Battle cleric build (Vol. 2)

[Rootstock]

You mostly hear people bashing the new cleric class. This is weird, because battle clerics may just be stronger than ever. Below is my guide to get you started as a battle cleric. Currently, battle cleric (BC) is one of the most overlooked classes.

Pros:

• BC is one of the best classes for luring.
• BC can easily act as your party's tank.
• You can gain ridiculously high attack speed, range, and high DPS.
• Presumably BC is also very good for PvP.
• BC is very versatile: after level 100, you can experiment with both melee and summons and try very different playstyles.
• BC can easily solo bosses, which can be fun and good for gaining rare items.

Cons:

• No real AOE.
• People are not well aware of the BC class, so some people don't want you in their parties (they  don't know about your luring skills so you can also tell them about this yourself).

The guide takes you to about level 130, where I am currently.

Please let me know what I have missed and how I could improve as well.

STATS

BC has a very wide stat spread. This is actually very nice, because you get a lot of useful stats for cheap.

INT is your main stat. You will basically want to have just enough INT to wear the best wand possible for your level. INT adds attack power, max MP, and some other useful things. Some passive skills scale from INT.

DEX is your second stat. DEX adds attack power and dodge rate. Keep DEX slightly above your level. Some passive skills scale from DEX.

SEN is good for BC, because you will have high attack speed and therefore want a high critical rate. I keep SEN just below my level, but adjust this to your taste.

CON adds accuracy, which is essential. However, BC also gets lots of passives that add accuracy. Keep CON at 50% of your level minimum, and add it when you feel like you are missing too many hits.

CHA slightly makes your buffs better, but more importantly CHA adds Damage over Time (DoT) to select skills. In BC skilltree, the only offensive skill it seems to affect is Hellfire, which is an amazing skill. If you use Hellfire, add CHA to minimum 50% of level and adjust as necessary.

STR adds HP and defense. You can invest slightly into STR, because early points are so cheap. But it's not one of your key stats, IMO.

 

SKILLS

ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR MUSE

• Spirit of the Magi. Skill power for cheap.
• Valkyrie Chant. Best buff in game.
  • Other party buffs are less useful, because you will usually be partying with a support cleric who has all the buffs. I only use this buff to buff my summons.
• Mana Shield. One of the most useful skills: it gives you a huge extra HP bar that scales off your max MP. A literal life saver. Get this ASAP and learn to use it.
• Mental Focus. Huge self-buff for cheap.
• Wand Mastery/Speed/Accuracy. Very useful (but expensive) passives.

OFFENSIVE SKILLS

You get to choose from four options:

Fire Bolt + Hellfire: Best damage over time. You'll want some CHA for Hellfire.

Mana Bolt + Mana Spear: Has a good MDEF debuff, which can be useful especially when partying with mages.

Ice Bolt + Frostbiter: Slows opponents down.

Voltage Bolt + Voltage Jolt: Chance to stun opponent.

All of these four are viable. Mana Bolt/Spear is the "default" cleric choice, and has another skill in the Cleric tree. Voltage skills have a mini AoE in the Cleric tree, which is nice but not extremely good.

You can also optimise the active offensive skills you use accordingly with enemy elemental resistances. For instance, fire seems to be quite effective in Xita (Eldeon), because many enemies are of the Earth type. Against Earth type enemies, Fire Bolt and Hellfire work well. Against Water type, Voltage skills are the best, and so on. Check out the guide for elemental damage here:

 

Overall, I personally prefer Fire Bolt + Hellfire for the DoT and the benefit it gets from CHA. I find this the most powerful set and only use these two as a level 135 Cleric.

 

OTHER NICE SKILLS

• Wand Range is extremely useful if you are a lurer. You will gain about 30% more range with this which saves a lot of time, and you get more hits in before the enemy reaches you.
• Summon Phantom Sword is very good, cheap SP-wise, and viable for PVE well into level 130+. They are useful for luring as well, since they draw enemy attention. You'll need Summon Training for this skill. Having 3 Phantom Swords fight along you is really nice. They also spread the damage you take as enemies will often aggro the swords and not you.
  • The alternative is a bonfire, which works well at lower levels. But the problem with bonfire is that if you are a lurer in your party, the bonfire will always disappear when you leave it.
• Mystic Deflection and Guard you can unlock at level 1: Guard adds more value per SP at level 1. It is good if you have a good offhand item (more on this below).

