Feedback: Cleric 101 (Work in Progress)

[FordyTwo]

Howdy! Our next 101 class guide is for the cleric, and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Notes of Interest:



If you have a one-to-two sentence tip or advice for newbie clerics, do share. We'll have an "Every cleric should know ..." section at the beginning of the guide where we'll spotlight some helpful tips.
This is only the template included with Cleric 101, and not the newbie-info area of the guide. We're posting it this way because our primary goal is to make sure any "how to build" information is clear and thus, helpful.
We have yet to add a robust "Enhancement" section to the template. If you've got a personal load-out for healing/cc clerics that you've found useful, feel free to share that as well -- and thanks in advance!


What to do: Give use constructive criticism and feedback!

What not to do: Derail Cleric 101 feedback with off-topic posts or inflammatory comments.

Thanks to:

TheDjinnFor, Asketes, dkyle, Angelus_dead, Raoull, Melicat, FrozenNova, knightgf, bigolbear, Hellllboy, lopkon, AZgreentea, Mellifera, KingofCheese, FlyingTurtle, Phidius, nat_1, Kourier, Doganpc, danotmano1988, Trowa88, csivils, Junts, Valiance, Danmor, Nerate_Mireth, Flavilandile, justagame, dragonmane, darkrhavyn, Jubbers, PNellesen, dennison_brilo, Morlen, Saaluta, sirgog, JollySwagMan, DoctorWhoFan, SirValentine, siver, Enoach, sirdanile, dejafu, Kmnh, Dendrix


--------------------Cleric 101 (Work-in-Progress)--------------------

This guide covers the basics of cleric ability scores, skills and feats. It also offers a basic template for a healing/support-focused cleric and tips for new cleric players.

==Every New Cleric Should Know …==

• Wisdom (WIS) is your most important stat, followed closely by Constitution (CON) and Strength (STR). How you want to play your cleric will determine how important STR ultimately is, but remember that no matter how you build your DDO character, CON determines your hit points (HP) and thus, your survivability.

• When playing the role of healer in parties, stay alive first and heal others second. It becomes terribly impossible to heal others while dead.

• You can target yourself by pressing the F1 key and the rest of your current party by pressing F2-F6. It's also possible to click on party members' names, found on the left-side listing of your display.

• Avoiding damage is even better than healing – spells like Command, Greater Command, and Comet Fall can temporarily disable opponents, and often make the most efficient use of your spell points.


==Template: Classic Casting Cleric==

This template provides a path to creating a classic cleric that focuses on casting spells that offer support, healing and some damage. Know that while a classic-casting-cleric can be played solo, this build performs best with hirelings or with fellow DDO players.

===Ability Point Buy===

Human is the racial choice with this template, both for their extra feat at level 1 and increased skill point gain. This template uses the 28 point build in DDO, if you've unlocked the 32 point build, consider using the extra 4 points for CON or STR.

• STR … 12
• DEX … 8
• CON … 14
• INT … 8
• WIS … 18
• CHA … 10

• Ability Point Buys: Every four levels put your ability point buy into Wisdom (WIS).

===Skills===

At character creation, max out Concentration to ensure your spellcasting suffers minimal interruption during combat, and then put two points into Tumble (netting you a 1.0 rank) – without that 1.0 in Tumble, it won't be usable in combat. Finally, use four points to max out Balance, and the remaining point in Jump.

At each level-up keep Concentration and Balance maxed. Beyond this, feed Jump some points – it'll help with traps and hazards!


===Feats===

It's recommend that new players – and really, most players – take the Toughness feat at level one. Beyond this piece of advice, our feat selection for this template focuses on opening up later enhancements and beefing-up healing power.

• 1) Toughness – Increases Hit Points (HP) at first level and provides additional HP for each new level, allowing a player to take the Racial Toughness enhancement. Taking Toughness results in such a significant HP boost that it's practically mandatory.

• 1) Extend Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells with durations last twice as long, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 3) Empower Healing Spell – While this metamagic feat is active healing spells are 50% more effective, but consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 6) Maximize Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, damage (and healing!) spells deal double damage (and healing!), but they consume 25 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 9) Empower Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells do 50% more damage, but consume 15 additional spell points.

• 12) Quicken Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells cast twice as fast and cannot be interrupted by enemy attacks but consume 10 additional spell points.

• 15) Spell Penetration – Adds +2 to your caster level check for defeating spell resistance.

• 18) Heighten Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, your spells are raised to the highest spell level your character can cast, making them more difficult to resist, but increasing their Spell Point (SP) cost.

===Enhancements===

Because enhancements in DDO can be reset for an in-game fee, this section of the classic healer template will offer suggestions -- but not strict guidelines. There really isn't a secret when it comes to choosing the "right" enhancements. It's a matter of being economical and choosing enhancements that feed into your chosen style of play, and offer the most for their value.

Tip! You can check "Show Unavailable" in the enhancements window to see prerequisites any enhancements you may desire at higher levels.

To dramatically boost a cleric's healing spells take enhancements like Cleric Life Magic; this enhancement adds a 10% boost to healing. Additionally, Cleric Prayer of Life and Cleric Prayer of Incredible Life both grant a chance for your healing spells to critical, restoring an ally's hit points (HP) by a considerably larger amount for the same spell point (SP) cost.

• Cleric Life Magic I to IV
• Cleric Prayer of Life I to II
• Cleric Prayer of Incredible Life I to II

Radiant Servant is a powerful prestige enhancement. When taken, it allows you to expend a Turn Undead spell for a potent Healing Burst, or a useful Aura of Healing. As an added benefit, Turn Undead uses will recharge at a slow rate with Radiant Servant. (Both the Improved Turning and Improved Healing enhancements are required to unlock this powerful enhancement.)

• Improved Turning I
• Improved Heal I to II
• Cleric Radiant Servant I to II

While clerics can use their Turn Undead ability to defeat weaker undead creatures, this ability can also serve other purposes with the aid of special enhancements. For instance, Divine Vitality restores a small amount of spell points (SP) to a fellow caster – but at the cost of consuming a use of Turn Undead. Unless you've taken Radiant Servant, Turn Undead can only be used a finite amount of times between rests, so use the two below enhancements wisely.

• Cleric Divine Vitality I to II
• Cleric Divine Healing I to II


Cleric spells are fueled by divine power, receiving divine gifts from enhancements like Follower of the Sovereign Host, which gives clerics proficiency with longswords and a powerful Unyielding Sovereignty enhancement. Unyielding Sovereignty is a powerful "last resort" heal that restores a character to full health and removes many negative effects.

• Follower of the Sovereign Host
• Unyielding Sovereignty

Each of these below enhancements will boost the cleric's ability scores, hit points (HP), and spell points (SP) by a reasonable amount. Feel free to take more ranks, if you'd like.

• Cleric Wisdom I to II
• Cleric Charisma I
• Human Adaptability: Wisdom
• Racial Toughness I to II
• Cleric Energy of the Zealot I to II

== Active, Passive & Toggle ==

Feats, spells, and enhancements come in three distinct flavors: active, passive, and toggle. None of these flavors are mutually exclusive. All feats, spells and enhancements can come in any of the three flavors.

Here's the breakdown:

• Active – When used, an "active" feat, enhancement or spell will cause an immediate effect. This effect can last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. Inflict Light Wounds is a spell that immediately damages its target, while Nightshield is an active spell that can immediately defend against Magic Missile attacks – but lasts for five minutes.

• Passive – There are no spells that are purely passive, but plenty of feats fall into this category. Toughness is a great example – it's passive, always giving you those bonus hit points (HP).

• Toggle – Many spells and feats come in this flavor. Think of toggles like a light switch: you can flip it on or off! A toggle always works this way, and in the case of metamagic feats (toggles!) using one will only increase the spell point (SP) cost of other spells – but in no way costs spell points itself to activate.

==Hotbar Loadout==

Newly acquired spells will not automatically show up on your hotbar. To add new spells, simply press the "C" key, and then click on the "Spells" tab on your Character Sheet panel. From the "Spells" tab you can drag and drop each spell icon to your hotbar – and the same can be done for active and toggle feats and enhancements from their respective tabs on the Character Sheet panel ("C" button).

Tip! The Bullstrength spell gives a +4 STR boost, and makes it much easier to defeat enemies at lower-levels with your melee weapon.

==Final Thoughts==

When playing a character with 20 levels of cleric – like the above template – there's plenty of room for customization. If you're interested in having some spellcasting capability but want deeper access to melee combat, consider creating a level 1 fighter, and then taking 19 levels of cleric. If you decide to tweak the classic healer template in this way, make sure to read some of our Fighter 101 guide for tips on important fighter Ability Scores, and more!


Cleric 101 was made the collaborative help of the DDO community! (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=326272)

[Paleus]

Every new cleric should know: The wavecrasher manifests that drop as collectibles can be turned in to Kipling Vranch in the Marketplace for a free (pre-owned) cure moderate wounds wand. Save yourself plat and spell points by checking every collectible for these useful items.

[Asketes]

since there is only one prestige enhancement line thus far for clerics, it may be a good idea to speak briefly about it.

[dkyle]

If you have a one-to-two sentence tip or advice for newbie clerics, do share. We'll have an "Every cleric should know ..." section at the beginning of the guide where we'll spotlight some helpful tips.

A Cleric is not a healbot. Healing actually requires very little focus for a build to do it well. A Cleric can melee, nuke, CC, and buff. A Cleric that focuses solely on healing is squandering their potential.


Overall, build looks fine. Divine casters aren't really my style, but for what it is, looks fine. I would suggest a word about melee Clerics. "Battle Clerics" get a bad rap among new players. Some nitpicks:


At character creation, max out Concentration and Diplomacy, then put two points into Tumble (netting you a 1.0 rank). Use the remaining two points on Jump. At each level-up, keep Concentration and Diplomacy maxed, using the remaining points to get Jump to rank 10. Once Jump is at rank 10, or while you're getting it to rank 10, show some love to the Balance skill.

Jump is not a class skill, so it'll only get to 10 at level 17, which leaves 1.5 ranks for Balance.

Diplomacy is questionable in my opinion, but I guess a newbie might like having a panic button. But a good Cleric is perfectly capable of handling aggro for a little while.

I'm glad you didn't say to take the Heal skill :cool:


• 15) Mental Toughness – Increases your maximum spell points by 10 at first level, and 5 Spell Points (SP) for each additional level.

Mental Toughness is a waste. It should only be taken if required by a PrE, which Radiant Servant does not require.

I'd go Greater Spell Pen (better CC) or Empower (better nuking).


Here's an example selection of some good cleric enhancements:

Will want to mention Radiant Servant.

[boricua_in_cali]

aimed at all clerics, b they battle clerics, warpriests, combat caster clerics, etc, etc. In end-game, and all the way up to it, your build isn't as important to the party, as is wether or not you can effectively heal. You might say, I'm a DPS cleric, or combat caster, destruction, blah, blah, blah, but the bottom line is, most groups, especially if your in a non-guild group, are going to look at your little cleric symbol, and expect the hjeals to be coming.

That's not to say that you're responsible for the group, people should be relatively self-sufficient. There's no reason people shouldn't carry their own healing supplies, be it wands, pots, scrolls, a pouch of jerky, a candy cane, or something that will help them stay alive.

P.S. I love my greataxe cleric.

Everything above, shortened to two (maybe 3) lines.
No matter what your play style as a cleric, people will expect you to heal them in groups. If you don't want to, so be it. But people WILL Expect it from you, and possible be upset when you don't, even if you are leading in kill counts. Be prepared to heal, or be prepared to be shunned.

[Angelus_dead]

At character creation, max out Concentration and Diplomacy
• 6) Quicken Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells cast twice as fast and cannot be interrupted by enemy attacks, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).
• 15) Mental Toughness – Increases your maximum spell points by 10 at first level, and 5 Spell Points (SP) for each additional level.!
Diplomacy is really nonuseful for Clerics, as their normal party function doesn't have them leading the aggro list (or even close). Balance or Jump is higher priority.
Taking Quicken at such a low level would be unusable until your SP are much higher.
I can't recommend any Cleric take Mental Toughness: there's always something better in melee weapons, spell focus, penetration, saves, or even a second HP Toughness.

Going 18 wisdom is actually excessive for most Cleric needs... compared to a Sorcerer or Wizard, it is much more justifiable to drop your casting stat to 16 and put points elsewhere. (I'd really tend to raise str a bit over int and cha!)

[Raoull]

It is imperative as a cleric to avoid dying. Often you are the only one who can raise. This matters when building your toon (at least 6 points to con), while gearing your toon (+con gear, false life, fort and extras like blurry) as well as when playing your toon (your red bar is more important than theirs). A cleric who is out of spell points can still heal with wands or scrolls (or mana pots). Dead clerics can't heal.

[MeliCat]

Balance not diplomacy - too many trip kitties in this game and faster you get up is better for everyone.

I like mental toughness - with 18 wis and level ups here this char is an offensive caster build therefore more sp = more damage. You should also definitely include a sample melee build too though.

Tip: poison neutralisation, lesser restoration, remove blindness, remove curse and remove disease can be cast from a pot which can be hot-barred. This leaves your hands free of wands so that you can hold potency or penetration items and leaves your spell slots free for damage and buff spells.

[dkyle]

Tip: poison neutralisation, lesser restoration, remove blindness, remove curse and remove disease can be cast from a pot which can be hot-barred. This leaves your hands free of wands so that you can hold potency or penetration items and leaves your spell slots free for damage and buff spells.

But not guild pots. Those are self-only. 'cause we all know guilds are selfish :p

Worth mentioning along with the above.

[FrozenNova]

Regular empower instead of mental toughness.
Your divine punishment and blade barrier will thank you.

I'd personally swap extend out for spell focus: evocation at cap. Now blade barrier is inextensible, extend offers nothing to the capped cleric.

Brief advice?
Any cleric with any build can heal. If all you do is heal, pre-epic, I don't want you in my party.
This build is an offensive casting build - correct operation requires adequate use of crowd control and killing spells.

A single cleric with just enough spellpoints for a single blade barrier can take out an army or five.

Commanding an ogre is cheaper than healing his damage. Greater commanding a pile of trolls is cheaper than healing their damage. And more fun.

You have a will-save spell, a fortitude-save spell, and a reflex-save spell.
Greater command, implosion/destruction, cometfall.
Know which, when, where and why to cast them.

Do not complain about costs. The cost of gearing a cleric and supplying scrolls compared to the cost of fully gearing a TWF melee is extremely small.

[knightgf]

===Ability Point Buy===

Human is the racial choice with this template, both for their extra feat at level 1 and increased skill point gain. This template uses the 28 point build in DDO, if you've unlocked the 32 point build, consider using the extra 4 points for CON or STR.

• STR … 10
• DEX … 8
• CON … 14
• INT … 10
• WIS … 18
• CHA … 10

• Ability Point Buys: Every four levels put your ability point buy into Wisdom (WIS).



If possible, I would simply divert the two points from strength and put them into constitution if possible. There are a few good reasons for this:


Even though you make yourself more vulnurable to Ray of Enfeeblement, the spell Bulls Strength will raise your strength from 8 to 12 for a brief period of time, and (Assuming the die isn't loaded) Ray of Enfeeblement deals only 11 str damage at max...you'll still have enough STR to cast or use lesser restore to dispel it. Besides, bulls strength is a nice party buff spell for melees at low levels, since its also when the rays happen the most, although it can continue even into the Sands of Mech.
For humans, there can be many benefits. A +1 tome can be used instead of a +2 tome for raising con to a even number, the enhancement human constitution can actually have use instead of sit there as a prerequisite to human toughness III, and if you get some good gear later on, one can use the exceptional bonus - Constitution +1 to even out their CON level.
Even though you carry less, managing your weight is a important thing to master. In a battle of STR and CON, a few pounds of carrying stuff < more HP. If you have trouble with your load cap, sell your loot in-between traveling to quests, avoid looting plain or low-qualify heavy armor, and if you can get a better source of DR 3/-, wear something lighter than heavy armor. Speaking of which, since clerics can wear heavy armor, any Adamantite heavy armor can be good to wear as even though clerics don't have much in AC, the DR from heavy armor isn't bad, and is better than nothing. Also, if you decide to use shields for whatever reason(Id use two caster-enhancing weapons personally), try getting something made of mithril, not only does it reduce your weight, but it also reduces your armor penalties.



===Skills===

At character creation, max out Concentration and Diplomacy, then put two points into Tumble (netting you a 1.0 rank). Use the remaining two points on Jump. At each level-up, keep Concentration and Diplomacy maxed, using the remaining points to get Jump to rank 10. Once Jump is at rank 10, or while you're getting it to rank 10, show some love to the Balance skill.


For new players, concentration is a must when quicken is either unavailable or inefficient. Diplomacy can be a bit tricky for players to use, as it requires monsters to be close to if not attacking them. It doesn't work on all monsters either, and if your using it, I think somehow there's a problem within the group, whether its the cleric or someone else.

For new clerics, the only other cross-class skill I recommend would be haggle if your not going to invest in diplomacy, as it helps you get some much-needed plat for the resources you bring along. You can also invest in balance early if you decide not to invest in Tumble, since really, a feather fall item gets rid of the fear that clerics face when falling in armor. Jump seems ok, but tumble might not get you far at early levels if a cleric decides to wear armor with armor check penalties.



===Feats===

We recommend that new players – and really, most players – take the Toughness feat at level one. Beyond this piece of advice, our feat selection for this template focuses on opening up later enhancements and beefing-up healing power in the levels beyond 10.

• 1) Toughness – Increases Hit Points (HP) at first level and provides additional HP for each new level, allowing a player to take the Racial Toughness enhancement. Taking Toughness results in such a significant HP boost that it's practically mandatory.

• 1) Empower Healing Spell – While this metamagic feat is active healing spells are 50% more effective, but consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 3) Extend Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells with durations last twice as long, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 6) Quicken Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells cast twice as fast and cannot be interrupted by enemy attacks, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 9) Maximize Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, damage (and healing!) spells deal double damage (and healing!), but they consume 25 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 12) Heighten Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, your spells are raised to the highest spell level your character can cast, making them more difficult to resist, but increasing their Spell Point (SP) cost.

• 15) Mental Toughness – Increases your maximum spell points by 10 at first level, and 5 Spell Points (SP) for each additional level.

• 18) Spell Penetration – Adds +2 to your caster level check for defeating spell resistance.


To be honest, as long as you invest a few tiers into the spell penetration enhancements and perhaps get a item, you really don't need the spell penetration feat. You could probably replace it with two things:


Improved Mental Toughness: Adds more SP into a class that is severely deprived of SP. I'd recommend it completely.
Empower spell: 50% more damage at the cost of only 15 SP. Good way to boost your heals, although to be honest, it's really more useful for your damage spells.

Also, if your going to recommend mental toughness, I suggest taking the first tier at a earlier level. In fact, you don't really need metamagics at creation, id recommend the feats in this order:


Toughness
Mental Toughness
Empower Healing SPell
Heighten Spell
Maximize spell
Quicken spell
Improved Mental Toughness
Empower spell



===Enhancements===

Because enhancements in DDO can be reset for an in-game fee this section of the classic healer template will offer suggestions, but not strict guidelines. There really isn't a secret when it comes to choosing the right enhancements. It's a matter of being economical and choosing enhancements that offer the most for their value.

Here's an example selection of some good cleric enhancements:

• Cleric Life Magic I (Grants a 10% increase to the effectiveness of your healing and negative energy spells.)

• Cleric Divine Vitality I (Activate this ability to restore 13 to 22 Spell Points (SP) to another character. Consumes a use of your turn undead ability.)

• Follower of the Sovereign Host (Grants a +1 bonus to hit with longswords, the favored weapon of the clergy of the Sovereign Host.) The longsword bonus is not generally very useful, but this enhancement is a prerequisite for Unyielding Sovereignty, which will be discussed in a bit.

• Cleric Wisdom I (Grants a +1 increase to your Wisdom score.)

• Racial Toughness I (Grants you 10 additional hit points if you have the Toughness feat.)

• Unyielding Sovereignty (Activate this ability to fully heal Hit Point (HP) damage done to an ally and remove several negative effects, restoring them to a completely healthy status.) Although Unyielding Sovereignty has a long cooldown, it can be a great “last resort” way to keep a high-hit-point ally alive, and remove most ailments!

One probably vital thing that you've forgotten to mention was the Radiant Servant PrE. It's the only and by far greatest PrE for a cleric. It allows them to passively regenerate turns and throw a few special heals. Now I don't know much about this, but doesn't it require a feat of some sort? If so, you can simply downgrade improved mental toughness to regular or exchange extend and use that feat instead.

Other than that, it's not bad.

[bigolbear]

looks solid, like the skills selection and stat distribution.

dont think you will have enough ranks in tumble to tumble with that dex in heavy armour - maybe more in tumble.

Id suggest adding to recomended feats: extra turning - for additional turns to fuel DV's and radiant bursts.

mention DV, divine healing, divne cleansing, and importantly radiant servant. You should suggest that 'turn undead' is useful vs low lvl undead such as skeletons but not generaly useful at high lvls and thus a cleric should start using their turn undead attempts for other things - then go on to explain about dv, radaint servant etc.

about heighten: it would be worth mentioning this is only recomended for more advanced cleric players that will toggle metamagics on/off often. It is not a good idea to leave heighten on all the time as it makes healing spells way more expensive. Infact considering this is a newbie guide remove heighten from the list of recomended feats.

[Hellllboy]

This is a good start.

You may want to discuss some of the items a Cleric (that would fall into this category) may carry-such as:

-Heal Scrolls
-Wands
-Devotion/Potency/Ador
-Sacred (for turn attempts)
-Wizardry/Power items

Perhaps you could give new players a run down on healing strategy, Mana Management, Healing amplification, Racial Tendencies, Ect...

[dkyle]

I'd personally swap extend out for spell focus: evocation at cap. Now blade barrier is inextensible, extend offers nothing to the capped cleric.

Good point. Extend is nice on a melee divine, to help keep Divine Favor and Divine Power up, but not much use on a casting divine.

Perhaps this would be a good guide to introduce Lockania and her free feat swap? It ought to be addressed at some point. It's really a very useful thing to know about, that's kind of obscure.

[dkyle]

Improved Mental Toughness: Adds more SP into a class that is severely deprived of SP. I'd recommend it completely.

It's like a 100 SP at cap. Drop in the bucket. Really not worth it.




Toughness
Mental Toughness
Extend spell
Heighten Spell
Maximize spell
Quicken spell
Improved Mental Toughness
Empower spell



Left out Empower Healing (prereq for Radiant Servant), which is in the original build.

[lopkon]

Mental Toughness doesn't seem very useful to me, rather I would suggest Empower Spell, since if you are going for combat Casting your BB, Cometfall,etc should hurt.

