Cleric Training: A guide for clerics from a clerics perspective.

I'll add a pvp component to this guide eventually.

HOW TO PK SOLO as a CLERIC - the way I do it

Information is power.

Alrighty, I'm not going to promise to hammer out all my thoughts all at once, or in a particularly organized manner; I can revise later via editing. This can be an on-going project, and if it becomes good enough, perhaps it can deserve a separate thread or sticky of its own. I believe in details, so if you can't summon enough patience to read through what I write, you don't deserve to learn anyways. I'll try to format stuff so its as easy to follow as possible.

Now, I can teach you all that I know, but I'm not going to teach all of you clerics out there how to pvp like a pro, because to honestly pk like a pro, you do need to sink some coin into your character; some serious coin. Naturally there are tactics and strategies you can employ that aren't gear-dependent, but like ANY class, to survive in pk you need a certain minimum level of gear. For example, I already employed many of the same tactics back when my gear was still under-developed that I do today (and would pull off nice surprise victories against high level assassins because of this), but when my gear got a bit better, the same tactics started achieving much more successful outcomes.

As well, as a general practice, to excel in pk you can't be worried about money all the time. In order to clear your mind for the fight ahead, you can't be worrying constantly about how much each hp pot, mana pot, defense charm, apothecary item, hp charm tick, mana charm tick, and guardian scroll are costing you. Doing so throughout the fight will slow your reaction times and prevent you from fighting as you should be able to. This can be a tough adjustment to make, and in order to make it possible, you need to have a decent amount of coin handy. PK the way its meant to be done is not cheap! And yet, if you use all of the resources available to you instantly as required, without worrying about cost, you will become a much tougher and deadlier pker for it.

As a side note, I have a lvl 101 demon cleric, and a lvl 102 sage cleric. Thus when I mention any differences between the two in terms of skills usage, I know what I'm talking about!

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Minimum gear requirements:

-defined as the gear necessary to handle (aka, not be easily one shot or killed before you can even react) some serious pk against a range of opponents, including +10 to +12 r9 assassins, and all other r9 characters

-+10 armor and +10 or better weapon (full gear set of either rank 9 or g16), socketed as best as you can (my cleric just has r9 with immaculate hp/garnet gems atm, because I'm still aiming for better gear; if you plan on making your gearset more permanent, consider citrine or garnet gems (cheaper option) or jades of steady defense (much more expensive, but much more effective)

-physical necklace from cube; g14 minimum +10 (which I use)

-physical defense RING(s): yes, ring. Exchange 1 or both of those magic rings for +10 or better Sign of Frost: Chaos (lvl 95 ring) or Sky Cover (lvl 100 ring); preferably Sky Cover for the 2 attack lvls and slightly better refine rates. Yes, you lose a bit of magic damage. However, in exchange you get vastly more physical defense. Consider: without ornaments, your physical defense from armor and stat point alone will likely total no more than 2000, which is just not going to cut it. The addition of a +10 sign of frost: chaos to my cleric increase physical defense from 7315 buffed, to 8.8k, a % damage reduction of 4% (64% to 68%). Thats a big gain for a mere +10 lvl 95 ring; much better results achieved with +12 Sky Cover. Considering that most of the time, physical damage will be what kills you, this is a necessary sacrifice to your magic dmg if you ever want to survive long enough to kill anything. Giving up the r9 ring is probably not recommended unless you replace it with a +10 or better Sky Cover, because you do lose a lot of damage by not having r9 ring equipped. However, the sky cover will grant better survivability to physical dmg than r9 ring, which is useful when defending against a stealthed sin, or when in TW and your main role is healing only.

*Note: clerics as healers can afford to give up a considerable amount of damage in TW, if it comes with a significant survivability gain, which is something most other classes, barbs excepted, cannot do.*

-r8 reforge weapon with a stat called Purify Spell, or if you are really really wealthy, r9 3rd cast weapon (I use a r8 reforge with purify).

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Purify Weapon

***** I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH how game-changing having purify spell is... ONCE your gear hits the right point, you became much more difficult for dps-users to kill. *****

What does purify spell do? Each attack you receive has a 5% chance to purify all* debuffs from you, and give you 5 seconds of 200% speed and immune to stun/immobilize/sleep/slow. What does this mean? When your gear is good enough to survive a number of hits, you can start relying on your weapon to get you out of sticky situations, provided you employ the right tactics. More on how to use a purify weapon will come later.

