Priest

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Aligned with earth, priests in the Kingdom of Elyssia lead a life close to nature. Over many generations, their spiritual research of plants has given them an understanding far beyond that of normal townsfolk. Believing in the power of the Light, they use powerful magic to heal their allies, and the knowledge of herbs and poisons to lay waste to their enemies.

Priests are the only class that can restore their own and other adventurers' health in battle for a long period of time. They generally require larger Mana reserves than mages for that reason. However, they are not just limited to healing. Having access to Wind, Poison, Light and Dark element spells makes them an excellent choice against a lot of monsters, and still a good option against the rest.

Typically, priests follow a path focusing either on healing or damage dealing, however a hybrid path (damage with some healing) is a great idea in many situations that can give your group the edge.

General Gameplay

There are two distinguishable play styles for a priest, consisting of healing or being a damage dealer.

Almost all priests will have to heal at some point because it is one of the most important positions within a group. Healing Priests will frequently use healing spells from time to time during the boss fight, trying to match the correct healing spell accordingly to the situation. They will use less healing spells if the situation isn't that of a problem, but will require using a combination of the same spells when allies are at low health. Judging by this, priests are more laidback than any other class at the start of the battle, but are forced to become more attentive to the group's health as the battle drags on. Against a group of monsters, Nightfall causes one of the monsters to sleep for up to 40 seconds so they won't be troubling your group unless woken up early (from taking damage). Cure Poison can cure a player that has been currently poisoned out of one of it's stacks. A lot of deadly damage over time spells cast by monsters will be a form of poison, so it is best to watch out for the stronger ones (and ignore the weaker ones).

Usually only for leveling purposes, it is rare for most priests to go into battle as a damage dealer because of shortcomings from the elements that it can use. However, when used correctly, priests can deal a significant blow to an enemy's health. Poison Priests tend to focus down on heavy attacks from Petal Rain (the only wind skill for priests), and poisonous damage over time skills. The higher damage output a poison priest can do, the more mana they can regain from each of their attacks. Light Priests combine aspects from both fire element and wind element spells from mages. Spamming their attacks apply a stack, which then can be removed for mana, while trying to separately refresh their damage over time spell. Dark Priests can either play a gimmick-focused role (which then can be used in PvP), or a typical damage build. Lastly, incorporating two potential skills into your build, such as Revitalise and Unfaltering Resolve can benefit a damage priest's survival, but may limit your options.

More information about strategies and tips for healing priests can be found here.

Pure Healing

Priests focusing on pure healing place most - if not all - of their skill points into the healing tree. This gives them a number of spells to keep themselves and their group alive:

Primary Spells

Name Description
Revitalise Revitalise is a basic heal-over-time spell. Once cast on another character, it will heal them periodically (about every three seconds[1], for twelve seconds). This is the spell of choice if someone needs some healing, but isn't in immediate danger of getting knocked out. If you cast Revitalize on a target before the effect expires, it is refreshed to its full duration (they do not get extra healing if you repeatedly use Revitalize on them).
Heal Heal is a slow-casting direct heal spell that recovers a substantial amount of health at once. Generally, it is best used to heal someone who is taking more damage than Revitalize can heal. By combining Heal with Revitalize (cast Revitalize first, and then start casting Heal - that way the first Revitalize will tick about the same time you finish casting Heal), you can restore a lot of health at once. Unlike Revitalize (which is Earth), Heal is Light based, so it will hurt demons, undead and dark element monsters.
Bond of Healing Bond of Healing is a direct heal spell that recovers health of your target, and also some of your own health. This spell is very mana efficient if both you and another character are taking damage at the same time.
Healing Winds Healing Winds is a heal-over-time spell that affects several allies at once. With a cooldown of 10 seconds, this spell can be used to restore light damage taken across the board between all of your allies, or can be used jointly with other spells to improve their healing power. Maxes out at Lv. 1.