Quicken is not really needed before you reach the Desert and then again, actually it just gets really useful in the last lvls, you can get it later. As mentioned before using it too early may cause a too big SP drain.

Extend Spell is not essentially needed anymore, since it doesnt apply on BB and the other buffs (even short terms) have rather long enough durations later on. On a Human this feat is still viable, but this feat is the one I wouldnt take on a non human.

Spell Penetration is definitely a nice feat and not a useless concept, but just getting one of those feats and even this one just at lvl 18 will leave it to have almost no use without taking more Spell Penetration feats or Past Lifes, if this will be included I would at least say to mention that the matching enhancements are a must have :)

Another useful tip would be that Empower and Maximize Spell Apply on all Cure Spells - which is a nice add to the healing amount, but since it's not always needed it's mostly a nice SP-drain as well. Furthermore you should add that it doesn't apply on Heal or Mass Heal. Speaking of SP Drain- Heighten can get a nice SP-drainer as well.

I would recommend new healer to carry heal and mass moderate wounds scrolls with them, as soon as they are able to pay them. And if you ever get SP problems in healing a quest, try to mostly scroll heal and only use a bit off mana, since once you run out of mana pure Scroll healing mostly won't cut it. However that's more for only a few endgameish quests, so it might not apply for a 101.

For the Skills: I would switch Diplomacy to Balance (or Haggle xP)

[AZgreentea]

For a 101 guide, I think it would be important to mention the ways to target your teammates. Targeting is helpful on an arcane caster, but auto target can still be used. For a Cleric, the only way to target your teammates is manually, unless you use the radiant burst. This means either right clicking on their character, left clicking on their name in the party list, or using the Function keys (F1-F6 for a normal party, F1-F12 for a Raid). Also important to mention about healing would be that the spells are LOS. You cant heal around corners or through object like pillars (which is also one of the ingame tips).

**EDIT
Oh, and the radiant servant SLA can only be used when targeting yourself or nobody (i.e not targeting an ally).

[knightgf]

Left out Empower Healing (prereq for Radiant Servant), which is in the original build.

Whoops, how'd I leave that out? Well, I guess you can replace extend with it...

Oh, and one thing I have to ask: Do we REALLY need all of these active metamagics as feats? While I have played a cleric and have had to juggle metamagics(Meaning I dont need all of them on all of the time), I think a new player would be scared away if they saw how many of their feats composed of metamagics.

[FuzzyDuck81]

if you're fighting undead, and need to heal yourself.. remember to select yourself first or it'll be used as an attack spell on the undead instead - that one caught me out a couple of times when i first started.

[Mellifera]

Nice start. This is an excellent template for a cleric who can heal AND cast offensively. Some notes tho:

Dip, Balance, and Jump: I don't think Diplomacy is a must have. All three of them are viable options for your secondary skill. You should say Concentration is a must (and why!), and then give a break down on what the other three are good for.

Feats: Dump Mental Toughness. Feats are tight on a cleric, and you can get extra sp through the Energy of the Zealot line. You could fit in Empower (or take it instead of Empower Healing) or Greater Spell Pen or Spell Focus. Quicken I would take much later; you can live without it until Blade Barrier and Heal. Extend is also optional post Spell Pass: it could be taken at low level for better buffage and swapped out via the free feat swap from running Lockania's quest.

Enhancements: No mention of Radiant Servant? Seeing as its the only PRE and how it's so good, I'd think there should be a few words about it.


Also, I hope you eventually write a guide on how to be a successful melee cleric. After all, not everyone wants to stand back and just sling spells. Some of us like to smash things in the face while throwing the heals!

[KingOfCheese]

Sometimes the best healing is the result of avoiding damage in the first place--command, greater command, comet fall, and other spells that temporarily disable opponents often make the most efficient use of your spell points.

[dkyle]

Oh, and one thing I have to ask: Do we REALLY need all of these active metamagics as feats? While I have played a cleric and have had to juggle metamagics(Meaning I dont need all of them on all of the time), I think a new player would be scared away if they saw how many of their feats composed of metamagics.

You mean should a new player build with so many metamagics, or should the game be changed to make metamagics easier to use?

There's not much we can do with the game as it is now but suck it up and take the metamagics, and do our best to deal with them. A Cleric without Empowered Healing, Quicken, and Maximize isn't much of a healer. Without Empower, not much of a nuker. Without Heighten, not much of a CCer.

But supposedly we'll be getting some way to assign metamagics to specific spells, instead of having to use toggles.

[FordyTwo]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'm combing through the advice right now and will update the original post a little later with contribution mentions, as always. :)

[FlyingTurtle]

Extend and MT aren't really wasted on a newbie cleric: they increase the margin of error for someone not used to mana conservation. Considering the alternatives: Empower, Power attack(?) etc, they're ok as cushions for a healbot.

[TheDjinnFor]

===Ability Point Buy===

I don't really like the low charisma on this toon... might I suggest just ditching jump and balance as viable skills (clerics are renowned as horrible jumpers...) and going with 12 cha to 8 int? Normally I would like to see 10 int on a cleric, but a human build gets one free skill so I'm comfortable saying that you don't need the int.


===Skills===

23 Concentration, 23 Diplomacy is okay for a cleric. Personally I would go 22 Con 12 Balance 1 Tumble, or eat a +2 Int tome at lvl 7, but that's just me.


===Feats===

Your current feat layout is more for an evoker/CC cleric than a 'classic healer', though I think that's a good thing. Emphasizing that clerics can make good damage dealers using spells like Blade Barrier or use CC spells to mitigate damage is important for new clerics so that they know to try and step out of their little healbot box they may be used to in other games.

I would personally pick this progression:

1) Toughness
1) Extend
3) Empower Healing
6) Maximize
9) Empower
12) Quicken
15) Spell Penetration
18) Heighten

Edit: Someone mentioned Shield Mastery > Extend. I suppose that's a viable option.

Quicken and Heighten are really end-game metas in my opinion; I would like to see Emp Heal, Maximize, and Empower on the cleric before they get Blade Barrier, so that not only are their heals pretty strong (if they need to be) but they can start nailing those high damage numbers as soon as they get BB. Once they get into the middling levels they're going to need quicken to cast spells while being hit; their concentration and diplomacy should be able to handle it before then. Once you start hitting the upper levels, Heighten becomes important to hit some of the insta kills and other spells that clerics get; newbie clerics are often not comfortable using their mana for this purpose (which is why I don't see the need for it earlier) but in my opinion it is mana well-spent as you get used to how much mana you have.

Mental toughness has already been addressed as a fairly weak feat, only giving 105 SP at end game.


===Enhancements===

Some nice starting enhancements, but here's a breakdown like the one I provided to the Fighter 101, including the Cleric Prestige Enhancement, Radiant Servant, as well as some other odds and ends.

A good healing cleric will want powerful healing spells; Cleric Life Magic grants a 10% boost to positive and negative energy spells per tier (a very valuable effect), while Cleric Prayer of Life and Cleric Prayer of Incredible Life grant you a small chance to perform a much more powerful healing spell whenever you cast it; these are not so essential but you can take more ranks if you'd like.
-Cleric Life Magic I to IV
-Cleric Prayer of Life I to II
-Cleric Prayer of Incredible Life I to II

Clerics have an interesting ability called Turn Undead which can be somewhat effective at expelling weaker undead creatures. They can use that ability a number of times per day, and some of their enhancements require the cleric to expend Turn Undead uses; Divine Vitality, a spell that restores a small amount of mana to a fellow caster, is one such enhancement while Divine Healing, which restores a moderate amount of health over time, is another.
-Cleric Divine Vitality I to II
-Cleric Divine Healing I to II

Clerics are empowered by their faith in the divine, and the Sovereign Host is one such god; as a follower, you'll gain proficiency with longswords (or the ability to pass that power to an ally) as well as the Unyielding Sovereignty enhancement, a potent 'last resort' healing ability that restores a character to full health as well as removing several negative effects.
-Follower of the Sovereign Host
-Unyielding Sovereignty

Radiant Servant is a powerful prestige enhancement that augments your healing and damage-dealing abilities and allows you to expend some uses of your Turn Undead ability for a potent Healing Burst and a useful Aura of Healing. You'll also recharge Turn Undead uses at a slow rate. Both the Improved Turning and Improved Healing enhancements are required to unlock this (as are some of the enhancements taken above).
-Improved Turning I
-Improved Heal I to II
-Cleric Radiant Servant I to II

These enhancements will boost the clerics ability scores, health, and spellpoints by a reasonable amount; take more ranks if you'd like.
-Cleric Wisdom I to II
-Cleric Charisma I
-Human Adaptability: Wisdom
-Racial Toughness I to II
-Cleric Energy of the Zealot I to II


If you have a one-to-two sentence tip or advice for newbie clerics, do share. We'll have an "Every cleric should know ..." section at the beginning of the guide where we'll spotlight some helpful tips.

Here's some:
-Damage mitigation & prevention is almost always better than patching up the cuts and bruises after the fact; find a few good buffs to hit up your allies with and use spells like Soundburst & Command (at lower levels), Chaos Hammer & Holy Smite (at mid levels) and Cometfall & Greater Command (at higher levels) to stop enemies before they hurt your teammates.
-Target yourself with F1, and the rest of your party with F2-F6. This is important for when you want to heal or buff specific people. You can also click on their name in the listing to the left; this is particularly useful when there are many people in your group.
-Once you get Blade Barrier, you're golden; it's a potent and long-lasting area of effect spell that does a lot of damage with Maximize and Empower on.

[pjstechie]

There are times when you will need to completely focus on healing (and with experience you can reduce how often this is true). Don't be afraid to pull out a weapon or cast a few spells, but also don't be afraid of ceasing all activities other than keeping people alive.

I also find keeping an alternative hot bar that is loaded with every cure spell in the book for spamming situations. Switch primary hotbars, mash buttons.

[Phidius]

Skills
Concentration > Balance > Jump > Diplomacy. At higher levels, heavy armor will be replaced with ballroom gowns, but having a good balance (I aim for 40 with a +15 item and buffs) can keep you on your feet. Jump doesn't really need to be high... 4 ranks + 4 (GH) + 30 (spell) + 2 (str) = capped out skill.

Diplomacy can be useful for specific NPC conversations, but is by no means necessary.

Feats
I agree with losing Mental Toughness and Extend for Greater Spell Pen and Empower.

Tips
Use the buddy system when you're starting out - at the start of each quest, pick a "buddy". If things start to go pear-shaped, focus on keeping that person up, and let the rest go to hell. As you get better, add in more people until you can keep the entire party standing.

If your "buddy" keeps making himself unavailable, feel free to choose a new "buddy".

[nat_1]

-Every 101 should say under the enhancements that you can check "show unavailable". This is key for seeing what things do.

-Cleric 101 needs to have a small section devoted to explaining what you can do with turn uses. This is not clear until you start digging around in the enhancements and is a big part of being a cleric.

-I don't think you need quicken until late game, I think Mental Toughness does not have a big enough payday and is debated enough that it should come with a YMMV disclaimer rather than an endorsement.


There is a (valid) feeling amongst vets that a simple healbot does not live up to the cleric's potential. Without expecting new players to min/max out of the gate, I've heard this explanation that I think is pretty good:

Let's say that a cleric can heal, melee, and cast offensively.

If you imagine that a pure healer is built with these priorities:
Heal 100%
Melee 0%
Offensive 0%

With a fighter/barb and wiz/sorc representing 100% of the other two categories. A cleric is never going to hit 100% in the other two categories, however, this is not something that has to be an even split. If you back off healing a bit you can potentially end up with:

Heal 90%
Melee 60%
Offensive 0%

These numbers are plucked out of my, um, out of the air. I'm just trying to express the idea that a slight reduction in healing can produce modest gains in other areas. Sacrificing those top two points of WIS gets you 6 to pay into strength or dex, which can push your strength to usable numbers so you can hit things.

If someone doesn't want to heal the party, they should question why they are rolling a cleric (soloable clogue battleclerics are 102). However, once the party healing is taken care of it's ok to pick one other area and build to be able to contribute to it.

The levels you pick to balance these 3 categories will define what kind of cleric you are. Also, trying to do all 3 on a 28 pt build with no gear is something that should probably be cautioned against.

[Mellifera]

-Target yourself with F1, and the rest of your party with F2-F6. This is important for when you want to heal or buff specific people. You can also click on their name in the listing to the left; this is particularly useful when there are many people in your group.


If you take nothing else from this thread, please include that. I've run with so many newbie clerics that don't realize you can cycle through the party with the Fkeys. I think I was playing for 3 years before I realized I could click on a party members name to target them!

[Kourier]

Early cleric grouping: make sure the party stays within heal range. Pick out the best members of your team and hang with them. People who go running off should be prepared on their own - you have no obligation to endanger yourself by chasing them into suicidal situations.

If someone is repeatedly posing problems (runs away, complains, dies often), you may just want to carry their soul stone for a while.

Invest in some wands! Conserve your sp by using wands between fights.

You don't have to top everybody off - it's ok if the red bar isn't ENTIRELY full.

Horde your sp pots. Use them only if you must.

I woul recommend picking up both spell penetration feats and 2 ranks of the enhancement. First life cleerics need as muchh help as they can get.

Mobs will be easier to deal with if you understand weak points: casters have low fort and reflex saves. Melees have low reflex and will saves. Rangers/Rouges have low fort and will.

Blade barrier: This 6th level spell deals damage to those entering and exiting the blades. Run in circles around the blades for best results.

Radiant servant: The first enhancement gives you a burst which damages undead, heals allies, removes stat damage and negative levels. Remember to target yourself before using. The second enhancement gives you an aura which heals people standing in it. Very useful.

Against undead it gets hard to turn them so just Radiant burst them.

Heal and mass heal are ONLY affected by empower healing. Cure spells can be maxed and empowered as well.

[Doganpc]

Every cleric should know: That other players can expect too much from you, don't take it personally.

Dogan
One for the failed PUG clerics.

[Chette]

• STR … 10
• DEX … 8
• CON … 14
• INT … 10
• WIS … 18
• CHA … 10

I would move the 2 Str buy points into Cha.



===Skills===

At character creation, max out Concentration and Diplomacy, then put two points into Tumble (netting you a 1.0 rank). Use the remaining two points on Jump. At each level-up, keep Concentration and Diplomacy maxed, using the remaining points to get Jump to rank 10. Once Jump is at rank 10, or while you're getting it to rank 10, show some love to the Balance skill.



No need for diplomacy really, if they are playing like a healer, they won't get aggro. If they are offensive casting they want aggro so that things will move through blade barriers. Max balance instead, any remaining points into jump (it's nice to have as high as possible even unbuffed).



• 3) Extend Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells with durations last twice as long, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

You guys need to stop saying this. The correct description would be Non-offensive spells with a duration last twice as long. There are very few non-offensive spells worth extending, unless you are a melee cleric. Extend is completely wasted on a casting build. Swap for empower spell.



• 12) Heighten Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, your spells are raised to the highest spell level your character can cast, making them more difficult to resist, but increasing their Spell Point (SP) cost.

I like heighten, but is probably more useful at 15 or 18. Not really a big deal, just worth mentioning.



• 15) Mental Toughness – Increases your maximum spell points by 10 at first level, and 5 Spell Points (SP) for each additional level.


I prefer spell focus evocation, at least mention it as an option.

• 18) Spell Penetration – Adds +2 to your caster level check for defeating spell resistance.



===Enhancements===


Nothing wrong with what you've listed, but please make sure to mention the prestige enhancement, what it does, and what you need to do in order to take it. Make sure they know they will need empower healing at or before level 6.

Finally, please include a description of some of the more useful spells. Mention the difference between crowd control spells (e.g. soundburst, command, symbol of stunning/persuasion), single target offensive spells (e.g. divine punishment) and mass damage spells (e.g. blade barrier, cometfall). Spell selection is one of the most important parts of playing a caster, so it deserves a little attention.

[danotmano1998]

One basic point to address that isn't mentioned.
Clerics are bricks. They typically don't have jump, nor can they haste/exp retreat.(Without a clickie, that is)

For this reason, I take a Least Dragonmark of Passage for a free level based exp. retreat, and I get jump as high as I can.

[Trowa88]

Looked through and if this has been mentioned and I missed it, I apologise.

Keep an eye out for superior ardor clickies, they give an extra boost to your healing spells compared to any kind of superior devotion or potency (75% increase compared to devotion and potency).

They come in potion form from certain vendors and if you can spare the money they're well worth it.

The clickies last for 3 minutes and have 3 charges each, they can be crafted if you go down that route.

(I think the description on them is still outdated, ignore it)

[Ancient]

Not only do you need to add a section on radiant servant, you should include the following details:

* Meta-magics do work on the burst
* burst targeting is bugged, the best way to reliably perform a burst is to target yourself
* Raising empowered healing to 75% makes mass cure light wounds a very nice spell

I agree that clerics are too feat starved to recommend extend or mental toughness.

If you are building a caster based cleric guide, be up front about it and include a section on offensive spells.

I personally would like to see you include a melee oriented build section with a section on what offensive spells are still worth taking.

It might also be worth including a section on the interactions between heal/mass heal and meta-magics. The fact that empower/maximize do not apply to heal spells means that there is more to meta-magic management than just turn them all on and forget. For example:

* While in offense mode (Max on, Empower on), a heal spell may be cheaper than a cure light wounds spell.
* In raid healing mode, turning max and empower off but leaving empowered healing on means that mass cure light wounds can be a nice patch heal.

If you want to include a section on splash builds and AC builds, I'd be glad to provide you a starting point.

[Junts]

I'd strongly urge the dropping of int and cha to 8 to support a 14 str: a 14 str cleric can melee acceptably up until level 10-12 with a decent weapon, and its a huge advantage to a new player to be able to do that.

a single extra turn undead or the like is hardly worth it, and as a human they already have 2 skill points/lv for jump+concentration.

At low levels, a cleric with ok full plate, a shield, and any kind of decent weapon can solo nearly anything between their acceptable melee ability and self-healing. That won't last, but it will get them through the ranges where grouping is by far most frustrating if they have problems, and they probably will - without access to consumable healing (ie wands), its very hard to heal other people, and if they join groups that expect them to they will be very frustrated in the harbor.

On the other hand, with a +3 full plate, a +3 heavy shield, and a +1 flaming weapon, they could probably solo waterworks on normal at level 4.

[Valiance]

Looks fine for what it is, a group friendly cleric not focused on soloing.

However, I concur wholeheartedly with those who recommend dropping mental toughness for empower. It is an absolute no brainer. Make that change and this build is totally fine.

V

[Danmor]

What Junts said.

Taking a least dragonmark to get the effect of a clicky is an utter waste. Just do Korthos and collect some exp. retreat clickies. Then go and do Chrono until you have the goggles. Much easier, much less cost.

Every cleric should know that there exist pots for curse, poison, lesser resto and remove disease. They conserve sp and spell slots.

Every cleric can melee at low levels.

Every cleric should be prepared to let people die if they run too far away.

Every cleric should be aware of the power of offensive spells.

[Nerate_Mireth]

Not sure if this has been said, but some good advice:

In groups, especially in raids, learn how to use the F-Keys for healing. It goes alot smoother than trying to click on someone or their name.

Also, Cleric's need to be good at multi-tasking. It can sometimes make the difference between success and a party wipe.

[Flavilandile]

Ok, here are my two cents.
I'll do it undear each relevant part quoted :




If you have a one-to-two sentence tip or advice for newbie clerics, do share. We'll have an "Every cleric should know ..." section at the beginning of the guide where we'll spotlight some helpful tips.



As a Cleric you are not a healbot, you have the ability to kill either by melee or with spells as well as the ability to heal, don't let yourself be cornered only in the heal part.



==Template: Classic Healing Cleric==

This template provides a path to creating a classic cleric – one that specializes in crowd control and healing. Know that while the classic-healing-cleric can be played solo, this build performs best with hirelings, or with fellow DDO players.


Clerics are really solo friendly, but having a target... erm, a drone, erm a hireling with you makes things even easier.
As for grouping, remember the above : don't limit yourself to the healbot job, you can do a lot more.





===Ability Point Buy===

Human is the racial choice with this template, both for their extra feat at level 1 and increased skill point gain. This template uses the 28 point build in DDO, if you've unlocked the 32 point build, consider using the extra 4 points for CON or STR.

• STR … 10
• DEX … 8
• CON … 14
• INT … 10
• WIS … 18
• CHA … 10

• Ability Point Buys: Every four levels put your ability point buy into Wisdom (WIS).



That looks decent. With a 32 pointer you put the other points in either Str or Cha.
( STR for more Melee orientation and Charisma for more Turns )



===Skills===

At character creation, max out Concentration and Diplomacy, then put two points into Tumble (netting you a 1.0 rank). Use the remaining two points on Jump. At each level-up, keep Concentration and Diplomacy maxed, using the remaining points to get Jump to rank 10. Once Jump is at rank 10, or while you're getting it to rank 10, show some love to the Balance skill.


Max Concentration, always. The rest will depend of what you want to do... but Jump and Balance are really useful.
IMHO the rest is just fluff, and unless you have points to waste ( with 10 Int you won't ).




===Feats===

We recommend that new players – and really, most players – take the Toughness feat at level one. Beyond this piece of advice, our feat selection for this template focuses on opening up later enhancements and beefing-up healing power in the levels beyond 10.

• 1) Toughness – Increases Hit Points (HP) at first level and provides additional HP for each new level, allowing a player to take the Racial Toughness enhancement. Taking Toughness results in such a significant HP boost that it's practically mandatory.

• 1) Empower Healing Spell – While this metamagic feat is active healing spells are 50% more effective, but consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 3) Extend Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells with durations last twice as long, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 6) Quicken Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells cast twice as fast and cannot be interrupted by enemy attacks, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 9) Maximize Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, damage (and healing!) spells deal double damage (and healing!), but they consume 25 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 12) Heighten Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, your spells are raised to the highest spell level your character can cast, making them more difficult to resist, but increasing their Spell Point (SP) cost.

• 15) Mental Toughness – Increases your maximum spell points by 10 at first level, and 5 Spell Points (SP) for each additional level.

• 18) Spell Penetration – Adds +2 to your caster level check for defeating spell resistance.



Oh dear.
I will agree on the Empower Healing, Extend and eventually on the Toughness Feats.
Skip the other metamagic feats, except maybe quicken if you are really fond of chain casting ( in melee condition ) mass heals. ( I live quite well in Epics without it )

A cleric is a feat Starved Class. That means you don't have many feats make them count.
I don't have any real suggestion on what to do with those feats, it's all going to depend on what you want to achieve : a more magic using oriented cleric will take some Mental Toughness and Spell Penetration, while a more melee oriented Cleric is going to take more Toughness, and some melee feats.




===Enhancements===

Because enhancements in DDO can be reset for an in-game fee this section of the classic healer template will offer suggestions, but not strict guidelines. There really isn't a secret when it comes to choosing the right enhancements. It's a matter of being economical and choosing enhancements that offer the most for their value.