*Not all debuffs are purifiable. And I'm not talking about being unable to purify because you are stunned or sealed, I'm talking about buffs that can't be purified by any means, period. When you encounter these debuffs, you want to ensure you don't waste time and chi trying to purify them; instead, depending on the debuff, you will react in other ways.

Debuffs which cannot be purified:

Archer:
-Arrow Inferno (the debuff increases charm cooldown by 3s and decreases hp recovery from hp pots by 20%)

Cleric:
-Seal of the Gods (15 second debuff which both seals and immobilizes, while also giving target 90% dmg reduction... more on this skill later)
-Magical Shackles (a MORAI skill; each time target uses a skill, has 30% chance to take physical damage equal to the base magic dmg of the cleric who used the skill... more on this skill later)
-Aurora Array and Absorbing Array (MORAI skills; Aurora Array is aoe, whereas Absorbing Array is single target with lower cooldown; both skills produce a debuff which absorbs healing from charm or hp pots or apoths; this debuff cannot be 'purified' in the usual sense, but the debuff can be removed if enough hp is recovered via charm and hp pots used by target... more on this later)

Barbarian:
-Berserker's Rage/Wrath (can produce a debuff which will prevent target(s) from being able to fly for 30 seconds)
-Raging Slap (produces a 6 second debuff that prevents you from targeting anybody else except the barb who used the skill on you)

Venomancer:
-Bewitch (essentially a debuff that acts like a seal but isn't a seal, because using anti-seal genie skills does not prevent this skill from working; prevents you from doing anything with skills for 6 seconds)
-Soul Link/Soul Shatter (its kinda a debuff; a little mob is linked to you, and any damage that the mob takes is transferred directly and instantly to you)

Assassin:
-Death Link/Death Chain (some of the damage the assassin takes gets transferred to you, except for damage you do to the assassin, which won't get bounced back to you)

Psychic:
-Diminished Vigor: (similar to Arrow Inferno, increases charm cooldown and effectiveness of hp pots and heals)
-Soulburn (every time you use a skill, for 8s, you take damage equal to the psychic's soulforce... very nasty skill)

Mystic:
-Transfusion/Sublime Transfusion (a portion of the healing you receive [can be your own heals] gets redirected to the mystic who cast the skill on you)

Tips on getting r8 reforge weapon:

-set up a buy catshop near the faction base in Archosaur
-let the main factions on your server that participate in trials know that you are buying at competitive prices
-participating in faction trials of your own---this will give you the opportunity to collect mats like damascene ores (necessary to reforge your r8 wep as you try and get purify) that disappear if you leave faction base.

*****ONCE AGAIN, having a r8 reforge weapon is CRUCIAL to surviving against assassins. If you do not consider obtaining a purify weapon, then you will be unable to utilize this guide to its full extent. My cleric is able to survive situations clerics with full jades cannot survive, due primarily to the purify stat on weapon.*****

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Suggested gear:

-defined as gear that could be replaced with other options without game-changing impacts, but which has features that make it more desirable than the rest of the available gears

-on my cleric, I sacrifice 50 magic points in order to equip a light armor g16 helm, thus granting me ~1000 more hp than an equally-geared but arcane-helmed cleric. I decided this was an excellent defensive trade-off, because when we divide 1000 hp/50 stat points, it comes out to 20 hp/stat point. This is a better trade-off than barbs get when they allocate vitality points, and is twice as good as if those 50 points sacrificed were placed directly into vitality, which would yield only 500 hp on a cleric. Again, a cleric can afford to sacrifice some damage in order to get better defensive results.

-Matchless Wings (robe): has all the things clerics need in abundance: +speed, +physical defense, +hp, +def level, physical dmg reduction. I compared Matchless Wings to the g16 light armor robe (having 2 pieces would give 700 bonus hp) and concluded that I prefered the physical defense over the extra hp. Unfortunately, the dexterity points on the robe would not be very useful to a cleric, leaving 2 of the 4 stats not very good. In a comparison of stats with similar survivability in each case, I prefer the stats with lower hp and higher defense, since it makes it easier to keep yourself healed.

-the obvious: if you can afford r9 2nd or 3rd cast, you will see leaps and bounds in all of your stats defensive and offensive. Highly recommended if you can afford it.

