[GUIDE] How to Cleric Effectively In Parties

[Rhe7oric]

There's really not much to playing a Cleric in parties, but keep in mind that I am speaking from a standpoint where all my skills are above Level 80. It will be more difficult if you are below this level.

The first thing I do is make sure EVERYONE, including the bards and myself have Body and Soul Blessing/Deity buffs. That's the Physical and Magical defense buff that lasts 30 minutes and doesn't go away if you switch weapons (except for ones you self cast on yourself.)

The next thing I do is give out the STR and INT buffs. This can be tricky, because there is a limited amount of connections that you can have with these buffs. Now, a normal 8 man party in Odin has 2 tanks, 2 bards, 1 cleric (myself), and 3 wizards; and you have 4 STR buffs and 4 INT buffs. First is give the two tanks STR buffs only. Now you are down to 2 STR and 4 INT left at this point. I give all 3 wizards INT, 2 of them have STR as well, with the higher level wizard just having INT only. If you have followed this down exactly, you should have 1 INT buff left and 0 STR left. That last INT buff is for STR chars who have a Bard subclass and therefore a low mana pool.

After that is healing (this is assuming you are 80+ full farmed and have healing orbit). Simple, easy and straight forward. If you are high enough and have the skill, keep Healing Orbit going at ALL times, along with Recovery Division and Holy Spell. Bless spell when necessary and keep an eye on the tanks HP bars; since you have Healing Orbit up all the time, the Wizards should be fine, not much effort is required to heal them; anyways, the tanks should be your main focus, if they die, you will eventually have a couple of dead and angry wizards.

Watch the tanks Holy Spell too, especially if the mobs give bad statuses ( for example, Tomb Snake Lords Lv 99 give off Zombie Status, which kills tanks so often if they don't have Holy Spell on), since they are normally physically away from the party luring mobs, they don't always get Holy Spell recast on them, so you may have to do it more often than not.

You will need a good Light Armor set and the Glory/Favor Armor passives skilled to the highest you can get them without compromising your gap if you require one. I recommend a +4/+5 light armor set with Durability maxed out, STR 6 and INT 6 if at all possible, and HP and MP maxed for your chest, legs and head. My gear isn't 100% full blued, but the stats are high enough that I do very well. A good shield is also a requirement as well, it can save your life often, especially if you have a good BR on it (that goes without saying, really) - I recommend at least a +3/+5 with a high STR and INT rating, along with Durability and good Phys/Mag Defense and Reinforce. The more blues you have on your gear, the more powerful your buffs and heals are on others, which results in less dying for everyone. Less dying = a happy party.

Also, this is a rookie mistake, DO NOT try to heal a party with a low level Cleric rod. This applies to Bards too, healing mana with a Level 32 harp in parties at Mobs 99 just does not cut it. Nothing pisses me off more than a Bard or a Cleric who tries to heal MP or HP respectively with a low level harp/cleric rod; and is a real quick way to being banned from the party. Just like a Wizard wouldn't try to kill mobs Lv 99 with a Lv 32 staff, don't try to heal with a low level cleric rod. It simply does not work and you heal a lot less HP than you would with a higher level cleric rod, preferably one closest to your level. It doesn't even need to be anything spectacular, I do just fine with my current Lv 90+3 cleric rod with only Durability maxed on it.

That pretty much concludes the guide so far. I'll try to edit and revise it as I get more suggestions.

[Cepiii]

Nice guide, helped me a lot

[pr0klobster]

Nice guide. I'd like to add a few things that I do to make healing easier:

-Rearrange the party so that the people you need to keep an eye on are in positions 2 and 3 (tanks).
-Healing Orbit, as you said, is on at all times, but using Ctrl-2, ctrl-3, etc and your skillbars set appropriately makes it easier and quicker to heal when a split second means death. I really hate trying to click on a character's name and missing, causing me to go walking away...using the keyboard makes this a lot less likely. Granted, you shouldn't need to target people - you should be using your group heals where possible.
-Remember STR chars with cleric sub heal less, but a good party can watch bless and keep it up ALL the time using their cleric sub, thus making your grinding go even more quickly.
-Since you've got Integrity, use that instead of Innocent, but realize you still may need to throw Innocent on a tank lurer who is out of your range.
-Lastly, you still should keep an eye out on mobs that may aggro as you heal someone, there may be rare times that the wiz/bards/tanks don't catch one heading right for you

One more thing, set a timer for 28 minutes so you can re-do buffs, in the heat of battle/healing, you may miss it when someone's phys/mag/INT/STR buffs drop. Or just keep an eye on them.

(offtopic, a "normal" party on Olympus like you just described is really rare IMHO, I'd love a nice party like that, but usually there are not enough bards - or tanks for that matter)

[Nick Invaders]

I have a question. Does healing reduce your durability? When I was still playing on my cleric I never ran out of durability while clericing. I would usually run out of mp pots first. And I carry alot of mp pots.

[pr0klobster]

I have a question. Does healing reduce your durability? When I was still playing on my cleric I never ran out of durability while clericing. I would usually run out of mp pots first. And I carry alot of mp pots.

Pretty sure it's only when you are attacked that your durability goes down. I can cleric for hours without losing dura.