Here's an example selection of some good cleric enhancements:

• Cleric Life Magic I (Grants a 10% increase to the effectiveness of your healing and negative energy spells.)

• Cleric Divine Vitality I (Activate this ability to restore 13 to 22 Spell Points (SP) to another character. Consumes a use of your turn undead ability.)

• Follower of the Sovereign Host (Grants a +1 bonus to hit with longswords, the favored weapon of the clergy of the Sovereign Host.) The longsword bonus is not generally very useful, but this enhancement is a prerequisite for Unyielding Sovereignty, which will be discussed in a bit.

• Cleric Wisdom I (Grants a +1 increase to your Wisdom score.)

• Racial Toughness I (Grants you 10 additional hit points if you have the Toughness feat.)

• Unyielding Sovereignty (Activate this ability to fully heal Hit Point (HP) damage done to an ally and remove several negative effects, restoring them to a completely healthy status.) Although Unyielding Sovereignty has a long cooldown, it can be a great “last resort” way to keep a high-hit-point ally alive, and remove most ailments!

Go for Radiant Servant II, that's a must have. It gives you a 1 minute 30 second healing aura that can be devoted/ardored. Thus you heal every tick ( 6 sec IIRC ) between 8 and 80 HP ( in area of effect ) around you. With a decent number of turn undead ( 17 for exemple, not a tough number to reach ) you can keep that on for more than 90 minutes...
Cleric Wisdom III ( the IV is too expensive ), and Energy of the Zealot IV are great things to have too.
The usual Toughness if you can take it is something worth it.

[justagame]

Understanding that this is a beginners' guide, and not a guide for someone who is going to be spending 98% of their time running epics, I'd offer the following:

On a generalist cleric, I'd put at least a couple more points into STR, take them from INT. As someone else pointed out, you can have at least acceptable self-defense or contributory melee capability in the early levels.

I'd second the recommendations for a section on the uses for turn undeads:

Turning undead (can sometimes be useful in the early levels, depending on CHA and enhancements)
DV's
Divine might (useful to enhance melee ability, but need to mention the base CHA requirement)
RS Bursts
RS Aura
Other (divine cleansing, healing, light) -- much less useful than the other uses these days, but having niche usefulness (e.g., divine healing being able to heal through obstacles)

I'd also devote some wording to RS abilities, what modifies/ehnances the burst and aura, and the prereqs.

[dragonmane]

Clerics are many things, when you roll a cleric make sure you know what you are wanting to be. There are battle clerics, healbots, mixed and there are clerics out just for fun.

Oh, Turning undead is great for any undead that is lower than you, but Divine Vitality is actually nice to have.

[darkrhavyn]

My one liner:

Every cleric should know: while you can and should contribute DPS, whether by spell or melee, any cleric CAN heal, and should be prepared to do so when the kobolds hit the fan!

General thoughts:
Overall its a pretty decent build for a basic beginner healing specd cleric. Everyone has made some great points about things like not needing quicken until end game, can drop int to 8 and forgo diplomacy, but most of those are tweaks to the character imo.

I would suggest that for healing a base 16 wis is enough and using the extra points in either CHA or STR. CHA, imo,may be better for one reason....turn undead, which is what is consumed with the radiant servant PRE for healing auras and bursts, are determined by the CHA score, not the WIS. A beginniner will get more and be more helpful to a group with more auras and bursts than the +1 to their DC's and the < 40 sp that an 18 wis over a 16 wis will give them. Yes, your turns regenerate with time, but having a couple of extra can be lifesaving, literally, in some quests.

To me, the feat selection is reasonable....lots of people forego Mental Toughness on their clerics to up spell pen, add greater spell focus.....and they have very good points. But for a healing spec'd cleric, most of your crowd control hits just fine without the added feats and having an extra 105 is probably about the same usefulness. As well, at higher levels the feat can be easily swapped out for spell pen, etc if people find that with their play style, they dont need the extra sp, but would like the spell pen etc

[Jubbers]

It's been said a few times and as a cleric player I'll post my observations.

My current feat list is:
Empower, Empowered healing, Maximize, extend, mental toughness, quicken, toughness and heighten

I find that heighten is more or less useless, yea the couple of pts in DC are great, but at end game spell pen is where I suffer. Couple of wiz past lives an item and some AP would fix that, but I'm not willing to have my primary character TR'ing till the cows come home.

From my feat list:
Toughness: is a great feat make sure you have it as a dead guy can't heal or raise.
Empower/Maximize: useful for damaging spells and while solo I love these feats, well that and on bosses too.
Extend: becomming more and more useless great at low levels, but at cap it's really lame except for VoD and that raid isn't all that tough.
Mental Toughness: taken before the pre existed, the extra 110SP on a cleric is nice. 3 more heal spells ect...
Quicken: Totally required, mass heal is so slow and this makes it usable and non-interuptable
Heighten: Figured I would need the DC's but not really worth it.

If I was going to redo my cleric here is how I would take the feasts and when.
H - Toughness (more HP = good)
1st - Extend (needed as ever lvl you add your buffs last 2 more min)
3rd - Mental Toughness (more SP are good)
6th - Empowered Healing (prereq for the pre)
9th - Empower (at this lvl empowerd healing is better and cheaper, but BB is comming)
Feat Swap - around 10 or so I would swap out extend for Extra Turning (+4 turns are great for bursts and auras are comming)
12th - Maximize (I would take this before quicken as the dam at this lvl can be overcome by concentration)
15th - Quicken (dam is getting bigger and 2 lvls you get mass heal)
18th - this is the wild card I would get imp mental toughness as I like more SP, but more turns again is an option as well as spell pen and evocation DC's or augmented summoning if you like pets

Skills are more or less unimportant - having tumble at 1 when in armor and shield is nice (or robes)

Attribute layout - as a 1st life cleric without hgih lvl twink and support and a 28pt build I would do this:
Str 14
Dex 8
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 16
Cha 14

it'll give you turns that can help through the low lvls and a str that you can easily melee with. If you have 32 pts then drop str to 12 and increase wis to 18, but at 28 pts this is very viable.

Good guild over all and nice posts.

[PNellesen]

Some comments/suggestions:


Howdy! Our next 101 class guide is for the cleric, and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Notes of Interest:


We have yet to add a robust "Enhancement" section to the template. If you've got a personal load-out for healing/cc clerics that you've found useful, feel free to share that as well -- and thanks in advance!



Since it looks like you're focusing this guide on Healing/CC clerics (not a bad idea for a new player, imo) I just want to reinforce what others have said:

1 - Drop INT, Up STR. At low levels, you don't get much in the way of CC, and you solo a few things. Need to be able to do some melee, at least early on.
2 - I would probably swap the order of the feats around a bit, put Maximize (or maybe Empower) at level 6 (since it affects RSI Burst, which you can also get at level 6), Spell Pen. at level 9, and Quicken at level 12 or 15. Save Heighten for level 18.
3- Explain the free feat swap, how to obtain it, and why you would want to swap Extend for another feat at some point (I would suggest some time after level 15 or so).

One-liner: Learn to use wands and scrolls for single-target healing early on, save SP for crowd control, damage spells, and mass cures/heals (when you get them)

[Partydeluxe]

Number one tip for any healer, newbie or more experienced:

You can't heal stupid.


For an official guide perhaps better stated by Phidius:



Tips
Use the buddy system when you're starting out - at the start of each quest, pick a "buddy". If things start to go pear-shaped, focus on keeping that person up, and let the rest go to hell (fend for themselves?). As you get better, add in more people until you can keep the entire party standing.

If your "buddy" keeps making himself unavailable, feel free to choose a new "buddy".

[dennison_brillo]

do let anyone tell you how to play your cleric. Any well built cleric can deal damage and heal.

[Morlen]

Further comment on Feat:Extend Spell.

It's hard to say not to include this feat in a beginner's guide for cleric. During the early levels having your resists and other buffs doubled in duration is an incredibly useful tool. Once you are around level 10, usually the need for duration to be longer starts to dwindle. As a pure 20 cleric, there is almost no reason to keep extend in your feat selection.

Since this IS a beginner's guide I can understand the need to have extend in the list, and I am not sure if putting a note mentioning that it would be a feat to use as a swap out later on would be practical advice for a beginner's guide either. (Feat swap isn't exactly an important part of learning to play the game/play a class.)

I'm not sure if that input is really helpful in any way, but I figured I'd through my 2 cents in there.

[MoonRunner]

* Now that extend no longer extends the good offensive spells it is useless. There are few instances were a 20 min buff isn't long enough and extend just seems to be a waisted feat for those few instances it is actually helpfull. At best this feat might be usefull at lower levels but talk to fred to fix this b4 it gets too expensive.

* Diplomacy IS your friend. If you are new enough to need to read this than you will most likely benifit from Diplomacy. My personal experiance with this is when I did a lesser resurection about level 14 or so. I removed the 2 rogue levels making it pure cleric and adjusted Stats and added Diplomacy. Before I did this I could stand back while the group went in and do nothing but think small and would still pull agro. After the resurection I can be the first one in and still seldome pull agro and I don't even click the Diplo button.

* Fortification, false life, Potancy, spell pen and devotion are items you want to Constantly be looking to upgrade.

* the Con in this build is really higher than it needs to be. You can get by with 12 though might be a little better with 14. This gives you some points to go to Dex to help you reflex save so you don't take as much damage in the first place. Save the 16 con for a 36 point build or a battle cleric.

[Saaluta]

Cleric wisdom from one of the original Khyber clerics:

Extend Feat is now useless past level 10, if you get it at level 3, plan to exchange it with Fred at this level.

Clerics are not nannybots, you can command things, you can do great damage to undead and other creatures with light spells, you have cc spells, damage spells, and healing spells...use them all to help yourself and your party to best advantage.

Saal :)

[JollySwagMan]

My basic play tips for Clerics:

Spells must be prepared by going to the Character sheet, selecting the Spells tab, dragging spells to the prepared spell list, then dragged down to a hotbar slot for use.

F1-6-12 keys for targeting party members. You can also click on players names' on the player list if using free mouse.

Press T to toggle, or hold R-Mouse between Free Mouse vs Mouselook. (I prefer using Mouselook 90% of the time, but switch to Free Mouse when buffing at the start of a quest, or when raid healing from outside of the combat)

Jump before casting a spell while on the move, this helps you to avoid having your spells interrupted by enemy attacks. It also slows you down less than casting a spell while running. Having a friendly Wizard/Ranger prepare the Jump spell for you helps immensely, or if you have 75 House P favour there is a 30 minute buff available.

Spells that have multiple options such as Resist Energy can have their individual options dragged to hotbar slots to make casting the appropriate resist less cumbersome.

Heavy Armor provides great AC in the lower levels, but around 10-12 onwards it won't provide much protection without heavy investment into all the obscure AC bonuses - switching to robes will make it easier for your character to dodge attacks and use spells such as Blade Barrier. I highly recommend the Elfcrafted Robe from Gianthold

Take the Archivist's Necklace from Misery's Peak! The Devoted Heart set is outdated as soon as the player leaves Korthos.

Use appropriate spells depending on the enemy you are facing. Eg. most melee types have horrible Will saves, so Command/Hold/Curse type of spells work well. Casters tend to have low Fort saves, so Soundburst tends to be effective. Clerics don't get many good Reflex save type of spells until Blade Barrier/Cometfall though. The Curse spell has had its spellpoint cost reduced to 10, and is pretty versatile.

Communicate with party members to ensure that your buffs aren't redundant.

When shrining, try to use up any extra SP/turns you have first by healing/buffing players that have already/aren't going to shrine. I prefer to shrine after Wizards that buff party members, using up the last of my Divine Vitalities on them.

When raid healing in laggy situations, you might try turning your back to the boss, reducing the amount of data your client has to handle.

---

Build tips:

16 Wis is plenty for a starter Cleric, allowing more points into Charisma/Strength. For a 28 point human build who wants a solid support build capable of soloing quests at level I would recommend the following:

True Neutral, or Neutral Good - True Neutral allows use of all Cleric spells, Stability items and less damage in later stages of the game. Neutral Good is handy for allowing use of items with a Good requirement, such as Pure Good weapons.

12 Str - sufficient for decent melee in low-mid levels, and makes the character less vulnerable to Trips/str damage
8 Dex - try and group up with Rogues to disable traps, they can also gain sneak attacks from some of your spells
15 Con - Human Con enhancement opens Racial Toughness III
10 Int - Max Concentration, 2 points into Tumble at creation, and half points into Jump/Balance while levelling.
16 Wis - plenty for most divine offensive casting, provided that one uses appropriate spells.
12 Cha - Turn enhancements provide a Cleric with various support abilities that don't depend upon spellpoints/wands. Also turning undead is awesome in the lower levels.

Levelups into Wis, using Cleric Wisdom/Human Wisdom enhancements to correct an odd Wis score.

Feats: Toughness (1), Least Dragonmark of Passage* (1), Extend* (3), Empower Healing (6), At level 8 pay for a feat swap (http://ddowiki.com/page/Fred) (1 Imperfect Dragonshard, 5k plat) and swap Extend for Empower, Maximise (9), Quicken (12), Heighten (15), Spell Pen (18). Do the Lockania quest for a free feat swap and swap out the Least Dragonmark when the character has 30% Strider boots.

Skills: Max Concentration, 2 points into Tumble at creation, and half points into Jump/Balance while levelling.

[DoctorWhofan]

Clerics roles change from group to group and from solo to group. Mostly, you will be asked to heal. Doesn't mean that is all you do. But it is your primary job. Just keep some SP just in case yuou have to save the party.

Clerics are the best healer AND buffer class in the game, hands down. Expect that people will want you to do just that, heal/buff.

42, with radiant servent, the CHA needs to be a little higher. A 14 CON on a 28pt. build newbie cleric is fine.

[SirValentine]

• STR … 10
• DEX … 8
• CON … 14
• INT … 10
• WIS … 18
• CHA … 10

• Ability Point Buys: Every four levels put your ability point buy into Wisdom (WIS).


This is spot on, maximum Wis, 6 points in Con, the rest to taste. I can see good arguments for slightly increasing or slightly decreasing all of Str, Int, and Cha.



At character creation, max out Concentration and Diplomacy, then put two points into Tumble (netting you a 1.0 rank). Use the remaining two points on Jump. At each level-up, keep Concentration and Diplomacy maxed, using the remaining points to get Jump to rank 10. Once Jump is at rank 10, or while you're getting it to rank 10, show some love to the Balance skill.


Maximum Concentration and a full rank of Tumble are both exactly right.

Diplomacy? Really? What for? Having aggro is fine, you can heal yourself a lot more easily than just about any other class! And Jump is okay if you have extra points to toss around, but Balance is far more important. Between Str-boosting and skill-boosting buffs, spells and items, your Jump will be fine. But being knocked down will kill you fast, you need to be able to get up quickly.



• 1) Toughness – Increases Hit Points (HP) at first level and provides additional HP for each new level, allowing a player to take the Racial Toughness enhancement. Taking Toughness results in such a significant HP boost that it's practically mandatory.

• 1) Empower Healing Spell – While this metamagic feat is active healing spells are 50% more effective, but consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 3) Extend Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells with durations last twice as long, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 6) Quicken Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells cast twice as fast and cannot be interrupted by enemy attacks, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 9) Maximize Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, damage (and healing!) spells deal double damage (and healing!), but they consume 25 additional Spell Points (SP).

• 12) Heighten Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, your spells are raised to the highest spell level your character can cast, making them more difficult to resist, but increasing their Spell Point (SP) cost.


Your feat CHOICES are good here, but your feat ORDER, not so much.

Empower Healing is not cost-effective at level 1. Move it to level 3 or level 6.

Extend is a better choice at level 1, to make those 1 min per level buff spells be more useful.

Quicken is very important to have by mid- to high-level, but level 6 seems early. I'd say 9 or 12.

Maximize (and/or Empower) are good to have earlier, to power up the Positive Energy Burst acquired at level 6 with Radiant Servant I.

Heighten is another must-have for end-game, but not as useful early. I'd push it to 15.



• 15) Mental Toughness – Increases your maximum spell points by 10 at first level, and 5 Spell Points (SP) for each additional level.

• 18) Spell Penetration – Adds +2 to your caster level check for defeating spell resistance.


Okay, here's where I have to disagree with your choice. Mental Toughness? On a feat-starved class like Cleric that doesn't need it as a pre-requisite for anything? I think you'd be far better served with either Empower (taken earlier, with Quicken & Heighten shifted later), or Greater Spell Penetration (at 18, with Spell Penetration at 15).

For enhancements, you are missing Radiant Servant! This is so powerful, it's a must-have for every Cleric, at least until other Cleric PrEs get released.

Also, at least the first rank of Wand and Scroll Mastery enhancement is a no-brainer. +25% for only 1 AP? Yes, please! Some people like to take even more ranks, but they get more expensive for less payoff. The first rank, though, should be a given.

[siver]

A few things I think are worth mentioning:

First, even with a 10 strength, a cleric can still contribute in melee combat at low to mid levels. So, find a nice longsword, use the Sovereign Host enhancement for proficiency (and here you said it was useless), and swing it a little. This will allow you to save the spell points you might have used zapping things dead. Just remember to keep an eye on the health bars of the party members (or you, if you are alone) and heal whenever needed. This can also teach you how to do multiple things at once, which is always helpful for a cleric.

This cleric is built to focus on spellcasting, so a brief discussion of the useful spells might be helpful. Command (and later Greater Command), Soundburst, and Cometfall all stop enemies from attacking, so you have less healing to do. Divine Punishment and Blade Barrier are currently the two best damage spells in the game, but most other cleric damage spells tend to be less impressive when compared to wizard/sorcerer spells. Buff spells worth mentioning are: Resist Energy (every class capable of casting this should have it prepared), Freedom of Movement (immunity to holds, webs, grease, and other things, but not trips) Deathward (No more instant death or level drain, but watch out for beholders) and Prayer (+1 to just about everything is nice, but the duration is short).

I personally would avoid discussing items, beyond mentioning a devotion/potency or ardor item (which can be crafted rather easily now, if you want to include a shout to the new crafting system) and a power/wizardry item. I'd rather teach how to manage your SP bar before mentioning there are bunches of items that can be used to supplement or replace it.

[sirdanile]

Honestly i'd bump quicken spell up to 15 or 18, drop extend for Shield Mastery because a percent-based reduction on incoming damage is extremely useful for survival, and put mental toughness down closer to the beginning.

[Enoach]

Tips:


Never chase someone to cure/heal/buff
Do not use SP to cure/heal between fights - Turn-ins and found wands work for this
Spells and Wands/Scrolls have seperate timers
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
Extended Buffs are not always necessary



Note on the Extend Feat:
Clerics only have one offensive spell that Extend did work on that now it does not, that was Blade Barrier. Extend's primary use for clerics was to buff once and be done, or for the 3 short term buffs generally used for melee focused clerics. If Extend was taken only for Blade Barrier then the feat was already a waste to the build.

[dejafu]

Honestly i'd bump quicken spell up to 15 or 18, drop extend for Shield Mastery because a percent-based reduction on incoming damage is extremely useful for survival, and put mental toughness down closer to the beginning.

I'd second this. Shield Mastery is great for clerics of any level - it's easy to lose track of your own health when you're focusing on the rest of the party, and you'd be surprised how often mob AI goes into "gank the healer!" mode.

Taking shield mastery is almost as good as Toughness in terms of hit point conservation - sometimes even better, especially since clerics don't get class-specific Toughness enhancements.

Plus, at low levels, many useful spell modifiers come on shields, and taking this feat makes a shield useful even if it's not giving you the best possible AC for your level. Keep a tower shield handy for those times when you're going into full-on caster mode - the non-proficiency penalty doesn't matter much if you're not using a weapon, and the boost to both AC and damage mitigation can be a lifesaver.

Remember, you're one of the only classes in the game that can use normal shields and isn't always expected to melee. Make the most of it!

[BattleCircle]

Velah's Law.

Anything that can go wrong will,

And it is ALWAYS the Clerics fault.

IOW Have a thick skin.

[Kourier]

Fordy Two,

I have not appreciated your character build posts because they usually detract from the very class that you advise building. That said, in three sentences, let me say the following:

A) My favorite character to play is the Human healing Cleric, which is why I only put points into Wisdom (18), Charisma (16), and Constitution (14) at creation.

B) People who do not like playing healing Clerics always gimp their character with non-class Skills, statistics, Enhancements, and Feats. This is why they do not put points into the aforementioned statistics nor into the Diplomacy and Heal Skills (which are class Feats for the Cleric), nor build on the spells, Feats, and Enhancements that lend directly to healing the party and helping to carry them through quests and raids.

Healing Clerics are absolutely required for parties to be successful in nearly every single quest in this game, Fordy Two. Please do not provide yet another "official build guide" that caters to the DPS-worshippers and the zergers in this Community, who are the minority. To benefit new players, for example, speak to the class they are interested in and not to the strategies that seldom work in most parts of the game. If you are going to provide a "solo quest guide" for newbies or "how to zerg with a Cleric," then please differentiate clearly for the reader. The healing Cleric should not be watered-down, regardless of the harsh words used against this vital contributor to any party.

Thank you.


Snootch

I don't see how this cleric is incapable of healing. The only feat missing that could possibly add healing capability is extra turning, and that just increases duration, not intensity. Empower, Quicken, Maximize, Empower Healing are all there. Even mental toughness, which is newbie friendly and can be used for casting anything.

The heal skill affects only how much hp you regain at a shrine. This does not seem useful to me when instead I could put points into balance which allow me to get up and continue healing the party. If a fellow member is incapacitated as a cleric I hope I am prepared to heal 10 hp at any time.

Diplomacy is situationally useful but if we have 2 skills I would rather have concentration (a class skill! make sure your heals work!) and balance myself.

So, Snootch, I would like you to tell me why this cleric can't heal.

[Woody00]

Fordy Two,


Healing Clerics are absolutely required for parties to be successful in nearly every single quest in this game, Fordy Two.
Snootch

False.

Healing clerics are not required for a majority of quests. They are fun to play and a benefit to have around but can be easily replaced with bards or favored souls. Or even none of those with well thought out toons and a game plan.

[Crazyfruit]

What do clerics require Spell Penetration for besides Destruction & the occasional CC against a few monsters? Obviously there's a few spells I never bothered using... anything important a new player might try?

I recommend trying the Enlarge feat to every new cleric I meet. It's super helpful starting out, especially when you aren't used to getting close to (or chasing/finding) people to heal them or in a group that doesn't stick together like a team.

I even take it on casters, but probably not anymore with the spellpass changes.

edit: Didn't see this mentioned in the original, since it is supposed to be a Healing cleric, how about a note on Charisma? Starting higher will let them get additional turn undead uses, which can be used for a variety of healing effects too & Area of Effect heals when combined with the Radiant Servant prestige class @ lvl 6.