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Other Requirements:

1. HP Charm: please never enter pk without a hp charm equipped... at least not as a cleric. About the only classes that might conceivably get away with no charm would be full jades +12 r9 barb, or lvl 105 assassins who never leave stealth! Needless to say, a cleric neither has 40k hp nor stealth. Put the charm on.

2. MP Charm: if you truly want to excel, a mana charm is a MUST! Unlike other arcanes, simply hitting mana pots every now and then is not sufficient, because via the effects of Plume Shell, mana becomes a cleric's second pool of life. Without a mana charm, a dps user will drain your mana dry within mere seconds or less, leaving you unable to do anything useful with your skills.

3. Defense charms: Get both the physical and magic defense charms (called Mystic Armor Charm and Charm of Defense, respectively). If you've never used these before, here's how they work. You manufacture them (lvl 8 apothecary required) by trading Perfect Stones at a high lvl apothecary master (I use the one in Snowy Village) under the Charms tab. For example, if you click a Charm of Defense, the next magic attack to hit you will only do 50% of the damage it would have otherwise done. Needless to say, very useful. The magic and physical defense charms share a cooldown of 10 seconds, so make sure you click the right one according to whatever class you are fighting against. To excel, you should: (a) have a physical and magic defense charm clicked (takes 20 seconds to have both of them clicked and cooled down again), and (b) click defense charms throughout a fight whenever the person you are fighting potentially hits you for over half your hp (which can happen when you fight r9 +12 anything).

4. Apothecary items: Keep your inventory well stocked with the ones you'll use most often.

-Ironguard Powder -> lvl 90 apoth often used with genie skill Fortify to get 12 seconds of stun-free immune to damage. Obviously excellent as a defensive move, or when launching a surprise offensive when the enemy thinks you are vulnerable.
-Pan Gu's Essence -> available only if you are in a faction with a lvl 6 apothecary wing: 8 seconds of immune-to-damage with no side effects like ironguard powder has
-Shadow Binder Powder -> lvl 90 apoth which is one of the best offensive AND defensive apoths available to any class, not to mention cleric. This apoth gives 15 seconds of 100% speed AND stun resist. Since being slow is one of a cleric's biggest drawbacks, this apoth is amazing, and much better than vacuity powder, which only gives 20 seconds of stun resist. Used properly this apoth not only prevents the stun, it turns a fight into your favor for 15 seconds, allowing you to keep up from a running enemy, or escape from a pursuer.
-Dew of Star Protection -> sometimes used when you want to fool the enemy into thinking you are going to be easy to kill; the problem with ironguard powder is that people run from you when you use it. However since dew of star, used on a cleric (you'll have your own physical and magic defense buffs in place), is much less noticeable (you have to spot the 'increased physical defense' buff) you can avoid this problem. As well, when combined with a purify weapon, the enemy will hit you a number of times before realizing you have an apoth in (if a dps-user), which increases the likelihood of getting a purify, and thus allowing you to quickly kite and then fire a few attacks off.
-Zooming Thunder Powder -> great for a surprise attack which you think will have a high likelihood of quickly killing enemy; gives 6s of zero channeling on skills like Tempest, Razor Feathers, and Wield Thunder (long channeling skills that are often avoided in a pk fight by enemy because of how long they take to channel)
-White Tea -> regain 2 sparks; essential in TW (use one each time you rez back at base) and in pk can be used to triple spark a 2 spark skill like Tempest.

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Necessary Skills and their Uses:

-defined as skills that you will use all the time if you are in pk, which you must have in order to excel

Short answer: nearly all skills are necessary in various situations. However, some skills certainly see a lot more use than others. Exactly which skills you tend to use the most will also depend to some extent on whether you are demon or sage, of course.

It is not my job to tell you what the skills do, just how to use them. In some cases I'll point out the differences between sage and demon, and how that affects gameplay, though.

Defensive Skills:

Vanguard Spirit:

One of the biggest advantages a sage cleric has in terms of surviving assassins and other dps-users is the fact that sage vanguard spirit increases physical defense by 100% for 10 seconds.

Now I know what you demon clerics are saying: 'we can get that too, we just use stream of rejuvenation'. True enough; however in practice, stream of rejuvenation takes far too long to channel and cast (assuming you have g16 or r9 armor in) if your sole aim is to get the physical defense buff.