Emergency Spells

Name Description
Surge of Light Surge of Light is a quick-casting direct heal spell that recovers a little less health than Heal. It also uses more mana than Heal. Use this spell if your target has little health left and would get knocked out before your next Heal cast finishes.
Emerald Shield Emerald Shield is a spell that priests learn "for free", by completing a short quest chain. It can be used to shield a target from a set amount of physical and magic damage, once every 30 seconds. Its high mana cost means that this spell is best used only in emergencies to instantly stop further damage on yourself or an ally, while you prepare slower-casting spell (such as a Revitalize - Heal combo) to actually restore health.
Revive Revive allows you to bring a knocked out player back to life. It is primarily meant for out-of-combat recovery, since any damage to you will cause the spell to fail. However, with good timing and a bit of luck, you can succeed in reviving a knocked out group member even during boss battles. Watch the spells your enemies carefully, and once you identified a time window where you won't receive much (or any) damage, shield yourself and begin casting revive. Note that revive uses a lot of mana, even if the spell fails.
Divine Clarity Divine Clarity makes the next spell that you cast instant, and can be used once every three minutes. Combine this spells with the previously listed spells for different effects - for example, Divine Clarity + Heal for an instant large heal, or Divine Clarity + Revive for an instant revive that will always succeed[2].
Song of Harmony Song of Harmony is a wide-area healing spell that recovers the health of any friendly character around you. It is channeled, meaning that once you begin casting, it will continuously restore health until the channel ends (up to six seconds). While this spell effectively brings your entire group back to high / full health, you need to be careful about when to use it: not only does it have a high mana cost, you can also use it only once every seven minutes. Finally, it is advisable to shield yourself from damage while channeling it (using Emerald Shield), so that enemies don't interrupt your channel.
Greater Heal Greater Heal is a powerful version of Heal that is even slower to cast, but provides a strong heal that can restore an ally to all, if not most of their health. Consumes a hefty amount of mana to use, making it only viable for sparing situations. Also being Light-based, it will hurt demons, undead and dark element monsters.

Support Buffs

Name Description
Serenity Serenity allows you to restore a gradual amount of your mana in 10 seconds, as well as divert monster attention away from you to your tank. It should be used carefully in a situation where you are lacking in mana, while your potions are cooldown, as this spell has a hefty cooldown of 5 minutes.
Elemental Ward Elemental Ward is a support spell that gives a buff to you and your allies, increasing their elemental resistances to the four elements (fire, water, wind and earth). It is useful for reducing damage taken as a result of common spells.

Magic Buffs and Curses

Name Description
Blessing of Speed Blessing of Speed is a support spell that applies a speed buff to you and your allies, increasing their movement speed. In addition, the spell slightly increases agility of those affected by it's buff. Helpful for getting around in PvE to avoid AoE skills and in PvP for Cheese Hunt.
Blessing of Fortitude Blessing of Fortitude increases you and your allies stamina, which contributes to your character's maximum health, survival and reduction against stun effects. In addition, the buff lowers the chance that you flinch when taking damage. Necessary for tough boss fights.
Protection of Nature Protection of Nature is a support spell that can only be used on yourself. It increases your armor, maximum health and resistance to being hit with critical damage. However, it lasts only 5 minutes, or until all 25 stacks have been removed (lasts up to 25 hits, having only 1 stack will still carry the entire buff's effect).
Inspiration Inspiration increases you and your allies intellect, as well as strength. It is used to increase the damage of all classes (except Hunters), and increase maximum mana for both mages and priests.
Curse of Slowness Curse of Slowness causes a target's movement speed to be reduced, as well as their agility slightly. It is the polar opposite to Blessing of Speed, dispelling the speed buff if the target has any. Allows allies to be able to kite a monster, than for the monster to catch up to them immediately.
Curse of Silence Curse of Silence interrupts a spell cast, and silences them for a few seconds. It is similar to a mage's disrupt magic spell, or a warrior's smite.

Notes

  • Especially in dungeons, the health restoring services of a priest are very important. While some dungeons (such as the Cultist Prison) use mechanics that allow completing it without a priest, most dungeons expect a group that challenges them to have a healthy mix of classes.
  • Every dungeon can be completed without any of your group members getting knocked out. However, depending on your group members[3], that may not be possible. In this case you have to triage:
    • Generally (unless a boss is almost down, and the only way you may win is by giving one of the other group members one final heal), you should try to keep yourself up. If you get knocked out, no one gets healed anymore, and your group will most likely get knocked out quickly.
    • The second most important is the player holding the boss. If they get knocked out, the boss will look for a new target (which might just be you) - which will likely take quite a bit more damage than a heavily armored warrior.
    • Next in line are the damage dealing players, considering their own capabilities of staying alive (a mage with almost full mana can use Mana Shield to protect themselves at the cost of mana) and how much damage they do to the boss (saving someone who is dishing out large amounts of damage to the boss every second they stay alive will help your group succeed more than someone who is slowly whittling it down).
    • You do not need to keep everyone alive. If someone is continuously standing in a poison patch, requiring constant and large (emergency) heals, you will quickly run out of mana and then everyone in your group will get knocked out (that person usually being the first to go when the constant stream of heals stop). Throw them a revitalize, and hope they will see the "low health" warning as a cue to look at their feet, to see what they're standing in.
    • Bosses are balanced in the expectation that your damage dealers are alive for 75% of the time (however some may well need to stay alive 100% of the time to deal the same damage another player deals that was alive 75% of the time).
  • Monsters will notice you healing. Unless someone else is attacking them (warriors can swipe, mages and damage dealing priests can use area spells to keep multiple monsters occupied) they will go straight for you when you heal someone they attack. You are not expected to hold those monsters on you - if this is causing you troubles, you might hint to the rest of the group that they should help you there.
  • In case you have a moment of quiet and no one needs any heals, just wait. You do not need to be constantly casting a spell. If someone is at 98% health, using revitalize will mostly be wasted: the first tick will bring them to 100%, and the remaining ticks will have no effect, since they're already at full health. In the Combat Log, this is recorded as an "overheal".