[Hokiewa]

Healing Clerics are absolutely required for parties to be successful in nearly every single quest in this game, Fordy Two.

Snootch

This is absolutely wrong. There is no quest in the game that a cleric is absolutely required.

[sirgog]

Keep melee out of a 101 build, IMO. Yes, melee divines are viable at all levels, I play one as my main character. Does not change that a newer player will have significant issues with getting the priority balance right between swinging an axe and throwing a heal.

Definitely stick to 18 Wisdom with all level ups, or alternately dump it completely. A 16 Wisdom is a waste of build points - you pay a lot more for 16 instead of 14 but don't get much at all in return - either go 18 + all level ups (offensive caster/healer hybrid build), or 14 or less without level ups. If you want to DC cast you need every point of Wisdom you can get.

14 Con is the right call, and the other points are really to taste. 28 point builds are really stretched, but this allocation looks fine.

Add in a comment about wands - Cure Light Wounds wands are cheap enough for a new player to regularly carry, and in a non-zerging group, are a phenomonally powerful tool.

As for feats - Maximize is the second most important healing feat and the best offensive casting feat too, anyone that suggests dropping it is off the planet. Mental Toughness is probably too weak to recommend. It always 'does something', but is never a good return for a feat. A second spell penetration feat is probably better.

[Arkat]

Healing Clerics are absolutely required for parties to be successful in nearly every single quest in this game, Fordy Two.

No



Please do not provide yet another "official build guide" that caters to the DPS-worshippers and the zergers in this Community, who are the minority.

Source?



To benefit new players, for example, speak to the class they are interested in and not to the strategies that seldom work in most parts of the game. If you are going to provide a "solo quest guide" for newbies or "how to zerg with a Cleric," then please differentiate clearly for the reader. The healing Cleric should not be watered-down, regardless of the harsh words used against this vital contributor to any party.

Sorry, but not everyone, including new players, like to play the way you do.

[Iwinbyrollup]

A) My favorite character to play is the Human healing Cleric, which is why I only put points into Wisdom (18), Charisma (16), and Constitution (14) at creation.


I believe the goal of these builds are to make well-rounded, accessible characters that aren't simply min-maxed. Putting points into Strength and Intelligence isn't entirely necessary, but both can be helpful to newer players.

[Kmnh]

That build seems playable enough. Life will be hell up to level 6, but from there on you can use the undead quests for easy leveling, and at level 11 you can start casting more offensively.

Up to level 13, when AC stops mattering, the cleric is likely the character with the highest AC in the party, and the only one with a shiled to block with. Run ahead, drop a (non-maximized, non-heightened, possibly from a wand) soundburst in the middle of the mobs, then shield-block with your back at the wall. You can complete most quests with this strategy, as long as the melees don't spread out too much.

[Snootch]

So, Snootch, I would like you to tell me why this cleric can't heal.


I know that if I ever said that "this Cleric cannot heal," then you'd have a sound argument against that statement. Of course, I never said that. So what are you really trying to do, Kourier?

Keeping this to what I did say and being on-topic to the OP, let's just point out that Fordy Two has a tendency to favor melee DPS for every single character that he ever advises on, which shows a bias. (Melee DPS characters need Strength and Constitution above the minimum, which gimps Spellcasters and the good Specialist builds.) The guy can't stay away from melee DPS for some odd reason. My response to his OP, then, was for him to stop doing this and instead focus on what makes a Cleric a Cleric, and that is to be the best healer in the game. I believe that Fordy Two is already on the wrong track again, and that is evidenced by other melee DPS worshippers concurring with his in-progress "101" build so far.

To note, I posted a Healer build (excerpt) on my My.DDO webpage if you want to see what my response to Fordy Two's "official guide" will likely look like.

http://my.ddo.com/snootch


Snootch

[Tirisha]

Superior ardor clickies are your friend.

[sirgog]

Superior ardor clickies are your friend.

They are, but I'd suggest a newbie carry a Sup Dev item permanently equipped. They aren't much weaker than Sup Ardor, but are always active.

Upgrade to Ardor once you learn the basics (and maybe keep a Devotion/Potency item too for something that persists through death)

[Angelus_dead]

Does not change that a newer player will have significant issues with getting the priority balance right between swinging an axe and throwing a heal.
That is completely and impressively incorrect. In reality, it is easy for a new Cleric player to decide between attacking and healing at low level: because your sp bar is so small you only could heal for under 10% of adventure time. The amount of time you can heal is capped, and it is frequently obvious that nobody needs healing right now. There's got to be something for the player to do for the large majority of time when he isn't casting a heal, and melee fills in that space.

[sirgog]

That is completely and impressively incorrect. In reality, it is easy for a new Cleric player to decide between attacking and healing at low level: because your sp bar is so small you only could heal for under 10% of adventure time. The amount of time you can heal is capped, and it is frequently obvious that nobody needs healing right now. There's got to be something for the player to do for the large majority of time when he isn't casting a heal, and melee fills in that space.

Bad advice.

Newbies will swing an axe at the wrong time, fail to notice 'oh hell, the fighter's at 30%' because they are paying attention to the mob they are attacking, then *ding*.

Or, they'll realise, but they will have a critical heal interrupted. *ding*. Then they are too low level to raise.

Playing a cleric that melees requires some significant experience to get it right.

[Angelus_dead]

Bad advice.

Newbies will swing an axe at the wrong time, fail to notice 'oh hell, the fighter's at 30%' because they are paying attention to the mob they are attacking, then *ding*.

Or, they'll realise, but they will have a critical heal interrupted. *ding*. Then they are too low level to raise.
Why do you write those things?

Do you seriously think DDO monsters are so incredibly deadly that parties will fail without a Cleric whose whole function is to wait around for someone to heal? And that it's a good idea to encourage building Clerics who have no way to complete a dungeon without recruiting someone to kill everything for you?

[Woody00]

Why do you write those things?

Do you seriously think DDO monsters are so incredibly deadly that parties will fail without a Cleric whose whole function is to wait around for someone to heal? And that it's a good idea to encourage building Clerics who have no way to complete a dungeon without recruiting someone to kill everything for you?

DDO monsters. No not that bad.
A group of totally new players? Yeah better have a healer handy that pays attentation to the red bars and not swinging his mace too much.

Gonna have to side with sirgog on this one.

[sirgog]

Why do you write those things?

Do you seriously think DDO monsters are so incredibly deadly that parties will fail without a Cleric whose whole function is to wait around for someone to heal? And that it's a good idea to encourage building Clerics who have no way to complete a dungeon without recruiting someone to kill everything for you?

Do you remember being a new player with no gear? I do.

This build is not designed for endgame players. Repeat, this build is not designed for endgame players.

Melee-specced clerics require 32 point builds to function well at all. Otherwise you'll end up with a medium-strength, medium-Con, low-wisdom build that swings and misses over and over not just at endgame, but while levelling.

A 14 Str is a total waste of build points beyond level 12 or so. Either go 18 plus all level ups (or at least 16+level ups, but that will be marginal without twink gear like Planar Girds), or dump Str. Otherwise you'll be going 'swing, miss, swing, miss' all the time.

28 point offensive casters work.

[Angelus_dead]

Yeah better have a healer handy that pays attentation to the red bars and not swinging his mace too much.
This is simple:
If you have an ability to melee, then you can choose whether or not to use melee according to the current situation.
If you don't have an ability to melee, then you can't choose to use melee, because if you try it won't really work.

PS. Selecting weapons better than a mace (sword or staff) should be part of a newbie Cleric guide.

[Kmnh]

Telling new players to play pure healbots is a surefire way to make them hate the game.

If a cleric can't melee or cast offensively, it is the most horrible thing to play, ever. It is at the mercy of bad PUGs and trolls at all times.

The build is looking good because the wisdom is maxed out and the feats allow some offensive casting. Clerics need a "how to play" guide more than a building one, though.

[Lemanchot]

Carrying Healing Scrolls, use your proper spells to skill the most important target on sight (Example a Casterish type!), Radiant Servant Prestige line is your friend and can bring alot over mass heals (Radiant Servant Burst is affected by maximize and empower spell).

Don't be afraid to take pressure, you're a Divine Caster not a Healer. Clerics who always stay back and does nothing except than healing and buffing doesn't go far. You can blind targets, knock them down, kill quick and still able to kite with Blade Barriers.

[Angelus_dead]

Do you remember being a new player with no gear? I do.
Your comments give the opposite impression.


This build is not designed for endgame players. Repeat, this build is not designed for endgame players.
Yes, which indicates that your advice is counterproductive, and that moving a few points from int/cha into str would be a good idea.


Melee-specced clerics require 32 point builds to function well at all.
The claim that melee clerics require 32 point builds is hilariously false.


A 14 Str is a total waste of build points beyond level 12 or so. Either go 18 plus all level ups (or at least 16+level ups, but that will be marginal without twink gear like Planar Girds), or dump Str. Otherwise you'll be going 'swing, miss, swing, miss' all the time.
That's not even close to the reality.

[Narmolanya]

You can't heal stupid.

Of course for a game guide you may want to word it something like this:

Being a cleric can be a chalangeing roll at times. You will be looked at as the divine source of healing for the group. When playing a cleric you should always keep in mind that other players are responsible for their own actions. If they choose to run out of your range on their own, stand in traps, or have low hit points there are times a cleric can do little to prevent party members deaths. This is not a reflection of you as a new cleric.

[Angelus_dead]

If a cleric can't melee or cast offensively, it is the most horrible thing to play, ever. It is at the mercy of bad PUGs and trolls at all times.
Yes, but there's another key fact: Due to the design of DDO, a low level Cleric cannot be an offensive caster, not effectively. Before about level 10, there just aren't enough reasonable offensive spells for that to be a workable role.

Maybe that'll change someday with new spells or a prestige specialty for offensive casting. But currently, the only way a lowbie Cleric can be helpful in between healing (or if nobody else is hurting the monsters) is to use a weapon.

[Habreno]

To New Clerics:

1) Leaving people dead is sometimes better for the party. While I wouldn't recommend NOT healing anyone, that Monk with 120% healing amp that is eating the mobs like an appatizer is probably worth keeping alive if he's got a decent amount of hitpoints, over, say, the 60 HP Warforged Wizard (who can repair themselves) or the other healer (who can heal themselves)

[DarkSpectre]

Fordy Two,

I have not appreciated your character build posts because they usually detract from the very class that you advise building. That said, in three sentences, let me say the following:

A) My favorite character to play is the Human healing Cleric, which is why I only put points into Wisdom (18), Charisma (16), and Constitution (14) at creation.

B) People who do not like playing healing Clerics always gimp their character with non-class Skills, statistics, Enhancements, and Feats. This is why they do not put points into the aforementioned statistics nor into the Diplomacy and Heal Skills (which are class Feats for the Cleric), nor build on the spells, Feats, and Enhancements that lend directly to healing the party and helping to carry them through quests and raids.

Healing Clerics are absolutely required for parties to be successful in nearly every single quest in this game, Fordy Two. Please do not provide yet another "official build guide" that caters to the DPS-worshippers and the zergers in this Community, who are the minority. To benefit new players, for example, speak to the class they are interested in and not to the strategies that seldom work in most parts of the game. If you are going to provide a "solo quest guide" for newbies or "how to zerg with a Cleric," then please differentiate clearly for the reader. The healing Cleric should not be watered-down, regardless of the harsh words used against this vital contributor to any party.

Thank you.


Snootch



There is this interesting guide called "Cleric The Path to Enlightenment"

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=202343&highlight=guide+clericing

I am curious where your definition of playing a Cleric falls on this...

[Kmnh]

Yes, but there's another key fact: Due to the design of DDO, a low level Cleric cannot be an offensive caster, not effectively. Before about level 10, there just aren't enough reasonable offensive spells for that to be a workable role.

Maybe that'll change someday with new spells or a prestige specialty for offensive casting. But currently, the only way a lowbie Cleric can be helpful in between healing (or if nobody else is hurting the monsters) is to use a weapon.

Yup, I said the same thing at an earlier post.

Your only source of offensive casting before level 10 is to do healing bursts on the undead. It is easy to get from 6 to 10 through the undead quests, though.

I think a melee-focused cleric is a lot easier to play than a caster one, especially at the early game. The problem is that you can't expect new players to know what they are doing, so we get a bunch of terrible clerics who can't melee well enough and can't heal quickly enough.

One thing missing from the guide is a priorities breakdown. something like:

1) heal yourself. dead clerics are a sad thing.

2) Heal the main tank who is in immediate danger. Don't let that guy that's leading ahead and keeping mobs under control die.

3) Heal the caster who's keeping crowd control up and is in danger. Spells disappear when he dies, and then all those mobs break loose. At endgame, keeping the caster up is more important than keeping the tank, except for a few raids.

4) Heal other people who are close to dying.

5) remove crippling debuffs, like massive level drain or stat damage.

5) Melee / cast offensively. If the party's hp bars are looking good, commanding that troll makes sure they stay there.

7) rebuff important short-term stuff Boosting the rogue's reflex save before the trap is always nice.

8) top people off. you can do this with your aura/bursts between fights.

[sirgog]

Your comments give the opposite impression.


Yes, which indicates that your advice is counterproductive, and that moving a few points from int/cha into str would be a good idea.


The claim that melee clerics require 32 point builds is hilariously false.


That's not even close to the reality.

I honestly think you are trolling here. I'll respond in case I'm wrong.

How do you expect a level 9 cleric to hit a 30 AC mob reliably with no twink gear and none of the resources to buy the hundreds of potions veterans carry?

Let's break it down.

14 Str, +2 Str item (all they are likely to have): +3. Goes to +5 if Divine Power active.
Base attack bonus: +6 if Divine Power inactive, +9 when active
Weapon enhancement: +4 (by 9, they've probably found a +4 weapon of nothing or a +3 elemental)
Divine Favor: +2
Haste: +1

That's +15 when Divine Power falls off, or +20 when it is up. They need a 15 to hit a typical mob in an at-level elite quest when not moving, or 10 when Divine Power is up. And that's with a proficient weapon, all of which are awful.


But don't take my word for it. Ask new players what their experiences with clerics that melee are. Battleclerics have an awful reputation among new players precisely because they see ten awful ones for every solid one.


On the other hand, they can dominate non-undead quests with Soundburst and undead ones with Radiant Burst. Then, once they have 32 point builds and twink gear, they can try a melee-oriented build, and use the Planar Gird they can trade for by then, as well as Heroism potions at low level, so they can actually contribute in that role from level 1.

The last thing the game needs is more newbies playing melee clerics, giving other Str-based divines a bad name.

[Angelus_dead]

I honestly think you are trolling here.
No, that's you.


They need a 15 to hit a typical mob in an at-level elite quest when not moving, or 10 when Divine Power is up.
That "at-level elite quest" thing is probably the core of your mistake. What exactly do you mean by that?

Maybe you mean a level 6+3 = 9, or maybe even 9+3 = 12. But whichever it is, it's a mistake to use that as the basis for judging the effectiveness of the character.


But don't take my word for it. Ask new players what their experiences with clerics that melee are. Battleclerics have an awful reputation among new players precisely because they see ten awful ones for every solid one.
I have asked, which is why I know what I'm talking about. But of course, nobody here was talking about Battleclerics until you just then; they're just talking about Clerics who aren't physical wimps.

Having 12 or 14 strength doesn't make someone a "Battlecleric".

[Angelus_dead]

One thing missing from the guide is a priorities breakdown. something like:

1) heal yourself. dead clerics are a sad thing.
You skipped over the highest priority list:
Join a group that makes sense. Don't assume that you need to get into a full party and heal them as your function, despite how some other games may use that system.

Lots of newbie parties have trouble and often blame the Cleric, regardless of whose fault it was. Newbie players are maybe used to regenerating mana from other games, or assume an Eternal Cure Minor wand is stronger than it is, and figure that healing output they got once can be continued as long as needed.

If a newb Cleric tries to heal a newb group through whatever they run into, he will fail. The mistake was made not while running the dungeon, but while choosing it.

[MeliCat]

I really appreciate that both A_D and sirgog are trying to aim for the best for the new player - please though no need to rip up at one another if you don't agree exactly what is best... please agree to disagree because I very much appreciate both of your posts.

I think it would be a shame for a new player to gimp wisdom - because hearts are expensive and when you've been told when you *finally* get to end game with all the care and attention that you've lavished on your char that you've gimped it from the outset with your stats. Therefore set it at 18.

Similarly for a new player con is always going to be good to be a little higher perhaps than longer term players may choose... therefore 14 is good.

Cha for positive bursts and a little Str becuase being burdened is a pain.

And A_D is right... the cleric is probably going to swing a mace or whatever because that's what their character seems to get on Korthos so that's what you do with a shield in the other hand... It gives the non-twink cleric something to do... but no one actually expects the cleric to actually kill anything more than boxes so that's ok.. So it really doesn't matter what their strength is. It's not a big deal but swinging at stuff is more fun that not.

The real bonus for baby clerics is Bullstrength - this is the buff everyone loves when they are totally gearless and the one that they first understand. And then afterwards it's things like removing curses and poison neut and just learning how to target and heal. And then you learn about resists (bah the easy button ship shrines!).

Please don't in any way gimp end gear stats for new players though - even though they may not intially appreciate what they really mean but are just following along on a guide.

[markymarksta]

==Template: Classic Healing Cleric==

This template provides a path to creating a classic cleric – one that specializes in crowd control and healing. Know that while the classic-healing-cleric can be played solo, this build performs best with hirelings, or with fellow DDO players.

__________________________________________________ ______________________________________________

I would change the words slightly to suggest what is possible with a cleric changes over time as they level up;

This template provides a path to creating a classic cleric - one that specialises in crowd control and (later) nuking, but always healing.

or to be more general;

This template provides a path to creating a classic cleric - one that specialises in healing and offensive casting.

The reason is that crowd control is not always an option at later levels of the game when so many enemies are immune or have high saves against enchanment based spells (Command, Hold person, Greater Command). Yet very useful in early and mid stages of the game. Unless by crowd control you also mean the use of offensive spells like BB's then ignore the suggestion.

Also I concur with many posts;
Lose Mental toughness and Extend for Empower and Spell Penetration

The build you provided would have been great when the level cap was 16 and extend was necessary for BB's Pre U10. Alas the game has changed :)

[furbyoats]

Fordy Two,

I have not appreciated your character build posts because they usually detract from the very class that you advise building. That said, in three sentences, let me say the following:

A) My favorite character to play is the Human healing Cleric, which is why I only put points into Wisdom (18), Charisma (16), and Constitution (14) at creation.

B) People who do not like playing healing Clerics always gimp their character with non-class Skills, statistics, Enhancements, and Feats. This is why they do not put points into the aforementioned statistics nor into the Diplomacy and Heal Skills (which are class Feats for the Cleric), nor build on the spells, Feats, and Enhancements that lend directly to healing the party and helping to carry them through quests and raids.

Healing Clerics are absolutely required for parties to be successful in nearly every single quest in this game, Fordy Two. Please do not provide yet another "official build guide" that caters to the DPS-worshippers and the zergers in this Community, who are the minority. To benefit new players, for example, speak to the class they are interested in and not to the strategies that seldom work in most parts of the game. If you are going to provide a "solo quest guide" for newbies or "how to zerg with a Cleric," then please differentiate clearly for the reader. The healing Cleric should not be watered-down, regardless of the harsh words used against this vital contributor to any party.

Thank you.


Snootch

Alright Snootch, since you are claiming to know more about what a cleric can and cannot do...could you please, in detail (by detail i mean mathematically [this game is based on math, not idealism]) explain why your stat allocation is better than the OP?

secondly could you please, in detail (give frequently occurring scenarios) explain why diplomacy and heal should be taken over concentration and balance? namely the heal skill. I don't care that it is a class skill, that means nothing. WHAT EFFECT DOES THE HEAL SKILL HAVE THAT TRUMPS CONCENTRATION OR BALANCE.

You yourself claim that you should be the best at the role you play. So I am giving you a chance to prove by the numbers, how your build is superior and how the OP's setup falls devastatingly behind.

Enough long winded rhetoric. It's now time for you to prove your beliefs if you wish to constantly troll the community and condescend other players.

If you want to run in role-play parties, then do it. But stop trolling the forums and trying to bait people over philosophical differences.

[SaneDitto]

I will not call myself an authority on the minutiae of stat and point distribution, so I'll look at style.

Before looking from the perspective of healing, look from the perspective of damage mitigation. Big mean ogre? Command it. Kobold Shaman ripping a new one in your party? Trip and kill it quickly. Swarm of kobolds? Soundburst. Pack of ogres/trolls? Greater Command or Holy Smite (and the sneak attackers will like you). Giants? Cometfall. Undead? Cometfall, Turn, and/or Radiant Burst. The spell points you spend on these spells may be less than the spell points and/or resources spent patching the party up after battles (yes, turns used for Radiant Servant abilities are a resource; they recharge, but you can run out if you are too enthusiastic with the bursts, turns, and auras).


In short, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

[SirValentine]

Yes, but there's another key fact: Due to the design of DDO, a low level Cleric cannot be an offensive caster, not effectively. Before about level 10, there just aren't enough reasonable offensive spells for that to be a workable role.

Maybe that'll change someday with new spells or a prestige specialty for offensive casting. But currently, the only way a lowbie Cleric can be helpful in between healing (or if nobody else is hurting the monsters) is to use a weapon.

Wow. Sorry, simply not true. There's plenty of offensive casting for a Cleric to do at low level. How about any of:

Command
Cause Fear
Hold Person
Sound Burst

Those all by Cleric level 3.

These spells are awesome, and, with Heighten later, can continue to be used up to and at cap, in Epics, etc..

Now, if you're saying a Cleric can't be an effective NUKER at low levels, then maybe I'd agree with you. Swinging a mace is more efficient at low levels than casting Nimbus of Light or Inflict Wounds. That remains true up until you get Divine Punishment and Blade Barrier, I'd think.

[katz]

in regards to the ... discussion... that went back and forth about a newbie having trouble splitting their focus between heals and melee... for me at least this was absolutely true. on my FIRST EVER divine, at first i DID have trouble... if i tried fighting i would get absorbed into the action and not notice a life bar dropping fast. at first it was easier for me to stand back and watch life bars... as boring as that was, i still had my own personal pride for how much i returned to each bar with each cast as a heal-specced divine. as i became more experienced it became easier and easier and now... at 20th, i'm still heal specced, but unless it's Harry or Sully or something i throw a divine power and wade right in alongside the big boys and have my fun too.

note: this build is a dual-scimitar-wielding high charisma low wisdom rogue-splashed heal specced favored soul who, despite all that, has (with gear swaps) a search DC in the 50s and a DD DC in the low 60s if you factor in +5 picks. and no one has told me i'm a poor healer or a bad person. i would not recommend my build for beginners, tho. (i know, i know, i said it was my first divine.. well, i had to LR myself, ok? :p )

[Dendrix]

I would not spend any points on the Diplomacy skill at all on any character ever.