If you are fighting a stealthed assassin, you want to use this skill and ironheart blessing, along with plume shell, while waiting for the assassin to make his move. More on the exact tactics will follow later in this guide.

Plume Shell:

Used very frequently in any fight against a physical damager, and especially dps-users. In fact, it should be put in nearly on cooldown if you are under attack and cannot sleep the enemy or otherwise avoid getting hit. When your gear is good enough, plume shell used properly can greatly increase your chances of getting a purify before you die when being attacked by a dps sin or bm.

Plume shell is a very very powerful skill, but how good it works for you all depends on how long you can keep your mana full. When your mana runs out, so does the shell. Thus, whenever you have plume shell in, you should make a habit of hitting 5,000 mana pots made from tokens. This, combined with a mana charm, will essentially give you far more than your roughly 9,000 to 10,000 mana as extra life.

An example: a 5,000 mana pot recovers 2,500 mana within 5 seconds, 5 seconds being the cooldown of mana charm. Assuming you have 10,000 mana, your mana charm will tick at 75% (2,500 mana), giving you a actual pool of 12,500 mana. Now, if you click a mana pot right before an assassin stuns you, that pool is increased to 15,000 (when the mana charm will tick again). Since your mana pool is taking (sage, 85%) of the damage, and its 1 mana point per hp of damage, 85/15000 = 100/x ; x = 17,600 damage. This is the amount of damage a bm or assassin has to do in 5 seconds to completely wipe out your mana pool before the shell runs out. Now, if you have decent physical defense, first of all, the odds of the sin breaking your mana pool are fairly low. Secondly, the sin is apsing on you this entire time, so that the likelihood that you get a purify from your weapon is very good. I'll get into more later on what to do when your purify weapon procs.

Sage absorbs 85% dmg (as opposed to 80% for demon) whereas demon costs 15 chi (as opposed to 30 for sage). I give demon the slight edge here. When your gear is good enough, 80% or 85% doesn't really matter; how long you can hold onto your mana pool is what decides if the plume shell works for you or not. Thus in a drawn out battle, the 15 chi saved over repeated uses is probably going to be more useful.

Ironheart Blessing:

I hardly need to mention this, but this is the skill you will use more than anything else, enough to term it a spam skill.

Example: While waiting for a stealthed assassin to make his move, this skill can be spammed between plume shell and vanguard spirit cooldowns.

Sage recovers additional 10% hp, while demon recovers a negligible amount of mana to the target of the heal. Your barb tank in pve may love you for demon ironheart, but for pk, sage ironheart has the clear advantage.

Purify:

While vanguard spirit, plume shell, and ironheart blessing can all be used while waiting for the enemy to attack, purify gets much more use once the enemy has actually attacked. The following is a list of debuffs you should, in most cases, immediately purify (and will be able to purify). Naturally, you cannot use the purify skill when stunned, slept, or sealed.

Movement Debuffs:

immobilize: for example, if an assassin uses Tackling Slash, you will be stuck in place for 9 seconds (and vulnerable to a stun lock if he uses his seal skill called Throatcut right afterwards). Purify immediately upon receiving the immobilize, and his seal will still land on you, but you'll be able to run away; once the 4 second seal falls off you are back in business again.

***WARNING***: Better assassins may start with the seal from Throatcut, and then Tackling Slash you as you run away. This gives them about 2 seconds of stun lock, and then you are still immobilized. If this happens, you either (a) use plume shell if it is not in already, or you (b) purify if plume shell is still in. We can assume that a sin this good will not be attacking you without tidal protection and deaden nerves in, so it is highly risky to stay in melee range with the assassin without purifying the immobilize and running away.

Slow: may or may not need to be purified immediately, depending on the situation. Knowing when to purify or not purify a sleep takes experience, but here are some examples of both situations.

Purify slow debuff immediately if: you have just used Chromatic Seal (if sage) and you are running to put distance between you and your target (because you don't want to waste 10 seconds running at uber slow speed); if you have multiple slows stacking on you and you can barely move (eg, mystics Nature's Vengeance stacking with any other slow skill). Also, any situation where an arcane is hitting you from near their max range, and you want to kite without relying on holy path from genie to overcome the slow, a purify would be acceptable (though heals might work just fine too in most cases).

Probably can wait: if a barb or bm uses a

Azzazin - Dreamweaver wrote: »

HOW TO PK SOLO as a CLERIC - the way I do it

This is really great work Azz. Thanks for taking the time to add it in. We were sorely lacking in-depth info for PvP.