Damage Dealing

Priests that focus on dealing damage will spend most of their skill points in the damage tree. It contains the following main spells:

Toxicology

Name Description
Petal Rain Petal Rain is your primary wind spell. It is a ranged magic attack that is very effective against water, fire and ghost, and still somewhat effective against dark element monsters. Similar to your Poison spell, leeching poison allows you to get some of your mana back every time you use Petal Rain.
Nightfall Nightfall is a crowd control spell that is useful even to healing priests - essentially, it causes an enemy fall asleep for a certain time, as long as they do not receive any damage. At level 2, Nightfall can take a target out of combat for up to 40 seconds.
Cure Poison Cure Poison is a spell that removes one stack of a poison debuff to one of your allies. It is used to prevent poison spells from carrying out lethal amounts of damage over time, and to wake someone from slumber due to an enemy's Sleep Powder or Nightfall.
Poison and Poison Dust These spells periodically deal damage over time, and are extremely effective against any of the elements, with the exception of fire, dark and ghost. Poison Patch is an area spell that stacks (the longer your target resides in the poison, the more damage they receive), while Poison is a single target spell that does not stack (poisoning a target you already poisoned simply resets the time on the poison to full).
Stir and Envenom These two spells complement Poison Dust. Stir allows you to relocate and keep your Poison Dust active on the ground, refreshing the damage over time stacks against enemies standing in it while saving mana. Newer monsters however will suffer from only two-thirds of the damage.
Leeching Poison Leeching Poison is a passive that restores a small percentage of your mana equal to the damage done with poison spells (this includes Petal Rain and other poison-related spells found from spirit bottles).

Light

Name Description
Judgement and Exorcise They are both light element spells (Exorcise is an area spell, whereas Judgement is single-target). These are the spells to use against dark and neutral element monsters.
Spiritual Regeneration In addition to the damage spells above, Spiritual Regeneration is a useful spell that allows you to restore a large amount of your mana every three minutes. This can cut down the number of mana potions that you would have to use otherwise.
Holy Fire Holy Fire is a damage over time spell that can spread to more targets nearby if it has been used for a second time on a target already affected by it. It is used with Nourish so that the damage greatly intensifies.
Nourish Nourish is a spell that magnifies the damage that Holy Fire is dealing on an affected target. This spell, when used up to five times can greatly power up a Holy Fire, rivaling that of an AoE spell. In addition, Holy Fire's damage is passively changed to whatever value Nourish is at.

Dark

Name Description
Dark Pact Dark Pact is an active support spell that allows the use of other dark skills within the skill tree, but prevents the use of light skills. Once used, it increases dark element damage and armor. When turned off, it causes you to lose half of your mana.
Spirit Strike Spirit Strike is the only spell for priests that inflicts ghost damage multiple times to a single target. Greatly effective against neutral targets, but ineffective against any other element.
Life Tap Life Tap decreases your current base health by 20%, but restores mana back to how much was lost. Useful when your mana is often low, but your health is still high, but should be backed up with healing.
Dark Bolt Dark Bolt is your primary dark spell, dealing a significant amount of damage to a single target. Use with Torment to deal even greater damage, and restore a small portion of your mana on attacks.
Terrify Terrify causes a target to tremble in fear, causing them to run around randomly without attacking. The effect does not break when using a dark spell against them.
Torment Torment is a damage over time spell that inflicts dark element damage to an enemy. Affected targets receive less healing, and amplifies your Dark Bolt spell, giving it a 25% damage boost. In addition, Dark Bolt recovers a small portion of mana against a tormented enemy.
Evil Land Evil Land is an AoE spell that is channeled over an area to inflict dark element damage. Demons, undead and dark element targets are healed in this area instead of being damaged.
Possess Possess is a unique spell that allows you to control a demon, undead or dark element monster for up to 40 seconds. The usual restrictions apply, including unable to possess if the target is three or more levels higher than you. When Dark Pact is at Lv. 3 or higher, it allows control of Brute type monsters.
Drain Health Drain Health establishes a green line between you and the target, inflicting damage to them and recovering some of it as health. The spell must be channeled in order to maintain the siphoning effect, and will break if the target is too far away from you.