Balance and Jump are far more useful in 99% of the quests in the game.

[Schmoe]

One thing that I think is incredibly helpful for a newbie guide to clerics is a discussion of scrolls and wands, and how they can be used to supplement healing. The guide should mention that scrolls and wands can be purchased at vendors (and some can be had through collectible turn-ins). It should also mention which scrolls and wands are the most useful and which enhancements can greatly improve the effectiveness of scrolls and wands. Finally, the guide should explain how using scrolls and wands alongside spell-casting will be a huge benefit in stretching a cleric's Spell Points from shrine to shrine.

Obviously, a newbie cleric won't be able to afford giant stacks of scrolls or an arsenal of wands, but this discussion is important for introducing the idea that a cleric doesn't have to rely on Spell Points alone to get the job done.

[Ralmeth]

I have some suggestions as well:

Stats:
Lower starting wisdom to 16 and increase strength to 14. This way you can still swing a weapon around and handle yourself, especially at lower levels.

Feats:
Swap Extend and Empower Healing. Extended buffs are helpful at 1st level and will let a new player learn to heal without empower healing turned on. Then at 3rd level the player will be given the option of maximizing healing for big fights, or leaving it off when not so critical.

Skills:
Balance is VERY helpful at low levels, in fact IMHO it is more needed than at higher levels (when you can get items to boost your balance skill). Instead of taking tumble or jump, those points should go to balance. At higher levels points can be put into jump and a couple into tumble.

[nat_1]

We can debate the placement of starting ability points until we get Druids and not reach a consensus. Can we step back from what is "best" for the moment and look at what larger ideas might be useful for a 101 discussion?

"A Cleric can, perhaps more than any other class, contribute to multiple party needs. This type of multi-tasking, for example healing the party and attacking with a weapon, requires keeping track of multiple moving targets and the health of each of those targets."

Bland, I know, but agreeable? Not telling new players to play a certain way, but warning them of the challenges?

[Iwinbyrollup]

I think the most important thing to add would be some spell advice. Mainly, focusing on CC (one of the stated goals of the build) and buffing. Something like this:

Preventing damage costs less SP than healing damage. There are two ways to prevent damage for this build: buffs and crowd control spells. Don't neglect them! Command is a great level 1 spell that works particularly well against melee enemies while Soundburst is a great level 2 spell that will hit multiple targets at once so is great for groups of enemies and spell-casting enemies.

-----

In terms of the recent discussion regarding strength or not:

Low levels do not favor offensive casting on clerics, but they do favor CC, which is what the build states it's aiming for along with healing. Command is a fantastic spell that a cleric will have access to at level 1 (probably the best level 1 CC spell in the game; the only other ones that come close are Charm Person, which has its own disadvantages, and Otto's, which is touch-range); Soundburst is a fantastic spell that a cleric will have access to at level 3.

The build described in the first post isn't a solo build and I don't think any of the guides so far have been aimed at solo builds. Having strength to melee is just not necessary in a group unless you're on a melee character, which this guide isn't. You sure won't top the kill count and if you're the kind of person that really wants to, cleric probably isn't for you to begin with. But coming upon a huge ogre, and then having that ogre sit down while the rest of the group takes no damage killing it? When you're a new player, you almost certainly will feel like a god. It doesn't matter if you did no melee damage whatsoever. You killed that enemy. Command and Soundburst are a LOT of fun. And, to make matters better, a new player on a cleric who uses these spells will likely stand out as a better player than most who don't use the spells.

There were some earlier comments about not needing max Wisdom on a caster cleric as much as Arcanes need max in their primary casting ability. I cannot disagree more. Clerics who want to offensive cast need it MORE than Arcanes because in the game right now there are less opportunities to boost DCs on a pure Cleric than there are to boost DCs on a pure Wizard. If a Wizard wants max Int, an offensive caster or CC-focused Cleric should as well.

[FordyTwo]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!

I've updated the template and added a snippet from the first portion of the guide titled, "Every New Cleric Should Know". Additionally, we've included some spell advice and tips throughout the guide in lieu of potentially overwhelming new players with too much upfront information.

[katz]

• You can target yourself by pressing the F1 key and the rest of your current party by pressing F2-F6. It's also possible to click on party members' names, found on the left-side listing of your display.

and don't forget that later when ya hit the raids, F7-F12 hits the other half of the party :o

[dkyle]

• STR … 12
• DEX … 8
• CON … 14
• INT … 9
• WIS … 18
• CHA … 10

This is 29 points. I'm guessing the 9 INT is a typo.


Nightshield is an active spell that can immediately defend against Magic Missile attacks – but lasts for five minutes.

Nightshield lasts for 5 minutes... if you're fifth level with no Extend. It's one minute per level.


• Toggle – Many spells and feats come in this flavor. Think of toggles like a light switch: you can flip it on or off! A toggle always works this way, and in the case of metamagic feats (toggles!) using one will only increase the spell point (SP) cost of other spells – but in no way costs spell points itself to activate.

Feats, sure, but Spells? I can't think of any spells that are toggles. They're either instant, or have a duration. A few are permanent until shrining. But none that you just turn on and off. Even the Radiant Aura is cast for a duration at a time, not toggled.


When playing a character with 20 levels of cleric – like the above template – there's plenty of room for customization. If you're interested in having some spellcasting capability but want deeper access to melee combat, consider creating a level 1 fighter, and then taking 19 levels of cleric. If you decide to tweak the classic healer template in this way, make sure to read some of our Fighter 101 guide for tips on important fighter Ability Scores, and more!

I have to question including this on a newbie guide. Seems like it would more confuse than help. It takes more than just a level of Fighter to turn this build into a viable melee. And if you're going to splash, might as well do two levels of Fighter.

Melee+Offensive Spellcasting is not an easy combination.

[Veileira]

Does a healing cleric still need Extend? It doesn't work on Blade Barrier anymore and I'm pretty much keeping it on my melee cleric for Divine Power alone. I'd put Heighten sooner and pick up a Spell Focus instead of Extend.

[Steiner-Davion]

Essential tip: you DO NOT need to click on a players avatar/character to target them. Instead you can use either the F1 through F12 keys OR you can simply click on their name in the party list.

[FordyTwo]

This is 29 points. I'm guessing the 9 INT is a typo.

Typos, the bane of writers! Thanks, fixed. :)

[dkyle]

Does a healing cleric still need Extend? It doesn't work on Blade Barrier anymore and I'm pretty much keeping it on my melee cleric for Divine Power alone. I'd put Heighten sooner and pick up a Spell Focus instead of Extend.

Problem is, it's definitely useful at low levels, but feat-swaps seem to be out of the scope of these guides. But then I'd have thought suggesting a level of Fighter would be way outside the scope...

[FordyTwo]

Problem is, it's definitely useful at low levels, but feat-swaps seem to be out of the scope of these guides. But then I'd have thought suggesting a level of Fighter would be way outside the scope...

The mention of adding a level of fighter is -- like everything with the guide -- currently subject to change. I've most definitely noted your feedback. :)

[dkyle]

The mention of adding a level of fighter is -- like everything with the guide -- currently subject to change. I've most definitely noted your feedback. :)

Oh, I don't mean to sound like I'm harping on it. I'm sure you've noted all the feedback in the thread.

Just trying to get a read on how advanced these guides are supposed to get, and the Fighter splash suggestion has me wondering if a passage on feat swaps might not be out of the question.

[Iwinbyrollup]

The mention of adding a level of fighter is -- like everything with the guide -- currently subject to change. I've most definitely noted your feedback. :)

I'd second the concern about adding the fighter-level mention, it is a bit out of scope for the guide. The problem is that I'd classify it as a bit of "how" advice. You're giving someone reading this guide the first bit of information on how most people build melee clerics. But that's the only piece of information you're giving, and without more information, you risk people making builds that can't accomplish much because they know one step but none of the others. Imagine a cleric with a single level of fighter, 12 Strength, and 18 Wisdom with all level up points into Wisdom. Not a horrible decision, but by no means a good one either.

Instead, I'd recommend emphasizing that the primary focus of this build is, as stated, support, spell damage, and healing, but that clerics are capable of performing many other roles with different builds. What this does is tell the reader that they can do more, but it doesn't give incomplete advice on how to do it or leave the scope of the build. This is mostly what you are doing with that paragraph aside from the fighter level mention.

Otherwise, I think the guide is looking good!

In terms of Extend, I think it's beneficial for a newer player who might not be as used to refreshing buffs. Once they get more experienced and higher level, they certainly can figure out the feat exchange issue elsewhere and switch out Extend for something else if they want.

[Woody00]

I have some suggestions as well:



Feats:
Swap Extend and Empower Healing. Extended buffs are helpful at 1st level and will let a new player learn to heal without empower healing turned on. Then at 3rd level the player will be given the option of maximizing healing for big fights, or leaving it off when not so critical.



This is good advise. At lower lvls you can get by without supercharged heals and the extended buffs will do more to prevent damage so it should have a higher priority then over-healing. Once you get your aura though its a good idea to pick up empowered heal to take full advantage of free healing.

[PestWulf]

I think you should make more of a note on the wisdom stat as it is either a vital or much less useful stat depending on your build focus. Wisdom is only a vital stat in a build that focuses on spell DC's (like your template) or in a build that uses it as a synergy, like Monk. Beyond max spell level that you can cast, it actually has no bearing on your healing capability or buffing support.

To cast a spell, you need a wisdom score of 10 + Spell level. Enhancement items or stat buffs count for this purpose.

The difference in spell points, at level 20, between a starting wisdom of 12 and a starting wisdom of 18 is only 87 spell points, much less than that at level 1 (30 point difference). (note: using ddowiki as my data source)

Also, Charisma effects the number of Turn Undead charges your character has.

[PestWulf]

................Once you get your aura though its a good idea to pick up empowered heal to take full advantage of free healing.

Unless it's changed, Empower Heal is required to get Radiant Servant 1.

[Thvari]

That one your not the party's nanny. Second look up the Great Samulas's Guide to Enlightement on the forums after using this guide for even more useful information on the trial and tribulations of being a cleric.

[Tendare]

Does a healing cleric still need Extend? It doesn't work on Blade Barrier anymore and I'm pretty much keeping it on my melee cleric for Divine Power alone. I'd put Heighten sooner and pick up a Spell Focus instead of Extend.

Extend is good at low levels to lengthen your buffs but trade it out for something else at mid levels. 10 minutes is usually enough time between shrines/finishing quest.

Although I do like my extend because I use holy aura and recitation alot and like the length of it when it's extended.

My advice to new clerics pick up a paralyzer as soon as you can. If I'm tasked with healing the group, during a battle, I can always pitch in and help out with the dps and crowd control too.

Quicken is a must before you start raiding, but before that it's not needed if your carrying a paralyzer.

Charisma for the RS is a must and get a sacred item or armor for all the undead quests in house J.

[furbyoats]

I know that if I ever said that "this Cleric cannot heal," then you'd have a sound argument against that statement. Of course, I never said that. So what are you really trying to do, Kourier?

Keeping this to what I did say and being on-topic to the OP, let's just point out that Fordy Two has a tendency to favor melee DPS for every single character that he ever advises on, which shows a bias. (Melee DPS characters need Strength and Constitution above the minimum, which gimps Spellcasters and the good Specialist builds.) The guy can't stay away from melee DPS for some odd reason. My response to his OP, then, was for him to stop doing this and instead focus on what makes a Cleric a Cleric, and that is to be the best healer in the game. I believe that Fordy Two is already on the wrong track again, and that is evidenced by other melee DPS worshippers concurring with his in-progress "101" build so far.

To note, I posted a Healer build (excerpt) on my My.DDO webpage if you want to see what my response to Fordy Two's "official guide" will likely look like.

http://my.ddo.com/snootch

Snootch

You have yet to back up your claims of your cleric being able to heal better than the OP's cleric...could you please provide a defense to your statements? I am talking about the claim that addition of STR and CON gimp the build? What exactly do you lose for adding those in? CHA is not as important of a stat as you would like to believe on a cleric. Please provide some evidence along with your claims, otherwise you are just trolling the thread.

[Propane]

Hello!

• Avoiding damage is even better than healing – spells like Command, Greater Command, and Comet Fall can temporarily disable opponents, and often make the most efficient use of your spell points.

Consider adding soundburst to the list

I would re-order the Feat List for better leveling...

LV 1 Toughness – Extra HP early!
LV 3 Extend – Keeps those buffs lasting
LV 6 Empower Healing – Extra Healing early!
LV 9 Heighten – Keeps your lower level spells effective as you level up
LV12 Quicken – you will start mass healing groups and may be standing among them (GH quest come to mind)
LV 15 Maximize – For when you really need a boost

LV 18 Flavor depending on play style – Shield Mastery, Spell Pen, Empower, Mental Toughness

I would not recommend multi-classing a cleric until getting your first pure cleric to mid-upper levels and get access to 32 pt builds.

[Billion]

There are many schools of thought on how a cleric should be built... I'm in a guild and I have a nanny heal bot, but I like that role... One thing I will say though; if your a battle cleric, please let the party leader know that up front when joining the party. IMO, a party expects the cleric to use their blue bar to heal them, if you don't plan on doing that let me know up front so I can drop you from group before we start. Nothing worse than getting part way into a quest and then have to drop and reform.

[DrNuegebauer]

Suggestion on the skills front:

Concentration, and UMD

Most pure clerics are going to end up with 20+ Charisma for the turns. And, I imagine, most clerics ought to be shooting for a GS con-opp item (put +5 charisma skills on it).
11 ranks +5 stat +5 GS +4 GH +3 item = 28. (enough to teleport!)

I know it's a guide for new players, but surely we want new players to become 'old' players? And I'd hate for them to walk away wishing they'd spent skill points differently.

[furbyoats]

FordyTwo I really do appreciate your effort in these 101 guides. Allowing new players to explore the possibilities of customizing a character outside of the preset paths without going in blind and making an abomination is just grand. My first toon was a cleric, and it was terrible at end game lol. Since then I created a few different toons, all which i consider solid for any epic.

If i were to make another cleric I would probably do it like this:


Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 03.09.02
DDO Character Planner Home Page (http://www.rjcyberware.com/DDO)

Blartspleen
Level 20 True Neutral Human Male
(20 Cleric)
Hit Points: 292
Spell Points: 1466
BAB: 15\15\20\25\25
Fortitude: 15
Reflex: 5
Will: 21

Starting Feat/Enhancement
Abilities Base Stats Modified Stats
(28 Point) (Level 1) (Level 20)
Strength 12 12
Dexterity 8 8
Constitution 14 17
Intelligence 8 10
Wisdom 18 29
Charisma 10 12

Tomes Used
+2 Tome of Constitution used at level 7
+2 Tome of Intelligence used at level 7
+2 Tome of Wisdom used at level 7

Starting Feat/Enhancement
Base Skills Modified Skills
Skills (Level 1) (Level 20)
Balance 1 10
Bluff 0 1
Concentration 6 30
Diplomacy 0 1
Disable Device n/a n/a
Haggle 0 1
Heal 4 11
Hide -1 -1
Intimidate 0 1
Jump 1 8
Listen 4 9
Move Silently -1 -1
Open Lock n/a n/a
Perform n/a n/a
Repair -1 0
Search -1 0
Spot 4 9
Swim 1 1
Tumble n/a n/a
Use Magic Device n/a n/a

Level 1 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+2)
Skill: Concentration (+4)
Feat: (Selected) Extend Spell
Feat: (Human Bonus) Toughness
Feat: (Automatic) Attack
Feat: (Automatic) Heavy Armor Proficiency
Feat: (Automatic) Heroic Durability
Feat: (Automatic) Light Armor Proficiency
Feat: (Automatic) Magical Training
Feat: (Automatic) Medium Armor Proficiency
Feat: (Automatic) Shield Proficiency (General)
Feat: (Automatic) Simple Weapon Proficiency
Feat: (Automatic) Sneak
Feat: (Automatic) Turn Undead


Level 2 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Feat: (Automatic) Defensive Fighting
Feat: (Automatic) Sunder
Feat: (Automatic) Trip


Level 3 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Feat: (Selected) Empower Healing Spell


Level 4 (Cleric)
Ability Raise: WIS
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)


Level 5 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)


Level 6 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Feat: (Selected) Empower Spell


Level 7 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)


Level 8 (Cleric)
Ability Raise: WIS
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 9 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)
Feat: (Selected) Maximize Spell


Level 10 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 11 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 12 (Cleric)
Ability Raise: WIS
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)
Feat: (Selected) Quicken Spell


Level 13 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 14 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 15 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)
Feat: (Selected) Heighten Spell


Level 16 (Cleric)
Ability Raise: WIS
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 17 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 18 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)
Feat: (Selected) Spell Penetration


Level 19 (Cleric)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+0.5)


Level 20 (Cleric)
Ability Raise: WIS
Skill: Concentration (+1)
Skill: Jump (+1)
Enhancement: Cleric Divine Intervention
Enhancement: Cleric Radiant Servant I
Enhancement: Cleric Radiant Servant II
Enhancement: Human Adaptability Wisdom I
Enhancement: Human Greater Adaptability Constitution I
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery I
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery II
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Racial Toughness III
Enhancement: Improved Concentration I
Enhancement: Improved Concentration II
Enhancement: Improved Concentration III
Enhancement: Improved Concentration IV
Enhancement: Improved Heal I
Enhancement: Improved Heal II
Enhancement: Cleric Prayer of Life I
Enhancement: Cleric Prayer of Life II
Enhancement: Cleric Prayer of Life III
Enhancement: Cleric Prayer of Incredible Life I
Enhancement: Cleric Prayer of Incredible Life II
Enhancement: Cleric Life Magic I
Enhancement: Cleric Life Magic II
Enhancement: Cleric Life Magic III
Enhancement: Cleric Life Magic IV
Enhancement: Cleric Improved Spell Penetration I
Enhancement: Cleric Charisma I
Enhancement: Cleric Charisma II
Enhancement: Cleric Wisdom I
Enhancement: Cleric Wisdom II
Enhancement: Cleric Wisdom III
Enhancement: Cleric Divine Vitality I
Enhancement: Cleric Extra Turning I
Enhancement: Cleric Extra Turning II
Enhancement: Cleric Extra Turning III
Enhancement: Cleric Improved Turning I
Enhancement: Cleric Wand and Scroll Mastery I




Please keep in mind that i sped through the build process and i am a bit sleepy at the moment. But if i were to start up on another server with a cleric at 28pts, i would do something very similar to this. It is your basic healing/casting cleric. The build is very similar to the op, perhaps with some difference in a feat or the order in which they are taken. As for enhancements, i just threw a bunch in til i hit 80ap :D.

I personally would keep extend on a new player's build for end game content where extended recitation/holy aura (especially holy aura) are much better than recasting every 2 minutes.

again, good work with the thread so far...keep it up :D

[marybee]

The guide looks fine, but I'd want to add a bit about how to play a cleric in the game. I have a level 17 cleric in play at the moment.
My advice to new clerics is this, (probably others would say the same):

Make sure you stay alive (sounds obvious but easy to forget in the heat of battle)

Don't expect to keep everyone at full health all the time. Other people might expect you to do this, but you should not feel pressured to comply.

Stay alert, and try not to leave people hanging out to dry.

Team play works both ways, and if people take unnecessary risks, they can't expect to be kept healed up to full.

If you're in a party of people who rush ahead and then complain that you are not healing them enough, say this: "If I can't see you I can't heal you."

If the party needs buffing, then tell people you are about to buff, to give them a chance to get group buffs. If they choose to rush on ahead, then don't offer to buff them again. It's good for everyone to take responsibility for their own actions.

Have fun!

[Tirisha]

They are, but I'd suggest a newbie carry a Sup Dev item permanently equipped. They aren't much weaker than Sup Ardor, but are always active.

Upgrade to Ardor once you learn the basics (and maybe keep a Devotion/Potency item too for something that persists through death)

ah I suppose it depends on what level you are talking about. Quests through lv 10 don't generally last long enough to have too worry about much more than one or 2 clicks. Sup devotion times are nice but until you get the heal spell that extra 25% is a big deal imo. I've always found slotting devotion a pain at low levels. I also think it's important that people playing healers pick up good habits early *like using clickies*

[Tirisha]

Bad advice.

Newbies will swing an axe at the wrong time, fail to notice 'oh hell, the fighter's at 30%' because they are paying attention to the mob they are attacking, then *ding*.

Or, they'll realise, but they will have a critical heal interrupted. *ding*. Then they are too low level to raise.

Playing a cleric that melees requires some significant experience to get it right.

This is true but I will say it is significantly easier too preform and develop these skills at low levels when damage comes in at a such a slow rate that they will have a lot of time to react.

If a new cleric focuses just on healing they will be learning a very lazy way to play the class and have a lot of boring down time through the lower levels.

[Kourier]

I know that if I ever said that "this Cleric cannot heal," then you'd have a sound argument against that statement. Of course, I never said that. So what are you really trying to do, Kourier?

Keeping this to what I did say and being on-topic to the OP, let's just point out that Fordy Two has a tendency to favor melee DPS for every single character that he ever advises on, which shows a bias. (Melee DPS characters need Strength and Constitution above the minimum, which gimps Spellcasters and the good Specialist builds.) The guy can't stay away from melee DPS for some odd reason. My response to his OP, then, was for him to stop doing this and instead focus on what makes a Cleric a Cleric, and that is to be the best healer in the game. I believe that Fordy Two is already on the wrong track again, and that is evidenced by other melee DPS worshippers concurring with his in-progress "101" build so far.

To note, I posted a Healer build (excerpt) on my My.DDO webpage if you want to see what my response to Fordy Two's "official guide" will likely look like.

http://my.ddo.com/snootch


Snootch

Snootch,

I apologize for not matching your exact wording, which included "gimp" and "watered down" and instead using an obviously non-equivalent phrase. What I am trying to do is help to create a newbie's cleric 101 guide.
I fail to see how adding strength or constitution makes this lean towards a melee-dps role. All the feats are conducive to spellcasting or healing. 12 strength is mainly to prevent becoming burdened or helpless. And you can't heal if you're dead.
I will admit to openly disliking that you would disagree with a guide just because other people happen to agree with it and feel this invalidates your arguments, however much merit they may have had.

Kourier

Edit: I have looked at your healing cleric build and noticed you are missing the feats maximize and empower. How will your cure/cure mass spells be sufficient without these feats? Do you find yourself healing from so far away that enlarge is constantly required? What function does the heal skill serve? What hp and reflex save total do you think this build can achieve? How can you prevent enemy spell casters from targeting you from afar, since diplomacy is a close range skill and intimidate does not function 100% of the time?