Bump (yea I know it's a sticky, whatever) to update the guide when possible!

Booooo... I added a bunch of content to the guide and it appears the forums was cutting it off; so when I saved I lost a bunch of it that I had written at the bottom. I have moved the guide into a thread of its own; my updates will keep it bumped and perhaps when its completed per my satisfaction, I'll get it stickied. Anyways, see

http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1517521

for all further updates to my pk guide.

Azzazin

iam cleric lvl 62....my mag is 205 with extra mag on my armor...vit 72...str 54 dex 10....my weapon still using the 48 weapon lvl cos i cant afford to buy or craft my own...anyone can help me or give advise for me thanksb:cryb:cry

hey guys this is a little info for all of us mages ,new and old. invest in the apoth craft because of a powder ,and other things, that lets you go faster than normal, for a limited amount of time of course. that way if you use your holy path at a bad moment or your genies energy is still low or your genie doesn't have the skill, you can use that apoth item and get a fair distance away, or closer, of your target. the first speed item should be easy for you to make. If someone else said this or the guide mentioned this, i probably didn't noticed it or i was lazy to ready everything. bye. b:bye b:avoid

i'm cleirc lvl 87 i got 105 str and 64 vit and the rest on magic is that build ok or no?

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

No unless you plan to be HA (Heavy armor), if you use Arcane armor (AA) buy a reset note and reset the str and put it in magic (or vit if you feel like it, but not in dex), you don't need more then 54~55 str to wear the end game gears.

ok thanks i think i will buy reset note then

deadcalm22 wrote: »

i'm cleirc lvl 87 i got 105 str and 64 vit and the rest on magic is that build ok or no?

As stated above, 55 strength is the most a cleric needs for G16 AA gear.

I wouldn't really bother reseting until you are near 100 and can plan your endgame gear out based on your own personal resources (r9? r9t3? G16? Morai? TT99/G15?...) and stat your strength around that. End game cleric's can get by with about 35 base strength and 20 more strength from gear adds.

The other reason you may want to wait for endgame is so you have a feeling on whether you want to keep vit or not. My opinion, and that of many other clerics, is that vit is not needed. Many more suggest a few points in vit while leveling but when you get to 100 and decent refines you can stat it out. And the some just like having vit, even if they already have 15k hp from gear refines and vit only adds a couple hundred more. Its a personal choice based on what you plan to do with your cleric. You can find plenty of forum discussions debating it. My point is if you wait till 100 and put basic refines on your gear (+5) you may decide 64 vit is 61 too high, or decide you'd rather kill faster or heal better and restat out a little.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I personally would start with the proven standard, then branch out into obscurity and preference. Telling a new cleric that LA is viable is only true if they have excessive refines on their weapon and don't add to vit, and even then they'll still have weaker heals than most clerics.

I prefer cleric's learn to heal and survive without a gear crutch, then branch to vitality or LA or HA as a personal preference of what works for them. That way they know what full heals look and feel like, and they know how to use their shields to survive or how to avoid heal aggro, all before they start throwing gear at the problem rather than learning the class.

So for an endgame concept its fine, but how does a cleric know what will work for them or what they prefer until they've tried the other options? Specifically the main option that most their entire server will prefer.

I recently made a new cleric on HT, and I made it pure, and I honestly cannot play it. I hate pure clerics. It does not suit my playstyle at all. I've adapted, I have not died. But I cannot stand it, it's terrible for my playstyle and has forced me to play differently. It has taken all of the joy of clericing out of the game for me, despite the fact that I hadn't played one in a very long time and started as a pure from scratch on this cleric. I kinda want to delete the cleric I hate it so much. It looks like my cleric, has the same preset. I can play like a pure no problem. But I hate it with a passion, and kinda just want to be rid of the whole thing. I don't think it's fair to say no guides should include how to do an explanation of how to do experimental builds correctly from level 1. If someone knows what they want to do, instead of just what other people like, I think it would be helpful to give them tips on how to do it. Just because you don't like it, or you prefer to squad with pures, that doesn't mean a guide should force clerics to cater to other people's likes first and foremost. It should include strengths and tips for all the different types of clerics. And many people do know what they prefer, because they have an idea of what they what they want to do before they do it. And look for guides to help them go about it.