoE, but for that, you have to max Purify, Razor Feathers, and Siren's Kiss. You lure some poison mobs and kill them with these skills, while simultaneously regenerating yourself with Ironheart Blessing and purifying whenever needed. Depending on your situation, one or the other method might be faster.

Tempest is really only for PvP. It requires 2 spark, so you can't really use it for solo AoE. For 1 vs 1 grinding, these 2 spark will be much better used for Advanced Spark Eruption, which then does more damage combined with Wield Thunder / Cyclone as Tempest alone would do.

So how did you solve the mp issues?

Actually, apart from Wield Thunder, or frequent Ironheart Blessing spamming, I found the MP consumption quite acceptable. If you like to save MP, try to attack with Cyclone and Plume Shot only, as those have the lowest consumption. Cast Ironheart Blessing only when necessary, or kite instead. Plume Shell is of course a big no-no for PvE, as well.

Another thing you might to, is to buy +MP regeneration stuff. Grinding usually doesn't require a set with all the nice bonuses like +INT or +HP, so if heavily stacked, +MP regeneration can save you some time from meditating.

As Caiyue correctly pointed out, crafting potions also helps a lot. To farm the herbs efficiently, try to remember their spots exactly. When you pick them, look at your clock to calculate exactly when they will respawn - it's every 10 minutes. Then, go to the next herb and try to construct an exact route that you follow during these 10 minutes, so you will arrive at the start again to pick up your herbs just after they respawned. I'll give you an example of my mining route at Plain of Leaving (Plain of Farewells in this version), done on my jaguar pet ride to harvest about 28-30 mines in 10 minutes:

Click here

It's only roughly from what I remember, so the actual route might be a bit different, but I think you can see the pattern. The starting point isn't important, you just have to complete the route within exactly 10 minutes, so you arrive at the first herb/mine just after it respawns. That way, you also prevent other people from stealing your mines. It may sound a bit complicated, but after you make a few runs, you'll get used to it.

If you're interested, here's a site with all the coordinates of the materials you can find:

http://pw-wiki.onlinewelten.com/Default.aspx?Page=enCrafting

You can create these mining routes wherever you like Some areas are more dense in herbs than others.

Thank you Elrond for your compliments, I'm glad to hear you're enjoying your class.

You're right, considering Wield Thunder's high MP cost, it starts off rather weak compared to Great Cyclone. However, we can't expect it to be amazing at level 3 already - almost no skill is. Since you've probably maxed out Great Cyclone and Plume Shot by now, the damage of Wield Thunder compared to them will increase much more as you level it. If I remember well, it will do at least 1.5 times the damage of Great Cyclone in the end.

This is Wield Thunder at level 3:

Cast a chain of lightning at the enemy, inflicting Metal damage equal to base magic damage plus 130% of weapon damage plus 2449.7.

... and at level 10:

Cast a chain of lightning at the enemy, inflicting Metal damage equal to base magic damage plus 200% of weapon damage plus 4583.3.

About the debuffs, I'd strongly recommend that you level them one at a time. Debuffs have no or close to no effect until their reach level 7+, so they're not really worth using before then. For PvE, the first one to level is without a doubt Elemental Seal, followed by Dimensional Seal.

For PvP (including TW), Chromatic Seal would be my first choice, followed by Elemental Seal. Silence Seal only paralyzes the enemy (unable to move, but able to attack), while Chromatic Seal sleeps them (unable to move or attack, but wakes up if attacked). Blademasters and barbarians will surely have a hard time with Silence Seal, but it's kinda useless against wizards, clerics, archers, and venomancers. During Chromatic Seal's uptime, you can heal yourself, use spark and debuff with Elemental/Dimensional Seal, without having to worry about the enemy attacking or running away.

Thank you Elrond for taking your time to do these experiments. I really wasn't sure if the stronger debuff would override the weaker one or not, so thank you very much for clarifying this. I have no idea as to why your buff increased your defense by only 56.4%, though. If I had the time, I'd definitely look into this a little further.

Cayeon, you mention somethings about area effect soloing. Can you elaborate on this?

Sure. I assume you mean solo AoE? At least that's what we called it over at MY-EN. Basically, it's just what the word says: as opposed to group AoE, you do it alone. In this case, no ''zhening'' is involved, and neither is Regeneration Aura. You just lure the mobs by yourself, stack some Ironheart Blessing, and attack them all at once with either Razor Feathers or Siren's Kiss. Because of the cleric's rather low defense, this is usually done on poison/burning DoT mobs only.

Unfortunately, it is pretty much required to have the skills Purify, Razor Feathers, and Siren's Kiss at a high level to be able to solo AoE efficiently, which is mostly not possible before level 70. If a slow kill speed doesn't bother you though, you could try it earlier, probably starting with the poison mobs level 61 called Petalii Hexkiss (In MY-EN, they were called OrchisSclew Hexeido) around Dreaming Cloud. I'm not sure how effective it is in the lower levels compared to traditional 1vs1 solo grinding, but I guess it's worth a try. Some people liked it, some didn't.