[Tirisha]

I honestly think you are trolling here. I'll respond in case I'm wrong.

How do you expect a level 9 cleric to hit a 30 AC mob reliably with no twink gear and none of the resources to buy the hundreds of potions veterans carry?

Let's break it down.

14 Str, +2 Str item (all they are likely to have): +3. Goes to +5 if Divine Power active.
Base attack bonus: +6 if Divine Power inactive, +9 when active
Weapon enhancement: +4 (by 9, they've probably found a +4 weapon of nothing or a +3 elemental)
Divine Favor: +2
Haste: +1

That's +15 when Divine Power falls off, or +20 when it is up. They need a 15 to hit a typical mob in an at-level elite quest when not moving, or 10 when Divine Power is up. And that's with a proficient weapon, all of which are awful.


But don't take my word for it. Ask new players what their experiences with clerics that melee are. Battleclerics have an awful reputation among new players precisely because they see ten awful ones for every solid one.


On the other hand, they can dominate non-undead quests with Soundburst and undead ones with Radiant Burst. Then, once they have 32 point builds and twink gear, they can try a melee-oriented build, and use the Planar Gird they can trade for by then, as well as Heroism potions at low level, so they can actually contribute in that role from level 1.

The last thing the game needs is more newbies playing melee clerics, giving other Str-based divines a bad name.

beginner clerics should be designed for normal difficulties. It sounds like you are thinking the worse case scenario (too hit issues generally won't be overly prevalent on normal difficulties at level even with base 14 str).

I believe playing a Caster cleric is more difficult for a new player since they have no conception of SP conservation (not knowing the quests, where shrines are etc...).

[Iwinbyrollup]

beginner clerics should be designed for normal difficulties. It sounds like you are thinking the worse case scenario (too hit issues generally won't be overly prevalent on normal difficulties at level even with base 14 str).

I believe playing a Caster cleric is more difficult for a new player since they have no conception of SP conservation (not knowing the quests, where shrines are etc...).

A base 14 strength character that hasn't geared around their low attack bonus from Strength will have a lot of difficult hitting enemies. The first life of my FvS was abysmally built and geared, such that I needed to stop playing him, learn how to play better with a different character, and then GR him to get him to cap. I was running Normal content in a small group over level, often with penalties for being over level, and still having significant difficulties finishing quests. The issue isn't just that the build was bad, but also that I didn't understand how best to improve my to-hit. And that's an issue that a lot of new players struggle with. Give a new player the choice between a +1 or +2 Flaming weapon and a +5 weapon. Many will take the former when they would usually benefit more from the latter.

To-hit isn't as much of an issue with 14 base strength if you know what you're doing and have ways to improve your to-hit. Neither are likely to be the case for a new player.

[zex95966]

I'd say no stat is "needed" except for con. wis dumped and charisma dumped clerics can still heal raids for example. That makes them one of the more versatile characters.

So the rest is up to you - if you like melee, be a battle cleric and dump into str.
if you like casting be a caster and dump into wisdom.

[katz]

more HP is always good... just for sheer survivability. its not even a melee v caster thing... no matter how good the tank's intimi is, (if you have a tank to intimi in your group) occasionally things will get thru that, and come beat on you, the longer you can take it, the safer you are. even if you do nothing to rate his ire, Harry WILL throw a delayed blast fireball in your face.

my first ever shroud with my healer i had 220 HP. i got thru it with sheer dumb luck, a little skill, and evasion. (i <3 evasion) i've, since then, reworked my character, and i now have around 450ish HP... and i am much happier with my "safety net" (so to speak) of HP.

how do i heal? maximize + empower healing + 50% devotion or potency item + quicken = pretty darn good, akshully >^.^<

[Riggs]

I'd strongly urge the dropping of int and cha to 8 to support a 14 str: a 14 str cleric can melee acceptably up until level 10-12 with a decent weapon, and its a huge advantage to a new player to be able to do that.

a single extra turn undead or the like is hardly worth it, and as a human they already have 2 skill points/lv for jump+concentration.

At low levels, a cleric with ok full plate, a shield, and any kind of decent weapon can solo nearly anything between their acceptable melee ability and self-healing. That won't last, but it will get them through the ranges where grouping is by far most frustrating if they have problems, and they probably will - without access to consumable healing (ie wands), its very hard to heal other people, and if they join groups that expect them to they will be very frustrated in the harbor.

On the other hand, with a +3 full plate, a +3 heavy shield, and a +1 flaming weapon, they could probably solo waterworks on normal at level 4.

Im skipping over a lot of pages - but yeah what Junts said.

Skills on a cleric are a bonus - concentration and jump, 1 point into tumble and maybe a bit of balance and you are set. Once you get quicken - other than buffing there is no real reason to turn it off in a fight - no matter how high your skill your going to take a lot of damage at points and will fail rolls when you need them most - so a few points off concentration wont really matter.

Cha? extra turns are nice - but you give up a lot to get 1-2 extra turns.

14 str, and divine power and divine favor give a cleric an effective 26 str (since to hit and damage is half str bonus, +3/+3 is pretty much like having 6 more str) - and 26 effective str on a mid level cleric makes for good melee. +2 tome and rage and that goes up to 30. A level 7 cleric will out damage a 7 fighter depending on gear most likely too. (I usually take khopesh on a cleric, then swap the feat at the quest lady at higher level to take Maximize or Empower).

Even at higher level - a 30 str cleric swinging a vorpal is not insignificant when not healing - unlike many that stand there and watch waiting for a chance to heal - and spend half the quest doing nothing at all.

Like he said - low level clerics dont have enough mana to keep a gimpy party alive - and blowing everything on wands or scrolls is annoying and slow, and expensive. Being able to lay some melee hurt down will mean the group needs less healing - so win win - until the melees get mad at losing out on kills (I got that a lot pugging - "Do your job and stop killing more stuff than all of us - because we cant handle a cleric that melees")

**edit ok I was rushing a bit and generalizing about the +3 divine favor that wont happen at level 7, but by level 9 assuming no other multiclassing, but still its darn handy.

[Riggs]

You skipped over the highest priority list:
Join a group that makes sense. Don't assume that you need to get into a full party and heal them as your function, despite how some other games may use that system.

Lots of newbie parties have trouble and often blame the Cleric, regardless of whose fault it was. Newbie players are maybe used to regenerating mana from other games, or assume an Eternal Cure Minor wand is stronger than it is, and figure that healing output they got once can be continued as long as needed.

If a newb Cleric tries to heal a newb group through whatever they run into, he will fail. The mistake was made not while running the dungeon, but while choosing it.

Awesome.

[Riggs]

in regards to the ... discussion... that went back and forth about a newbie having trouble splitting their focus between heals and melee... for me at least this was absolutely true. on my FIRST EVER divine, at first i DID have trouble... if i tried fighting i would get absorbed into the action and not notice a life bar dropping fast. at first it was easier for me to stand back and watch life bars... as boring as that was, i still had my own personal pride for how much i returned to each bar with each cast as a heal-specced divine. as i became more experienced it became easier and easier and now... at 20th, i'm still heal specced, but unless it's Harry or Sully or something i throw a divine power and wade right in alongside the big boys and have my fun too...

A perfect example of why low level clerics should spend some time in melee - because it is experience in being able to heal AND fight - which once practiced - is a very useful skill - that people will never learn if they just do what some will say "Stay in the back and heal, do your job and let the real classes work".

**
The guide itself looks like it has added all sorts of good comments. I would still go with a 14 str and 8 cha however...

[Tom_Hunters]

Every cleric should know
- They have the priviledge to ask for resources (pots/scrolls/wands), especially if they are useless loots to others, or when the group is only one step far to success. Well, of coz your group mates can anyway choose not to provide them.
- Similarly, you can choose to stop burning resources if it's an obvious failure. You're not the only one responsible for a team failure

[sirgog]

I'd add a comment that Extend Spell loses some of its lustre at higher levels (12+), and that players can swap it out (with effort) if they find it no longer necessary.

Also, it's very unclear to many new players what sort of equipment they should be looking for on a cleric. Now that it appears you've settled on the max-Wisdom, medium Con, medium Str route, I'd tell people to look for the following. This is not a min-maxxed gear setup (and thus avoids clickies), but something aimed at ease of use:

1) A +Wisdom item (remember that if you have more than one, only the best one applies, some very special high level loot can break this rule)
2) A shield with the best healing stats you can find (+2 Heavy Steel Shield of Greater Devotion 3 or similar).
3) A set of armor oriented toward keeping you alive (example +2 Full Plate of Invulnerability). At high level you will select armor for its other attributes, at low level it's useful to keep you alive.
4) A +SP item (Wizardry, Power, Magi, again, only the best one applies)
5) A +Con item
6) A +Str item
7) A 'False Life' (or better) item
8) A melee weapon you are proficient with, with melee modifiers (+2 Holy Heavy Mace or similar)
9) Once you are level 6 or higher, a +Cha item
10) One or two of the best healing wands you can afford, for those times SP just isn't enough.


If, on the other hand, you eschew melee, the gear becomes easier - you can put the +SP item in your main hand (as a weapon), and the healing 'stat stick' in the offhand. Doing this makes more gear available (you can, for instance, look for a healing 'stat stick' that is a weapon rather than a shield, and you can use a Potency weapon instead of a Devotion one).


A cleric built as the first post suggests will find four or five of the items that drop in the Chronoscope to be excellent for them, if they can beat the raid. (Specifically the Goggles of Time Sensing, Envenomed Cloak, Helm of Frost, Charged Gauntlets and Infested Armor, maybe even the Timeblade).

[Natashaelle]

I'd put in something along the lines of :

The fully mêlée-focused "battle cleric" is fairly popular, but new players should realize that it's an advanced playing style, including several rather difficult components and variants. It is very easy to make mistakes here ! Newer players should only attempt it after they have mastered playing a mêlée fighter from a more specialized class (Fighter or Barbarian for instance), as well as mastering the primary healing function of the Cleric class.

[HavickAngel]

This is a good start.

You may want to discuss some of the items a Cleric (that would fall into this category) may carry-such as:

-Heal Scrolls
-Wands
-Devotion/Potency/Ador
-Sacred (for turn attempts)
-Wizardry/Power items

Perhaps you could give new players a run down on healing strategy, Mana Management, Healing amplification, Racial Tendencies, Ect...

If available, Wizardry items are better than power items for adding SP. Wizardry items can be used by divine casters. Also if you are going to get an item enchanted with one of these, make sure to get it on something you wont change in the middle of an adventure, or you will lose those extra SP until you rest with the enchanted item equipped again. Definitely dont get this enchantment on a weapon; you will most likely change to diff weaps during the progress of a quest.

[HavickAngel]

Sometimes the best healing is the result of avoiding damage in the first place--command, greater command, comet fall, and other spells that temporarily disable opponents often make the most efficient use of your spell points.

Dont forget or under estimate soundburst for a low level offensive spell. Not only does it do damage, it also has a good chance to stun your enemies(even groups of enemies) with an area effect.

[sirgog]

If available, Wizardry items are better than power items for adding SP. Wizardry items can be used by divine casters. Also if you are going to get an item enchanted with one of these, make sure to get it on something you wont change in the middle of an adventure, or you will lose those extra SP until you rest with the enchanted item equipped again. Definitely dont get this enchantment on a weapon; you will most likely change to diff weaps during the progress of a quest.

That's fine - you don't lose SP when removing a Power/Wizardry/Magi/Archmagi item unless your current SP are higher than your new maximum SP.

[sirgog]

Snootch,

I apologize for not matching your exact wording, which included "gimp" and "watered down" and instead using an obviously non-equivalent phrase. What I am trying to do is help to create a newbie's cleric 101 guide.
I fail to see how adding strength or constitution makes this lean towards a melee-dps role. All the feats are conducive to spellcasting or healing. 12 strength is mainly to prevent becoming burdened or helpless. And you can't heal if you're dead.
I will admit to openly disliking that you would disagree with a guide just because other people happen to agree with it and feel this invalidates your arguments, however much merit they may have had.

Kourier

Edit: I have looked at your healing cleric build and noticed you are missing the feats maximize and empower. How will your cure/cure mass spells be sufficient without these feats? Do you find yourself healing from so far away that enlarge is constantly required? What function does the heal skill serve? What hp and reflex save total do you think this build can achieve? How can you prevent enemy spell casters from targeting you from afar, since diplomacy is a close range skill and intimidate does not function 100% of the time?

I sincerely hope that build is a joke. Skipping the second best healing feat (Maximize) for maybe the tenth best (Improved Mental Toughness)? Shield Mastery on a character that is dead the instant it gets close enough to warrant shield blocking?

Reminds me of the 200hp cleric I had once in a run of A New Invasion (on Normal). They kept getting killed by Barnizdu's fireballs, over and over and over, until we just stopped raising them.

Fortunately, the rogue in the group (who was not geared, and didn't have a 100% chance on Heal scrolls yet) was able to provide enough healing to make up for the worse than useless Cleric.


The moral to this story? A cleric that dumps Constitution is a worse healer than a rogue, or at least they are in the very situations where you most need healing. This goes double for a Radiant Servant - a build that gets two very potent healing abilities that only work when you are in close proximity to those people getting attacked.

[Atree]

I sincerely hope that build is a joke. ...

If you look at his capped cleric it seems he follows his own advice.

Running any Amrath quest with someone having that kind of mindset would be an interesting experience.
How would you "stay in the back" when devils are teleporting all over the place?

[Kourier]

If you look at his capped cleric it seems he follows his own advice.

Running any Amrath quest with someone having that kind of mindset would be an interesting experience.
How would you "stay in the back" when devils are teleporting all over the place?

Waves, man. ;)

A small note on pale masters: Some wizards choose the pale master enhancement line and can go into undead form. You can tell if a wizard is undead if: They shuffle about, float in air, emit red flame, or have glowing eyes. They are healing themselves if they emit a dark purple aura.

In this form, they can heal themselves with the spells death aura and negative energy burst. You can't heal them with normal cure or heal spells, but you can heal them with inflict wound or harm spells.

Most pale masters only need healing in emergencies or when they take lots of stat damage (Harm is the only way for a pale master to remove stat damage).

[PNellesen]

Most pale masters only need healing in emergencies or when they take lots of stat damage (Harm is the only way for a pale master to remove stat damage).

We're WAY off-topic now, but apparently not many Clerics are aware that Harm even exists, judging by the responses I get from PMs when I hit them with it right before they're about to die (or is it "live", for a Pale Master? Still not sure how that works :p )

[TDarkchylde]

This section needs to be edited:


===Skills===

At character creation, max out Concentration to ensure your spellcasting suffers minimal interruption during combat, and then put two points into Tumble (netting you a 1.0 rank) – without that 1.0 in Tumble, it won't be usable in combat. Finally, use four points to max out Balance, and the remaining point in Jump.

At each level-up keep Concentration and Balance maxed. Beyond this, feed Jump some points – it'll help with traps and hazards!

You took the template build's INT down to 8. On a human, this only allows the purchase of two skills - there will be no access to Jump (not needed anyway - a Jump spell from a level 9 or higher Wizard, Sorcerer or Ranger, a Greater Heroism spell, the Divine Power spell (or a +6 STR item) and at least +2 to Jump from an item maxes you out with a starting 12 STR), and either Concentration or Balance's investment will need to be cut in half to enable Tumbling. (Concentration might be the better skill to take the hit early: it can be recouped late since the .5 Balance the build would otherwise get at Level 20 is useless, but that same point will buy a full rank of Concentration.)

I would suggest a small section in the finished guide with some of the more useful (and requested) spells that most newbie Clerics would be encouraged to keep prepared as often as feasible - spells like Resist Energy or Death Ward as examples, with short descriptions of the spell's listed effect and its actual impact on gameplay. It doesn't have to be all-encompassing or even extensive, but just enough that a new player would see a spell there and figure "This spell sounds important - I should keep it ready."

[KannyaAryien]

* If you plan to go Radiant Servant, try to aim for over 400 hp. The aura has a nice range on it, but you're going to want to have enough hp to stand in with the melee and not die instantly during a battle.

* I don't have extend on my cleric...at end game, most encounters between shrines are less than 18-20 minutes, which is the duration for most unextended divine buffs. Saves sp for me to not have extend on.

* Have fun with it. :) A cleric is an awesome class to play.

[redoubt]

1. Learning to heal is only the start (metamagic management and learning to not over heal so as to conserve spell points is part of that.)

2. Learn all the other things you can do too: clerics have some great Crowd Control and offensive damage spells, you can even melee as you start out. Run with a more experienced cleric/FvS (yes two in the group) occasionally while you level, use this time to experiment and learn the non-healing stuff.

[Stormslayer]

My advice to new clerics is:
1.Learn to utilize mana from day one. Wands and Scrolls are your bestfriend.If there is a wand or scroll for it and its not for healing or crowd control utilize them such as remove curse,remove poison,remove disease, restoration and greater restoration scrolls,heal scrolls,ect..It saves on mana.
2.Deathward mass is a must when u get to that level. It saves on using mana for stat damage and negative levels.
3.Unless it specifically asks for a battle cleric be prepared to heal. If you are a true battle cleric you need to let the party leader know before the quest.It saves on a lot of ranting from dead party members and getting blacklisted.
4.Con is not an option.I recommend atleast a 14 con to start with.
5.Have fun with you toon. Once you get the hang of it healing will come natural. It is one of the hardest classes to master but it can also be the funniest to play as well:)

[bleedscarlet]

It's hard to say this without sounding insanely narcissistic, but I think I have one of the best clerics on Khyber. I've solo healed elite shroud, hard VOD, and normal hound (although the hound isn't really amazing if you have a good party).

I focus on healing, but my offensive casting and negative spells are my favorite. As it says in my bio:

Healing is my profession, but killing is a hobby i take very seriously.

You can look him up, Avination, and I'll put my build up here when I have time (probably later tonight if possible). There's nothing too fancy about it, except that I did avoid Lorrik's at all costs which makes me happy.

I could probably be a little better at healing if i went for the set but the thought of farming SOS wearies me.

[DeafeningWhisper]

The hardest thing you will need to learn is when to let someone die, basically combat triage: "who needs to be ready and able so the quest can be completed?".

More then once, specially at boss fights, you'll run into this scenario: tank is low on hp and Intimidate is on cool-down, casters are out of sp or very very low, dps are still kicking but will go down fast if they are focused by the boss and your own sp/scrolls/wands are getting dangerously low. The worse you can do is try to keep everyone alive, the dps can kill the boss the tank/casters can't, if they catch aggro let them die, you can always ress them after the fight with scrolls.

Second hardest thing, saying: "Sorry, no".
Most of the games ailments can be cured by pots you can buy at the guild merchant and most players have a high enough guild level to buy them (and most carry them all and buffs pots to boot), but some run out/forget or simply don't buy them and depending on how hard a quest is you might not have the sp/time to cure them, it comes down to triage again. Can you afford the sp/time of removing curse on the rogue versus healing all the team with a mass spell? Can your tank survive long enough for you to remove the caster's blindness? If you know a tough fight is coming up you might have to conserve the sp you have and refuse to remove ailments even if nothing is going on at the moment. You are not a hireling, you decide who get what and when.

Simplest things to learn, mitigating damage is better then healing it.
Giving acid resist is a lot cheaper then having to heal those Melf's Arrows every few minutes, making sure your guys are harder to hurt is always better then just healing them.

You get priority, everyone else can wait.
Been selfless is a fine quality, but if you are dead/incapacitated/knock-downed or otherwise disabled no one gets healed, in a way you are the most important player on your team (and seen how we get blamed for TPKs far too often I guess most players agree).

I main a "Battle" Cleric, the only battle stats/feats he has are 16 str at creation and Improved Shield Bash, it means I can kill trash mobs without using sp for the lower to mid levels (when your sp will be low enough that a bad group will leave you empty before the quest ends), can carry all my loot without problems and it goes well with my Improved Shield Mastery. I like been able to stand with the dps while taking manageable damage so my Aura/Bursts heals them(swinging my mace at low/mid levels and shielding up at higher levels) , the less sp I use the better it is for everyone.

P.S. Every clerics, no matter the build, needs the following items: Deathblock, the highest possible False Life item, highest con/wis/cha item you can equip, Feather Fall, Underwater Action, Devotion/Potency the highest the better, highest Fortification you can equip and SP pots (even if you never use them but it's reassuring to have some).

[Terebinthia]

Hey,

Lots of good input here and props to you for coming to the community for it.

I'd like to see a section on spells, particularly crowd control / damage spells. Soundburst, Command, Greater Command, Cometfall, Blade Barrier etc. Which buffs to carry, which to scroll.

Useful kit would be helpful too - already touched on, I'd nominate the Archivist's Necklace, Elfcrafted Robe, Blue Dragonscale Robe, that trinket from the Necropolis chain turn ins that gives you extra turns, the Sacred Band from Red Fens as well as the Devotion / Wizardry / Ardor items already mentioned.

A link to the Path to Enlightenment thread would also not be out of place at all :)

[Kulothar]

Overall if you are making a good middle of the line cleric it looks good but having played since beta at least 3 clerics to level 20 (edit sorry 2 to 20 one currently 16+1) I think you underestimate a bit.

Your charisma is too low since you miss out on turns. I played with a cleric last night that stated not to expect him to turn anything in a dungeon full of undead since he didn't invest in charisma. Understood, he doesn't think turning undead is that important. But he also could not keep Radiant Servant Aura up and ran out of burst mid way between shrines.

A healing cleric as stated should prevent damage to begin with but Enhancements are those abilities that fill in gaps using Turn Undead instead of spell points.
1) Divine Cleansing means you don't need to memorize cure poison or disease and give a Fort Save.
2) Divine Healing can be cast on the tank at the start of combat to regenerate him and give you more time to heal.
3) Divine Light can damage undead that are unturnable such as red named.
4) Divine might.... well not much there.
5) Divine Vitality may give the caster that one more spell to turn the tide.
6) Divine Aura is group heal over time so you can concentrate on other things.
6) Divine Burst is great for group restoration and heal but also a great undead damage spell.

I am not saying push Charima to 18 but do consider it a good thing to have.

As was stated preventing damage is key. Bless/Prayer/Holy Aura/Magic Circle for pluses. Cometfall, command for control. Direct damage spells just generate agro and make everyones job harder but disabling spells help. Once you gain levels you will figure out how to best use blade barrier, dismissal, destruction and implosion but at lower levels keeping the party alive is the only thing that matters.

Those that say you don't need diplomacy do not understand the agro generation of healing. You should spam diplomacy any time you are not doing something else since every time you heal someone you move up in agro. Once the tank dies the mob then runs over kill the archaine and will come to take you out next. (unless of course you healed the tank so much you have more agro than the archaine.)