Hybrid

A hybrid priest uses spells for both, damage dealing and healing. Which spells you pick exactly is up to you, and what you need.

For example, you can go with a full damage dealing build, and then, with your remaining skill points, get the highest level of Revitalize that you can. That way you can deal damage to your enemies, while using Revitalize on yourself and your allies to constantly recover health. At level 32, the maximum level of revitalize recovers around 115 health every second - so the health that you gain back is quite substantial. In addition, since Emerald Shield is "free" (meaning you do not need spend a skill point for its first level), you will always have it at least at level 1. This can be used to buy yourself some time without damage, so that revitalize can heal you up more. Kiting (where you run around with monsters chasing after you) can also be very effective in avoiding damage.

A hybrid priest can also pursue buffs and other skills in addition to their healing or damage, but this is rare due to the lack of skill points needed to cater to their most important skills. However with a bit of curiosity, certain buffs or curses can become useful in PvP such as Cheese Hunt.

References

  1. Revitalize will tick faster the more dexterity you have. Not only does this help recovering health faster, it can also recover more if the ticks are fast enough to fit another into the twelve second window. For example, if, thanks to your dexterity, revitalize ticks every 2.4 seconds, it will tick five times in total, whereas usually it would have only ticked four times.
  2. Note that during a boss battle, you are limited to three revives for a five player group, two revives for a four player group, and one revive otherwise. In addition, if you are afflicted with debuffs that decrease your casting speed by a certain percentage, Divide Clarity is no longer instant.
  3. This includes their equipment, spells, the amount of damage they do, how good their armor is and how well they withstand damage, their capabilities to not stand into a huge pulsating poison patch the boss left on the ground.

General
General Auto-AttackAlchemyElixir MasteryCookingCraftAnalyseFirst AidMarker
Pet Call PetRevive PetPet: 'Attack'Pet: 'Follow Me'Pet: 'Stay Here'
Extra Abilities Curse of Roots
Warrior
Combat BiteImproved BiteFocused StrikeSlashSwipeNatural FighterAdrenaline RushThrashBattle CryOverpowerPounce
Defense ToughnessChargeBashSmiteTauntShattering StrikeGrowlBurning DeterminationSpell ReflectUnyielding Rage EnduranceDivine PleaDeflect
Others Battle StanceDefensive Stance
Mage
Arcane Mana ShieldHarvest ManaArcane FocusBind ElementalSkipInvisibilityTeleportBind EarthDisrupt MagicArcane MightDispel MagicSteal Magic
Fire Fire BoltEmbersIgniteFire WallInfernal HeatFire Hail
Ice IcicleArctic WindsMana CrystalMana ExplosionIce SpikesMist of IceFrigid SplashIntense ColdPath of FrostBlizzardFlash FreezeFrost Nova
Wind ThunderboltLightning BoltOverchargeLightning RodWind BurstOverload
Earth Earth SpikeSpike TrapRune of PowerHeavy RuneRune of WisdomRune of Warding
Others Grace of Elements
Priest
Restoration RevitaliseReviveSerenityElemental WardHealBond of HealingHealing SpringsSong of HarmonySurge of LightDivine ClarityEmerald ShieldHealing WindsGreater Heal
Toxicology Petal RainPoisonPoison DustStirEnvenomNightfallCure PoisonLeeching PoisonUnfaltering Resolve
Light JudgementSpiritual RegenerationExorciseHoly FireNourish
Magic Blessing of SpeedBlessing of FortitudeCurse of SlownessCurse of SilenceProtection of NatureInspiration
Dark Dark PactSpirit StrikeLife TapDark BoltTerrifyTormentEvil LandPossessDrain Health
Hunter
Close Combat RakeRipEnchant PoisonCamouflageVeil of ShadowsSprintShadowstepHeal PetBattle InstinctsCombat TrainingTouch of the Phoenix
Ranged Combat Double StrafeBow MasteryFocused ShotArrow ShowerSnipingSharp ShotDisrupting ShotPiercing ShotSharpen SensesSiphoning ShotArrow BarrageEagle Eye
Traps Trap ProficiencyTar TrapIncinerating TrapRoot TrapExplosive Trap
Others Arrow Crafting