[Nick Invaders]

Alright thanks.

Edit: Great guide.

[-.-]

cleric rod dur goes down on healing but its slower

i'd put last int buff on bard doing mana cycle instead of a tanker...
and using 1 warrior and 1 rogue would be better :S warrior should hold aggro on everything without problems while xbow can lure without moving away from cleric/bard buffs as well as hold aggro using poison

[Nick Invaders]

cleric rod dur goes down on healing but its slower

i'd put last int buff on bard doing mana cycle instead of a tanker...
and using 1 warrior and 1 rogue would be better :S warrior should hold aggro on everything without problems while xbow can lure without moving away from cleric/bard buffs as well as hold aggro using poison

The aggro on rogue becomes extemely useful when the aggro fence (forgot the name) is over 50%. Any mob the rogue attacks is going to the warrior.

Tip on using bless spell:
Use it whenever you see a Giant(Party) appear or when the tanks' hp start getting low. (When I used to be a cleric I rarely needed to cast bless for the second reason. Of course this was only for the lv 20s to low 50's I can't say how it goes for higher levels.) It is optional for Giants but they die pretty fast if you are in a good party. And if your bless is still on recharge and the tanks are getting low on hp this would be a great time to use Group Recovery. I can't guarantee they will work at higher levels but I have saved my party a few times casting bless spell at these times.

I feel like saying this only because when I went to warrior/cleric it was so annoying to see clerics cast bless spell when it was completely unnecessary. Like for example when there is only 2 mobs attacking the tank....
There are so many things that I see people doing that make me think that they have no idea what they are doing. Unfortunately I can't play every role in a party.

[1337]

Great guide. But could anyone make a guide on how to tank? Low levels (32-52) And Higher too please. If someone made one then that would be great

[Toasty]

Good guide, but pretty much only for people who are very new to clericing (and are over 80). Good clericing is completely different for people under 80, so the guide would be much more complete if you extended it to lower levels aswell.

[Drabon]

Good guide, but pretty much only for people who are very new to clericing (and are over 80). Good clericing is completely different for people under 80, so the guide would be much more complete if you extended it to lower levels aswell.

+1
every noob can heal and manage the aggro with masteries >= lvl 80


and as far as i know the dura on the rod goes down while using healing division/favor (and attacks of course)

The more blues you have on your gear, the more powerful your buffs and heals are on others, which results in less dying for everyone.

uhm what? buffs arent effected by blues on the gear, only by the lvl of the skill and the geartype. If you want to heal more, get a robe set (much more effective than some int-points).

[Rhe7oric]

Good guide, but pretty much only for people who are very new to clericing (and are over 80). Good clericing is completely different for people under 80, so the guide would be much more complete if you extended it to lower levels aswell.

Yeah, its been a while since I've done that though, I don't really remember how I managed then without healing orbit, mostly spamming group heals and Healing cycle on yourself whenever needed. My character has slowly progressed as the caps get raised ever higher; I've never yet reached cap.

Way back when (this is pretty old):

Spoiler!

And now:

Spoiler!

[pr0klobster]

The more blues you have on your gear, the more powerful your buffs and heals are on others, which results in less dying for everyone.

uhm what? buffs arent effected by blues on the gear, only by the lvl of the skill and the geartype. If you want to heal more, get a robe set (much more effective than some int-points).

Buffs aren't affected by blues, but heals definitely are - specifically by the INT blue. Most of my heals are adequate without having to go robe and lose phys defense, with additional int on my gear.

There's an old thread where I made & tested two chars - one pure STR and one pure INT. The INT consistently healed more and had a higher range of healing power.

[Rhe7oric]

I'm not going back to a Robe set because Light Armor has proven to me time and time again that it is a much better choice if you are going to be the Cleric more often than a Wizard. That's my role right there, because the slot of a Wizard can easily be replaced by someone who is full farmed -- therefore more damage dealt. Plus, Light Armor has saved my ass in 1v1 PvP fights or when grinding solo and I pull in a few party mobs and have to defend myself, where with a robe set I would surely have died.

The loss that extra 10% of speed that robes give over light armor (Robes = 20%, L.A = 10% and so on...) for some extra defense as an INT char is invaluable. It gives me the ability to tank that little bit extra damage and go in for more nukes.

[Toasty]

Yeah, i think that if your full int LA is best, without doubt.

If your hybrid, like i was, its not quite as simple though.

[Fuzzy]

Is it better to be Clerick/Bard or Bard/Clerik? :-/

[pr0klobster]

Is it better to be Clerick/Bard or Bard/Clerik? :-/

Depends on how you want to play the character.

Bard sub cleric - mostly for soloing, will do ok in parties, don't have to take all the cleric skills if you don't want.

Cleric sub bard - more for parties, do ok soloing, just take noise/march.

Full bard/full cleric is tough but doable. You solo well with bard skills, when you can find a party people are happy to have you either do bard OR cleric buffs.

You can tank giants of your level with appropriate buffs and RD, but you kill slow, so get used to being KS'd. The big downside is that it's pretty heavy for SP requirements.

Although frankly what usually happened with my char is that people in a party didn't understand that you can't put on Moving March, put up a dance and somehow still do cleric buffs/heals...it's just not possible.