Secondary skills. The Cleric should read all of the suggestions posted. One thing to consider is what happens when you run out of spell points and there are mobs between you and the shrine.

If a barbarian insists on running ahead and getting beat to a pulp then expects you to heal them so they can do it again, I remind them it is cheeper to rez them then cast heal. Manage your mana and make sure the group doesnt waste it any more than you should.

Also an Int of 8 does not help with skill points so I usually have at least a 10 so I can put points in things like spot, tumble, move silent, etc. Move silent and bluff are good for soloing to pull mobs one at a time or if you have to get past them.


Clerics should also keep lots of backup in scrolls just in case usually for pets and heals. I never memorise a summon pet or Death pact spells since scrolls do the job.

A Cleric should have at least some fighting ability to survive if low on sp. I personally like to concentrate on just one fighting skill. Elf clerics can use longbow and stay out of the fight or longsword if they have to. WF Greatsword works if you have to. Dwarf and shield/Dwarven Axe. The thing is to not try and be a tank unless you are building a battlecleric. If you are a battlecleric let the group know before they let you join since they will have to get another healer.

Best wishes and good luck .

[Kulothar]

I notice the reply about Shield feats and thought about it. My FvS is simular in that she took defensive feats and is dex based. At higher levels there will be close in fight where one of the best stategies is to get up close and personal. I keep a reavers shield or a healing boost shield for this and stand in the middle of the fight. Shield block and mass heal is great for some fights where everyone is beating on the boss so if you can reduce damage by all means get in there.

Items I like to have include the mace from invaders and the gloves from Reaver. The archivist collar is a must but the twisted talisman and the silver flame from Necro are good to have later on. I really like the simbiot from the Von 4 but the new simbiot is nice too but usually I wear a crystal cove talisman. Gear is important but that should be a separate discussion.

My cleric had DT armor that was purely defensive for when he got agro. It is hard to resist fighting back but he had to learn to block and spam diplomacy till the tank could get control again since a dead cleric is a non healing cleric. If you cast a blade barrier it is also good for staying alive while running around.

As for feats, absolutely once you get blade barrier the Quicken megafeat is essential to get the spell off before the mobs start beating on you.

[Kulothar]

We're WAY off-topic now, but apparently not many Clerics are aware that Harm even exists, judging by the responses I get from PMs when I hit them with it right before they're about to die (or is it "live", for a Pale Master? Still not sure how that works :p )

Harm is another one of those spells I scroll. It is a GREAT spell. It does 10pts dmg per level up to 150 but it also heals Pale masters. I used to carry mass inflict damage scrolls since they would not only heal the pale master but damage the mobs around him but Harm just seemed to be more useful. Otherwise I use a wand of inflict damage for small heals on them if I got one in a chest.

I started carrying harm scroll since I could cast them two levels earlier than I could cast the spell and their damage was nice for smaller mobs to one shot them. Later when I grouped with a pale master they became a staple in my scroll quick bar.

[Kulothar]

As you can tell I am not at work today. :)


Yup, I said the same thing at an earlier post.

Your only source of offensive casting before level 10 is to do healing bursts on the undead. It is easy to get from 6 to 10 through the undead quests, though.

I think a melee-focused cleric is a lot easier to play than a caster one, especially at the early game. The problem is that you can't expect new players to know what they are doing, so we get a bunch of terrible clerics who can't melee well enough and can't heal quickly enough.

One thing missing from the guide is a priorities breakdown. something like:

1) heal yourself. dead clerics are a sad thing.

2) Heal the main tank who is in immediate danger. Don't let that guy that's leading ahead and keeping mobs under control die.

3) Heal the caster who's keeping crowd control up and is in danger. Spells disappear when he dies, and then all those mobs break loose. At endgame, keeping the caster up is more important than keeping the tank, except for a few raids.

4) Heal other people who are close to dying.

5) remove crippling debuffs, like massive level drain or stat damage.

5) Melee / cast offensively. If the party's hp bars are looking good, commanding that troll makes sure they stay there.

7) rebuff important short-term stuff Boosting the rogue's reflex save before the trap is always nice.

8) top people off. you can do this with your aura/bursts between fights.

True, a one page "to do " list would be very helpful to begining clerics. I might add.

a) Clerics are very versital, do not assume there is one absolute build as each person has their own style. I have seen battleclerics heal effectively and healnannies tank effectively.

b) Clerics have limited SP so make the party play to your healing and buffing.

c) It is cheeper to put a dead zerger in your pack and rez him when you get to the fight than waste SP healing someone that won't stay with the group.

d) Non-essential heals are exactly that. Heal as needed but don't waste SP because the WF Caster has a booboo or the rogue is at 95% health.

e) Many non-essential skills are very useful.
Bluff = Solo pulls and easier fights.
Move Silent = Not agroing while sneaking or invisible.
Heal = Everyone at the shrine getting more HP back so less spot healing.
Jump = Well, clerics can't jump so it helps.
Tumble = Less painful falls.
Spot = Hey look at that assassin you just ran by and is poking you in the back now.
etc...

d) Turn undeads regenerate so the enhancement such as devine aura can come back once you run out of SP. Remember to use them, use them wisely since they come back but slowly. They are Charisma based.

e) On quests with few shrines scroll early and often. Don't be shy, ask for chest items you can use such as scrolls and wands. Some spells are best scrolled such as pets but others are good to scroll to conserve your spell points such as heal, mass heals, resurections, etc. Always have remove blindness pots for yourself until you get heal scrolls.

f) Defence and let the tank control the fight, Offence and take out the trash or Control and slow down the action. If you are doing control remind people that if they agro it they own it and are wasting your SP. (I hate doing soundburst and then the wizzy cast burning hands or the tank wades into the middle with the great axe at low levels and wakes them all back up). Command is a very nice control spell. Try it, you might like it.

g) There are a lot of spells. Change them to suit your needs and learn what they do. A separate discussion on spells at low levels is helpful. I keep a healing set of gear and a defensive set and wear them as appropriate. With buffs there is no reason a cleric cannot kill things effectively. (again I like bluff so I only have to kill one at a time.)

h) Clerics are slow and can't jump. Get haste boots and jump clickies or potions but make sure the tank realizes you can't heal him if he runs out of your range.

i) Make the tank do his job. If he doesn't taunt, don't heal until he gets agro again and try to keep yourself alive. If he complaint explain you don't have the SP to heal him since you have to use them all to stay alive since healing goes to the one taking the damage. Also remind casters to control their agro. (see the rez is cheaper than heals comment). If the tank can't do the job change gear and buffs at the next shrine and take over if you have to. Shield block/intimidate does actually work sometimes.

j) There are preconcieved concepts of what a cleric should be. If your build and style varies from that politely let your party know so they can adapt. If you have told them how they need to behave to stay alive and they fail they weren't paying attention. I use aura/burst a lot and if party members refuse to stay close that is their option as to how they want to patch heal themselves.

Many more but you can see how this could be a very long guide. Good luck with it.

[Atree]

For some reason lots of people assume that a battlecleric can't heal. Another misconception that seems prevalent is that clerics are fragile and should avoid agro.

In my personal experience this is not necessarily the case. The first toon I ever capped was a 28pt cleric with a splash of rogue and fighter. Started with 16 Str (all lvlups here), 14 Con and 8 Cha. Pugged and/or solo'd all the way to cap. With gear found along the way she performed adequately in most quests as solo healer.

Remember that gear (GFL, +6 con, Mino, GS = 155hp) combined with with the toughness feat and enhancements (another 40-50hp) and Con (base 14 + 1 tome + 1 enhance = 60hp) have a much bigger effect on health than class choice (160 cleric vs 240 barb) . A capped cleric can aspire to reach or exceed 400hp by cap.

Contrary to many players' beliefs, it doesn't take a lot of sp to keep a good party healthy. In fact in most quests Aura and bursts are sufficient. 3 base + 4 enhancements + 3 Cha (8 base + 6 item + 2 enhance = 16) = 10 turns per rest, which allows to keep the aura going pretty much indefinitely and still allows for a few bursts when needed. A burst with maximize, empower, empower healing, superior ardor, and relevant enhancements heals about 200hp over a decent radius.

Thus if the cleric runs out of sp it is either due to play style of the cleric (overhealing, lack of buffs, no CC), bad group (can't heal stupid) or overambitious expectations (we have a healer, lets do elite!!)

Final note (beyond scope of a 101 guide): A TR'd cleric with raid gear makes a superb tank. With sp-restoring gear (Torc, con-op) getting lots of agro is a good thing. It is far easier to manage your own health than that of others, esp with the aura healing continuously even when tripped/blocking. I was able to tank Lailat and Sinvala at lvl 14, with enough surplus sp coming in to heal/nuke/rez as required. This is likely not relevant for raids, since keeping agro vs raging barbs, sneaky rogues and trigger-happy savants will be tricky at best.

[DeafeningWhisper]

Hey,

Lots of good input here and props to you for coming to the community for it.

I'd like to see a section on spells, particularly crowd control / damage spells. Soundburst, Command, Greater Command, Cometfall, Blade Barrier etc. Which buffs to carry, which to scroll.

Useful kit would be helpful too - already touched on, I'd nominate the Archivist's Necklace, Elfcrafted Robe, Blue Dragonscale Robe, that trinket from the Necropolis chain turn ins that gives you extra turns, the Sacred Band from Red Fens as well as the Devotion / Wizardry / Ardor items already mentioned.

A link to the Path to Enlightenment thread would also not be out of place at all :)

I've been playing for 6 or so months and really could have used the sort of advice I found on this tread when I started out so I thought I should add some of my own.
On a 28 points build I would go for something like this for a caster cleric:

12 Str
08 Dex
14 Con
10 Int
17 Wis +5 level ups, +3 Cleric wisdom +1 greater human adaptability +6 item = 32 wis
11 Cha +1 from human adaptability + 6 item + Extra Turning feat (really a lot more useful then Mental Toughness if want more sp, in the main build add this instead of Extend) = 11 turns, not perfect but will be enough to work with

18 wis sounds good in theory but that means low Int, low Cha or worse low Con. This stat build will get you the minimum Str score to carry your loot and not be incapacitated every other minute, a whole 3 skill points from Int if you go Human (which I recommend for new players the extra feat and skill point are very valuable). The extra turns will reduce the amount of sp you'll need to use to heal once you hit level 6. Keep in mind that by the time your cleric reaches end game you'll have enough favors for 32 point build and can/should greater reincarnate so no need to worry too much about it from the get go, without 32 point having 18 Wis will actually harm your build. 3 skill points means you get Concentration, Balance and Jump or Diplomacy (I carry a full plate and tower shield, your average rock jumps better then me, I'de kill for ranks in jump). You'd think every caster would carry the Jump spell, well they don't, don't ask me why.

[MadDruid]

I dont know why people dont max cha as a cleric, it gives u more auras/Bursts and with the right enhancements lets u walk through anything with undead all through the game without breaking sweat. Only epics cause grief as turning nearly always fails but those extra bursts still do a decent amount of damage vs undead in epics as well. I always max Cha at expense of Str/Con as I dont do the close combat thing...(getting hands dirty is job for the less godly folk :)) but even if I did a Battlecleric I'd want it maxed even if it means dropping a point of wis or two. The damage/Healing from the regening Bursts is worth this slight mana drop.

[sirgog]

On Charisma - there's actually very little return for increasing it as a stat.

+2 Charisma means one more turn attempt, and that's it.

Given RS's regenerate turns over time (enough to almost sustain the Aura), usually the only way you run out of turns is when spamming the Burst in an undead quest, or aggressively using Turn attempts on Divine Vitality.

Two build points for one more use of Radiant Burst isn't an impressive return for build points, IMO.

Charisma shines in some advanced Cleric builds (when you have Divine Might and/or a 2 level Paladin splash - I don't recommend the latter at present endgame but it might be worth considering if save DCs increase), but that's out of the scope of a 101 guide.

But if you want to improve your healing capability, Constitution provides a better return on build points (even if you are paying 2 points for it) than Charisma does. Con improves HP (dead clerics can't heal) and Concentration (reduces scroll failure in combat) - both better than Charisma. I think 14 Con and dumped Cha is the right balance on a 28 pointer; a 32 pointer that never wants to melee (ever) should go 16 Con and 8 Cha.

[garlor]

a healer/caster cleric doesn't care about str, cha is more important because it gives more auras and explosive auras ( whatever is the name ingame )


On Charisma - there's actually very little return for increasing it as a stat.

+2 Charisma means one more turn attempt, and that's it.

Given RS's regenerate turns over time (enough to almost sustain the Aura), usually the only way you run out of turns is when spamming the Burst in an undead quest, or aggressively using Turn attempts on Divine Vitality.

Two build points for one more use of Radiant Burst isn't an impressive return for build points, IMO.

Charisma shines in some advanced Cleric builds (when you have Divine Might and/or a 2 level Paladin splash - I don't recommend the latter at present endgame but it might be worth considering if save DCs increase), but that's out of the scope of a 101 guide.

But if you want to improve your healing capability, Constitution provides a better return on build points (even if you are paying 2 points for it) than Charisma does. Con improves HP (dead clerics can't heal) and Concentration (reduces scroll failure in combat) - both better than Charisma. I think 14 Con and dumped Cha is the right balance on a 28 pointer; a 32 pointer that never wants to melee (ever) should go 16 Con and 8 Cha.

and landing blows on a 20 instead of landing on a 20 ( oh wait, it's the same! ) on endgame is a great return ..., I consider cha more important than con ( once you have 14 con ), but I agree any of them is better than str

aw I think what you don't get with 450 hp you will not with 470

[ceiswyn]

a healer/caster cleric doesn't care about str

Believe me, you'll care about strength when looting Shroud makes you Burdened. Str on all clerics needs to be at least 10, to lug about all those scrolls.

[Flavilandile]

Believe me, you'll care about strength when looting Shroud makes you Burdened. Str on all clerics needs to be at least 10, to lug about all those scrolls.

I do concur... And you don't need to reach the Shroud to notice the Problem. Just Splinterskull will be enough to have a first glimpse of it... if not Tempest Spine will be the one to bring it out.

Once you have your 10 in STR, your 12 to 14 in CON the rest is really up to what clerical flavor you want to be and has already been discussed at length.

[Urjak]

Honestly i was too lazy to read all of the posts^^ ... but here some little advice gathered from my 3 cleric lives:

.) No matter on what you want to focus on as a divine, CONSTITUTION is very important try to start with at least 16 (14 on drow/elf, 15 on human)
.) For healing spells your wisdom score doesnt matter (thinking of melee clerics, well you should get to 19 at level 17 but that shouldnt be a problem, even with a low starting wisdom, though starting with less than 10 wisdom is unadvisable/only for vets with good gear)
.) IMHO clerics can focus on one of three directions. Try to choose one and stick to it ... Being very good in one and miserable in the other two is far better than a mix:
..) Offensive Caster: You will focus on offensive crowd control spells (probably the most newbie friendly one^^). Try to get your wisdom as high as possible and take max empower feats, maybe even sf:conj, gsf:conj
..) Melee aka Battlecleric: Focus on Strength! (If you want to fight with two weapons a few points in dex will be necessary) If you got some spare points put them on charisma to get divine might (minimum for first tier is 14 4th tier is 20) If you skip dm dump cha. (But thats it only in short ... i guess i could write a whole book on battleclerics lol) ... oh and extend is a must-have-feat on this build ;)
..) Turn Cleric: This more of a flavour build, since there are no epic/end game undead that could be turned (sub-t skeletons r immune to turn) For this build you will want high wisdom and charisma. On low to mid level this is a very funny build to play (though it requires access to necro 1-3 to play this build really efficiently) and on high level you will have nearly infinite divine vitality and healing aura/burst usages (at level 20 you will have around 20-25 turns available with just basic gear!)
.) Oh and dont forget to pick up the TOUGHNESS feat! makes life a lot easier ;)

So much to the build department ... now some gameplay tipps:
If you play a cleric/favoured soul a very short response time from you is required and expected! (Noone likes that slow healer who needed just 0,5 seconds too long and so you got killed) How to achieve that? Here some tipps from my experiences as battlecleric and turn cleric:
IMO there are two possibilities:
.) (My prefered method since it lets you move and turn faster) Get a mouse with more than 3 buttons:
..) IMO a mouse with 4 buttons is already enough (i use one with 5 but ddo doesnt recognize the 5th for some unkown reason O_o)
..) Assign your highest level healing spell to that additional button
..) Assign your second highest level healing spell to ctrl+that additional button
..) Remap F1-F6 to number 1-6 (and practice ... lots of practice pressing theese keys without having to look at your keyboard!)
..) Go into mouse-look-mode (very nice for battleclerics since mouse-look-mode lets you easier chase mobs around)
..) Now u can fight (right mouse button), scroll view distance (middle mouse button), select stuff (left mouse button) and heal (4th mouse button). This method needs some practice ... but once you mastered it nothing will stop you from becoming a really really fast healer ;)
.) Learn to play with your keyboard only:
..)Remap your main hotbar (1-0) from the numbers on the main part of the keyboard to the num-pad (this also works very nice when playing a caster). Now "all" you have to do is:
..) Move with wasd
..) Select ppl with F1-F6 (you could also remap them to the stand 1-6 number keys for even faster selection)
..) Press the correct key on your num-pad with the right hand to select the right healing spell.

.) Some other advice (also i prolly get neg-repped for this, but it s simply what i experienced (and i think 3 cleric lives are proof for at least some experience on that topic^^)
..) During mob fights people are often spread wide out and players dont/rarely get damaged at the same time => dont waste sps on mass cures where you would probably hit only one or max two players at once => better use the sp for one heal spell (which is very good hp/sp) which heals the target up to full (or nearly if barb) health instead of spamming 3 cures for 5 times the cost.
..) During boss fights almost exclusively use mass cures/heals. Since all players are hunched up around the boss you will easily hit them all with your mass spells. Only use single target heals when that sorc steals aggro from the barb tank^^
..) Try to make use of your radiant aura and burst. Unlike an archer or caster you are NOT supposed to stay back far away from the melees ... try to have radiant aura always on and place yourself at the center of the battle so you affect as many people as possible ... and shield block (just incase you for whatever reason draw aggro/get hit by cleave/...) When you see that several people got damaged (but not seriously => then it would be time to instantly throw them a heal^^) throw in a radiant burst! If you are a turn cleric you can heal groups through quests with nearly no sp usage at all ;) (more room for some offensive spells ;) )

phew long post (longer than i expected^^) ... hope it helps some newbs (and some noobs too hopefully^^)

[ballsz]

Every new cleric should know not to over heal. No matter how much the melee nag you, you do not have to make that red bar full. Over healing is a huge waste of SP and especially as a cleric your SP will be precious.

Always keep in mind that every player in the party is just as a effective with 1 HP as they are at full health. This does not mean wait until they hit 1hp to heal them though, as a good rule of thumb 50%-60% health should be healed. This can vary greatly though depending on what level you are at and what characters you are healing as well as how strong your heals are. So you will need to learn to use your best judgment.

Your role in the party is to help make sure that the quest succeeds. Not to keep everyone happy.

[MisosOrcus]

The build offered is not bad over all, however, if going for radiant servant, I believe you would be better off leaving Wisdom at 17 or 18 and using the points to oost charisma. This will allow you to heal even when out of SP. Yes the uses of Radiant servant do regenerate but only one a minute. It will also allow you to be better at turniong undead and using skills such as haggle and diplomacy. I know some people feel you must max out on wisdom, but I will have to quote a warforged TR player I was debating with "In the end it one les plus only means 20 less spell points and one less plus to your rolls. With feats and good equipment you never notice the difrence" at lower levels how ever, I feel that the extra uses of turn undead are invaluable. SO personally i would put 14 in STR and Cha and leave wisdom at 16. This is of course just my thoughts, if you dfisagree feel free. I am not looking to argue just expressing what I think.

[Indel_Eventine]

I have 2 clerics, one 20, and another about 1.5 ranks from 20.

A couple of things. At low levels, Divine Cleansing is a very good enhancement to take, as it removes Poison and Disease. Poison is the primary issue, as it is fairly common and can hurt the party fairly badly. Not needed as much at higher levels, when spells/wands/scrolls can do most of the things it can.

Your feat list: Your list is for humans, which gives an xtra feat. Other races get only 7 feats.

1) Toughness – Increases Hit Points (HP) at first level and provides additional HP for each new level, allowing a player to take the Racial Toughness enhancement. Taking Toughness results in such a significant HP boost that it's practically mandatory. This is in no way required at level 1. You have 3 hit points from it at level one, 5 at level 3. It is important, but not a must for level 1. My L20 cleric doesn't even have the feat, and still has 320 hit points (however, I generally just heal. Getting the feat with one enhancement would increase my hit points by 10 percent, so it is still a good thing to have, but no where near "mandatory".)

• 1) Extend Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells with durations last twice as long, but they consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP). Also not necessary at level 1 - level 1 spells that would use extend cost 10 sps already, so casting it twice is just as good.

• 3) Empower Healing Spell – While this metamagic feat is active healing spells are 50% more effective, but consume 10 additional Spell Points (SP). A must have, but a little wasted on healing spells that cost less than 20 sps to case in the first place, since you only get a 50% boost. Can be taken later. (note, once you get the empower healing enhancement line, it only costs 6 more - the best use, IMO, as you cast healing spells more than anything else - so you can just leave it on (by the time you can get it, you hardly ever use your level 1/2 cures anyway)

• 6) Maximize Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, damage (and healing!) spells deal double damage (and healing!), but they consume 25 additional Spell Points (SP). Good, but not a must have - again, the additional sp cost is usually not worth it unless the original spell costs at least 25, so this can be taken later. It can be useful in final boss fights where you have a full mana bar and can spam damage spells, but other than that, it is a dangerous mana sink at low levels. This does stack with Cure spells, but not Heal spells.

• 9) Empower Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells do 50% more damage, but consume 15 additional spell points. Same as Maximize - innefficient unless the spells cost 30 to start with.

• 12) Quicken Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, spells cast twice as fast and cannot be interrupted by enemy attacks but consume 10 additional spell points. The only truly useful spell this impacts is mass heal (with the changes to Blade Barrier so that it casts faster). Not needed until you reach that level, but almost a must have for higher level raids - the party can wipe while you try to cast mass heal without it. Mass cures do not need it, so it remains "amost" a must, you can get by without it.

• 15) Spell Penetration – Adds +2 to your caster level check for defeating spell resistance.
Definately a good one, should take earlier - a lot of spell resistance exists in the Von series and Gianthold.

• 18) Heighten Spell – While this metamagic feat is active, your spells are raised to the highest spell level your character can cast, making them more difficult to resist, but increasing their Spell Point (SP) cost. Meh, I don't have it on either cleric. Good for the death spells.

A couple you didn't discuss -

Mental Toughness is useful at lower levels, as it gives 10 to start and 5 each level, for 105 at 20 - but 105 at 20 isn't anywhere near as useful at 30 sps are at level 5. Take and drop later if you desire.

Extra Turning - 4 extra uses of your Divine Vitality/Healing/Cleansing - but more importantly of your Raident servant aura/burst. I have it on both of my clerics. Used to be more important when the turns didn't regen, but I still regularly use them all in the harder quests. I have 16-18 of themm on mine, and that is a TON of SPs to return to another cleric, wiz, or sorc - also useful at shrines to allow a wiz to buff and be restored before the cleric rests.

Augmented Summoning - this should be the level 1 feat taken - it is useful through all levels, and is especially useful at lower levels.



My two cents - I do not cast a ton of offensive spells, I generally hang back and heal, so a more aggressive cleric might have more luck with how you have set out the enhancements.

[VorpalUser]

If you're choosing a cleric... HEAL! Wear heavy armor because divine magic isn't affected by spell failure. Concentrate on maxing your heal and concentration skill... and that's about it. I have a cleric and i chose to make it a living pharmacy... and believe me, that's what groups will be expecting from you, and even more from lvl 12 and up. Forget about making a battle cleric. If you wanna have a good fighter that heals, choose a goddam light monk or efficiently multiclass your fighter into a cleric!

[Moorganna]

Having played Clerics in this game for 5 years... (My first character 5 years ago was a clr and he is still fun to play) I now have seven Clr on Thelanis all capped (or nearly so) and by far my favorite is the 40 cha Radiant servant healbot! I have seen several state that cha is a dump stat and yes, turns do regen with RSII BUT, churning out 29 DV 3s to fill up a lvl 20 Bard or topping off another clr between shrines in a raid is FUN! (and handy I might add)
I'll just say that the Clerics that are the most fun to play are the ones that have been planned out to lvl 20 BEFORE creation. There are MANY ways to plan/build YOUR clr, but if you don't know what you want before you start... you won't be happy with what you get! (and probably won't follow through to cap said clr)

All that being said... I HAVE to mention Clogues! I mean, what ELSE is the 'Find Traps' spell for??!! ;-)

[TheDjinnFor]

Yes, but there's another key fact: Due to the design of DDO, a low level Cleric cannot be an offensive caster, not effectively. Before about level 10, there just aren't enough reasonable offensive spells for that to be a workable role.

Maybe that'll change someday with new spells or a prestige specialty for offensive casting. But currently, the only way a lowbie Cleric can be helpful in between healing (or if nobody else is hurting the monsters) is to use a weapon.

...Sorry?

Soundburst (for groups of weak trash like kobolds), Command (for the beefy Ogre types), Holy Smite (for AoE debuffing evil enemies), Chaos Hammer/Orders Wrath (for a great stun against lawful/chaotic creatures) are amazing for both soloing and groups. Then there's Greater Command and Cometfall for upper levels.

I'd rather be the first person into a fight with my cleric and hit a group of mobs with one of those AoE spells, then mop up as a melee. I did it with a 28 pter too.

Most clerics default response to a group of trash at mid levels is to throw a blade barrier then heal the result. The problem is, the trash is dead 5 seconds later and the cleric also needs to throw a mass cure moderate or something because the group took some hits. A good cleric throws a cometfall and then doesn't need to heal anyone :)

[Angelus_dead]

I'd rather be the first person into a fight with my cleric and hit a group of mobs with one of those AoE spells, then mop up as a melee. I did it with a 28 pter too.
A CC+Melee is one kind of character, and an Offensive Caster is another. A Wizard or Sorcerer can reasonably be an offensive caster at low levels, which would not work for a Cleric. If a low level Cleric isn't attacking with a weapon, then he's got a lot of spare time in combat waiting around.


I did it with a 28 pter too.
Yes, it was the guy I was refuting who claimed a 28 point Cleric could not function in melee.

[TheDjinnFor]

A CC+Melee is one kind of character, and an Offensive Caster is another. A Wizard or Sorcerer can reasonably be an offensive caster at low levels, which would not work for a Cleric. If a low level Cleric isn't attacking with a weapon, then he's got a lot of spare time in combat waiting around.

Spare time? Most mid-level battles last about 3 seconds with 4 melees mauling through them. I barely have enough time to cast a Chaos Hammer before everything is dead unless I'm the first one in.

And for soloing, thanks to dungeon scaling, it's pretty easy to drag a horde of mobs behind you, then turn and throw a Chaos Hammer/Order's Wrath plus Holy Smite combo with some enhancements and a potency IV item and kill them all in a normal, level 8 quest. And you have to throw both of them because it's better than max/emping one of them.

Is it smart to occasionally melee against weak, CCed, low-hp mobs? Yes. As a wizard you wouldn't even bother casting a spell but would just wait for the melees to mop them up... or kite them to the next group of victims, and there's nothing stopping you from doing so as a cleric.

[samho]

Most clerics default response to a group of trash at mid levels is to throw a blade barrier then heal the result. The problem is, the trash is dead 5 seconds later and the cleric also needs to throw a mass cure moderate or something because the group took some hits. A good cleric throws a cometfall and then doesn't need to heal anyone :)

I'm sorry, but...

If a cleric throw a BB for a group of trash then he also need to mass cure, then either he's doing it wrong or the group just don't understand how to work with the blade barrier.

Actually, for my newly created divine casters, I do have intimidate key map into main hotkey for all of them (even without putting any point into intimidate, just use intimidate ring + greensteel air guard. Usuaully it's plenty for trash).

[DoctorWhofan]

Guess what? Healbots are not self suffiant (which alot of people insist other classes to be) if they cannot protect themselves. This means not just passive spells, either.

[wolflairabyss99]

something new clerics should know is that almost all groups will expect you to play healbot and will not be happy when they see you running around swinging weapons and nuking mobs.

mental toughness is a good feat no matter what type of cleric you are.
extra turning feat is pretty good for both healbots or high cha offensives.

i have found that my playstyle doesn't require any cha. dex is useless to a cleric, a +5 item is good enough for dex capping plate. robes w/o shields are acceptable considering that ac becomes all or nothing around the time you reach gianthold.

playing a cleric can get expensive; buying scrolls, wands, spell components, mana pots(optional). its incredibly rude to demand compensation because clerics are only a part of the group, not the center of it.

[Aashrym]

something new clerics should know is that almost all groups will expect you to play healbot and will not be happy when they see you running around swinging weapons and nuking mobs.

mental toughness is a good feat no matter what type of cleric you are.
extra turning feat is pretty good for both healbots or high cha offensives.

i have found that my playstyle doesn't require any cha. dex is useless to a cleric, a +5 item is good enough for dex capping plate. robes w/o shields are acceptable considering that ac becomes all or nothing around the time you reach gianthold.

playing a cleric can get expensive; buying scrolls, wands, spell components, mana pots(optional). its incredibly rude to demand compensation because clerics are only a part of the group, not the center of it.

I agree that some groups might expect the cleric to play healbot. That does not make it a good idea, however.

Mental Toughness is not a good feat. It has a small return until late in the game and other feats are better. Torc and ConOpp works.

High CHA offensives sounds odd considering spell DCs are WIS based, but there are some CHA enhancements I suppose. ;)

Shields can mitigate damage regardless of AC. RS aura healing while shield blocking. The shield mastery and improved shield mastery can help.

Playing a cleric is only expensive if the cleric chooses to shell out for all of the consumablse and use them for the rest of the party. I am not saying he should not buy consumables, but each player can be responsible for some self healing by buying healing potions. Turning in collectibles for wands provides a lot towards saving costs. Using SP for damage mitigation is more efficient that straight healing.

I disagreed with some of your general comments and added some of my own, which I thought might be less discouraging for new players. ;)

[Malric]

I just wanted to point out a few flaws I noticed in this guide that I think are pretty significant.

First off, it lists the primary 3 stats for a cleric as wis, con & str...

Even when it goes into additional, it lists charisma below int...

Really? I mean this may be suitable for a combat cleric but this is nowhere near realistic for a healer which is the primary role of clerics in DDO. Lets be honest, if your group is looking for a cleric and a combat cleric enters the group, how happy are you about this?

I think yes, the primary stat is Wisdom...

Now considering that the only current prestige class for DDO is radiant servant, and every ability you get from radiant servant is based on your turn undead attempts, which in the end determines your overall ability to heal, I'm sorry to dissagree but I'd place Charisma as #2.

Now everyone needs Con, it's a given stat no matter what class you are. We all take hits and we all want to survive them so yeah, I'd place con as #3.

#4 I would say is str, if you do somehow have to do melee damage then you'll need it to hit, but honestly, unless you're a combat cleric, this is unlikely, however it will determine how much loot you can carry. When you're already wearing heavy armor & possibly a shield, with all the scrolls, spell components, wands, mana pots & other stuff you may be carrying, you'll want to actually be able to loot treasure without becoming burdened.

#5 would be int. concentration is your number one skill you'll want and if you have high enough int you can pickup UMD and diplomacy, it's unlikely you'll have enough int to pick more than that unless you've TR'd a couple times, in which case maybe tumble would be good, or balance or jump.

#6 i place as dex, end of story, you need 12 dex eventually max and no more. In heavy armor you can only get a max dex bonus of +1 in most full plate which is likely what you'll be wearing. Adamantine full plate will be better for you than Mithril because if you're using a shield you're still limited with your max dex and the DR will do you better in the end than 2 AC will at the cost of 4 more stat points (really 6 points if placed in the beginning unless you're elf or drow).

On a 28 point build I would put more like 10 str, 10 dex (why AC Penalty?), 10 con, 18 wis, 14 cha and would dump all optional points into wis.

I believe on my 32 point build I actually went 8 str, 10 dex, 12 con, 8 int, 18 wis, 16 cha

14 con and 14 cha would be perfectly fine too though.

With the wrath of sora kell set 14 str is more than enough str to loot, but honestly, str items and tomes to bring up str later is easy to get and honestly later game if you're still meleeing you're either a battle cleric or you're doing something very wrong.

Feats:

cleric's don't have a ton of SP and later on with all the meta magic feats you have you'll want all the SP you can get, not sure why any build would not incorporate mental toughness. So dump spell penetration and pickup mental toughness which i would actually pickup right after toughness. At very low lvl like 1-2 people don't have enough HP and you don't have enough SP to need Empower healing right away.

also you need to remember empower spell and maximize do not effect the heal spell, so I'm not sure if you really want both of them unless you plan on doing a lot of damage. it will help with mass cure spells, but be aware the cost of something like mass cure serious or critical will become huge when effected by so many meta magic feats.

Anyway I thought I was gonna make a couple small comments but as I read this build it opens up a whole can of worms and dissagreements for me, so I'll stop now.

If anyone in game is interested in my pure healing build, that is still capable of defending itself when needed, hit me up on cannith, I'm usually on Malric, Celes, Traci or Mondain.

Anyone that knows me or has grouped with me knows I know my role as a healer very well, take it very seriously, and am quite proficient at it.

[xtchizobr]

If you're choosing a cleric... HEAL! Wear heavy armor because divine magic isn't affected by spell failure. Concentrate on maxing your heal and concentration skill... and that's about it. I have a cleric and i chose to make it a living pharmacy... and believe me, that's what groups will be expecting from you, and even more from lvl 12 and up. Forget about making a battle cleric. If you wanna have a good fighter that heals, choose a goddam light monk or efficiently multiclass your fighter into a cleric!

the Heal skill is quite broken at the moment. it simply serves no useful purpose ever. like Repair. Clerics are unfortunate in that the Heal skill is one of their few class skills, but they generally have low intelligence anyway, so why care about skills when you get so few points? since you get so few skill points, though, and since pretty much everything is a cross-class, then max Concentration and throw any remaining points into Balance (where they will do the most good).

the problem with the Heal skill is that at later levels recovering HP while you're at a shrine or safe spot is trivial since there are so many options available to high level characters (and if the cleric is alive and standing around next to you, he definitely is capable of pumping your health bar without forcing you to use the shrine). the theory behind the skill was that it would save a lot of spell points by allowing everyone to be recovered to full health when they rest near a teammate with Healing... except that it doesn't recover enough to completely heal most characters, it doesn't work on Warforged (which would be the most expensive characters for a Cleric to heal) and, as i said, hp are trivial to recover starting in the mid levels (when non-divine characters begin to be able to UMD wands or afford tons of potions or whatever). in the low levels, clerics aren't stressed for SP anyway since high AC will allow a character to solo a dungeon quite easily without ever getting hit in the first place (traps still hurt i guess). wand-whipping Cure Lights is quite cheap and effective, as well.

my advice to new Clerics: the Heal skill is useless. do not waste skill points there. ever. the Heal skill enhancements, however, are required to get your Radiant Servant PrE, but they're pretty cheap and refundable, and your PrE is definitely worth it.

[Letrii]

Don't forget your eternal wand for nuking at low level.

[xavyre]

hey fordytwo do you mind makeing a bard 101 because im going to Tr into a bard soon and i really need help Tring from a ranger to a bard alot of difrenet stuff

[Khuul99]

Just a small thing but as a cleric I hardly ever run around without quicken on, so for me concentration is usually a wasted skill set. If I scroll, I'll do that from a safe spot.

I usually put more points into balance and jump instead of concentration but that might be a personal choice and life is abit awkward for a battle cleric until you taken quicken...

[Yagi]

I prefer to do everything that I am capable of doing.

[sirgog]

Just a small thing but as a cleric I hardly ever run around without quicken on, so for me concentration is usually a wasted skill set. If I scroll, I'll do that from a safe spot.

I usually put more points into balance and jump instead of concentration but that might be a personal choice and life is abit awkward for a battle cleric until you taken quicken...

It's not always possible to avoid damage while scrollhealing.

Cough, cough, Tower of Despair/Vision of Destruction with their teleporting trash mobs. TOD you can rely on Invisibility and not stand near anyone else to avoid being cleaved, but in VOD that is less of an option as you usually want to be close enough to (non-tank) party members to use your Aura.

The epic Cojoined Abashai Devastator takes this same issue even further, as the trash mobs there all see through Invisibility.

[Creaturz]

Primary strengths-
*Healing
*buffing
*stuns/commands
*undead slaying

If you are one of those melee clerics, guess what? You fail. Go get Fvs or make a paladin. If you are a nuke cleric, guess what? You fail again. The line of direct dmg spells in the divine list is extremely poor compared to the arcane list. The cleric class is not designed to be melee or nuking, except for undead perhaps.

In a group-
If you are thinking it would be better to swing a mace at some random mob instead of keeping vigilance over the parties hps, you need to stop playing a cleric now and find a different class. YOUR job as a cleric is THE most important job in the group, and raids dont exist without you. That job is not to spend all your sp buffing everyone up, though some buffs are nice. Your job is to have sp to HEAL.

In a raid-
No other situation will test your worth more than a raid. The demand on the cleric to buff/heal/raise dead is huge and so time consuming that if you even try to swing a club to hit the dragon, you will be booted by the raid leaders. It is in these situations that you learn what buffs are essential above all others. Aid/Elemental prot/death ward to name a few. Even so, again, never spend alot of sps on buffing. a fighter with aid being smacked to neg100 or disintegrated = a wasted aid. Same fighter being smacked close to zero then receiving a heal = much better. Hours could be spent covering all the bases on raid sense, but only time and experience can really show you. Get out there and raid, and stick to your basics. No club swinging or nuking clerics on raids please.

Soloing-
Even here, nuking or swinging a club is going to be fustrating at times, cause it takes forever to kill the mobs. The one real way out of this to solo is when you reach the insta-kill spells. Slay livings/harms/etc. THESE are as close as clerics get to nuking, and they can be powerful here, but only against a low number of mobs.

More

[sirgog]

Primary strengths-
*Healing
*buffing
*stuns/commands
*undead slaying

If you are one of those melee clerics, guess what? You fail. Go get Fvs or make a paladin. If you are a nuke cleric, guess what? You fail again. The line of direct dmg spells in the divine list is extremely poor compared to the arcane list. The cleric class is not designed to be melee or nuking, except for undead perhaps.

In a group-
If you are thinking it would be better to swing a mace at some random mob instead of keeping vigilance over the parties hps, you need to stop playing a cleric now and find a different class. YOUR job as a cleric is THE most important job in the group, and raids dont exist without you. That job is not to spend all your sp buffing everyone up, though some buffs are nice. Your job is to have sp to HEAL.

In a raid-
No other situation will test your worth more than a raid. The demand on the cleric to buff/heal/raise dead is huge and so time consuming that if you even try to swing a club to hit the dragon, you will be booted by the raid leaders. It is in these situations that you learn what buffs are essential above all others. Aid/Elemental prot/death ward to name a few. Even so, again, never spend alot of sps on buffing. a fighter with aid being smacked to neg100 or disintegrated = a wasted aid. Same fighter being smacked close to zero then receiving a heal = much better. Hours could be spent covering all the bases on raid sense, but only time and experience can really show you. Get out there and raid, and stick to your basics. No club swinging or nuking clerics on raids please.

Soloing-
Even here, nuking or swinging a club is going to be fustrating at times, cause it takes forever to kill the mobs. The one real way out of this to solo is when you reach the insta-kill spells. Slay livings/harms/etc. THESE are as close as clerics get to nuking, and they can be powerful here, but only against a low number of mobs.

More

In raids, it's usually the case that multiple divines take turns healing.

When it's not your turn to heal, you contribute a lot more swinging a weapon (assuming you can stay alive) than you do sitting behind a rock. If you are lucky enough to own a Torc of Raiyum, you might even gain SP out of being in a melee.

Playing a melee divine takes skill, and bad ones are terrible, but they bring unique abilities to raids. And unlike the Barbarian they might replace in your raid, they can shift gears and heal the whole raid if another cleric disconnects.

[Creaturz]

In raids, it's usually the case that multiple divines take turns healing.

When it's not your turn to heal, you contribute a lot more swinging a weapon (assuming you can stay alive) than you do sitting behind a rock. If you are lucky enough to own a Torc of Raiyum, you might even gain SP out of being in a melee.

Playing a melee divine takes skill, and bad ones are terrible, but they bring unique abilities to raids. And unlike the Barbarian they might replace in your raid, they can shift gears and heal the whole raid if another cleric disconnects.

If a cleric is swinging a weapon, then a cleric is in argo range of fresh pulls and a cleric is not paying close attention to others situations. Of course, im sure if it's a relaxing little raid, unique things can be done to entertain.

[TheDjinnFor]

If a cleric is swinging a weapon, then a cleric is in argo range of fresh pulls and a cleric is not paying close attention to others situations.

Reread the first sentence of the post you quoted for the response to this sentence.

[aerendhil]

(I didn't read all the posts)

Extend Spell is for battle cleric not casting-focused, either damage or healing.
For caster, i'd rather take mental toughness and eventually improved mental toughness instead.

[dkyle]

If a cleric is swinging a weapon, then a cleric is in argo range of fresh pulls and a cleric is not paying close attention to others situations. Of course, im sure if it's a relaxing little raid, unique things can be done to entertain.

You do realize that it's possible to do more than one thing at a time, right?

Swinging a sword, and watching HP bars isn't rocket surgery. And unless it's Horoth or Sulu, I'm quite content drawing aggro myself.

Heck, running Shroud, I do three things at once: heal (sometimes solo), melee, and keep DP stacked up.

If that sounds impossible to you, I'd suggest learning how to play the game better.




Extend Spell is for battle cleric not casting-focused, either damage or healing.
For caster, i'd rather take mental toughness and eventually improved mental toughness instead.

Extend? I agree. I don't even have it on my melee FvS, although I sometimes wish I did.

MT and IMT? Waste of feats. There are so many better things you could be getting than a tiny smattering of SP.

[TheDjinnFor]

If a cleric throw a BB for a group of trash then he also need to mass cure, then either he's doing it wrong or the group just don't understand how to work with the blade barrier.

I'd say the opposite: if the melees aren't taking hits the group is doing it wrong.

If the cleric is throwing BBs instead of Cometfalls, the only way the group is going to avoid all take damage is if he starts kiting things around.

One cleric soloing the quest by kiting trash around with BBs while 5 melees stand there and watch (or chase the trash around) is "doing it wrong" when the group could complete much faster if the 5 melees were doing something useful (read: killing things).

[aennae]

I'd strongly urge the dropping of int and cha to 8 to support a 14 str: a 14 str cleric can melee acceptably up until level 10-12 with a decent weapon, and its a huge advantage to a new player to be able to do that.

a single extra turn undead or the like is hardly worth it, and as a human they already have 2 skill points/lv for jump+concentration.

At low levels, a cleric with ok full plate, a shield, and any kind of decent weapon can solo nearly anything between their acceptable melee ability and self-healing. That won't last, but it will get them through the ranges where grouping is by far most frustrating if they have problems, and they probably will - without access to consumable healing (ie wands), its very hard to heal other people, and if they join groups that expect them to they will be very frustrated in the harbor.

On the other hand, with a +3 full plate, a +3 heavy shield, and a +1 flaming weapon, they could probably solo waterworks on normal at level 4.

I totally agree with this comment.

- Lot of people claim that mental toughness is a waste, it's not in the low levels. Remember that feats can be changed.

- Toughness and it's enhancement are a must have.

- Extend is a waste at any level, it's only usefull in the 1-10 range when you are grouped with people that will rush the content within 15mn.

- Empower healing is nice at any level, it turns CLW or CMW into powerfull spells. At level 3 you can heal over 50 with an empowered cure moderate (level 3 spell).

- Advices about wand/scroll curing are irrelvant, a newplayer cannot afford that before level 10-11. I advice to Carry raise dead scrolls (around 8) and some heal scroll (around 11). Raise dead scrolls allow you to load a more usefull level 5 spell. Obviously the higher level you are the more you can heal with wands.

- Note also that wands are casted at a prescribed level, and do not beneficit from life magic. So a cure moderate charge from a wand is doing very small healing. Empower healing and wand expertise probably do affect them.
Radiant servant is a much better way to patch heal with 0 mana than wands.

- CC spells like greater command will drain your mana very quickly at 9, and since even in elite mob die in a second it's not efficient, especially with no spell penetration. It may be important post 12 or 14.
Soundburst is a much better CC spell, simply because it cost much less, moreover spell casters seems more vulnerable to it than to command.

- Element resistance and protection from element are very important and can cut the damage received by almost 100%.

- Recitation prayer should be kept for boss fights.

- Mana is the most important ressource, especially if you solo. Always rest with a power item in hand, then buf and swtch.

- If you look at efficiency nothing come close to a blade barrier, using empower on it is a bad idea if you kill the "army" while the barrier is up. As example at 11 in the sand tombs almost anything dies after 4 BB hits. So i advice to ajust your usage of empower. 25 mana is a lot if you consider than 40 mana means 200-300 hps.

- Symbols can be very efficient, but using them in group is difficult. If you solo their impact may be really good. They cost low mana and are highly proactive.