 

CLERIC SKILLS

There is lots of diversity here, but instantly when you reach level 100 you'll notice a cluster of 4 passive skills in the top-left corner. My recommendation is to unlock these passive skills ASAP. They add impressive attack power, attack speed, skill power and magic pierce (magic pierce means your magic damage goes "through" the enemies magic defense; basically it means better damage for your magic attacks). The passive skills Cleric's Intensity is amazing: whenever you hit an enemy, it has a chance of adding a stack of attack power +5% and attack speed +5%. If you have high attack speed, you'll almost constantly have this stack buff when attacking enemies. So you'll probably want to invest in high attack speed (see below). After you have these, you can either unlock active offensive skills (Mana Wave or Voltage Storm if you wish). Personally, I'm moving towards the dodge and defense passives instead. I find high attack speed + Fire Bolt and Hellfire works just fine.

Another option as cleric is to go full summon. Here my recommendation is to work towards the Firegons first. You'll be able to spawn two Firegons and they are really good. Note that summons scale of your base stats (attack, defense, etc.) so as a summoner you'll want to invest in those passives as well. However, summons don't seem to scale off attack speed or skill power, so those passives can be ignored as pure summoned. TLDR for summoner build is you'll want to maximise attack power and summon two Firegons (until you have the gems and SP to summon two Ice Dragons, which is very late game).

I don't have any heals on my BC build. Why? Well, it requires a lot of SP investment, and your stats aren't optimised for healing. I find Mana Shield enough to keep me alive, and the party healer can keep the others alive!

 

GEAR

In my opinion, the best blue class items are the Dark ones. You'll want high attack speed to work with Cleric's Intensity. Demon gear are also good. Legendary INT doesn't add enough attack power to compensate, in my opinion, but it's also not bad. For stats, seek ap, crit, aspd, and mspd. Dodge and defense are useful as well.

Wings are nice, but backpacks are cheaper. You can easily get an amazing backpack for cheap. The accuracy on backpacks is nice.

For jewelry, choose whatever fits you. At level 100, I recommend the Gale set for attack speed and movement speed. Movement speed is very useful for your role as a lurer.

Note that at around level 70 there’s very little rare muse gear around. At this point, have an artisan craft you a good reinforced wand. And while at it, have the artisan make some nice back items and a good offhand item. Don’t overlook the offhand item (books, mirrors, etc.)! They add surprising amounts of def and mdef. Moreover, there’s a passive skill that scales off offhand item defense, again making you more tanky. The only problem with offhand items is that the materials are hard to come by. Ask your Artisan friend for the recipes.

 

PARTIES (your role)

With this build, you have four main perks for parties:

1. You are really good at luring and tanking. Battle cleric might actually be the best luring class for reasons described above.

2. Your dps is surprisingly high! You can easily melt away the enemies you lure.

3. Your buffs are still pretty decent (namely Valkyrie Chant).

But people are mostly unaware of battle clerics and their perks so you may not always be the most popular pick for selfish parties, unfortunately. But worry not, all mentioned above makes for a pretty neat solo build as well!

Moreover, I like soloing bosses for the challenge, and BC is pretty much the optimal class for that.

 

One last piece of advice: always let your party know that you are not a healer. Otherwise they may have false expectations and... die. And get angry.

 

Enjoy!

 

Finally, here is my build at level 135 for reference:

 

Edited December 31, 2022 by Rootstock

[wlie]

Thanks for writing this guide, Ill definitely give it a try!

[eDskidoodles]

Coming from a FS Cleric on previous ROSEs, I'm looking forward to be a Battle Cleric this time due to the changes they have done to the class.

Nice guide BTW!

[DoubleRose]

Go higher on dex. Your block % scales with dex, as does dodge and attack. Int is important, but less than you'd think because blessed mind is your only buff that really matters, and that's a consistent 15% percentage.

[Rootstock]

6 minutes ago, DoubleRose said:

Go higher on dex. Your block % scales with dex, as does dodge and attack. Int is important, but less than you'd think because blessed mind is your only buff that really matters, and that's a consistent 15% percentage.

Thanks. I can easily believe this is the case. I haven’t run the numbers, but DEX seems to add quite a bit of attack. Would you keep DEX quite close to INT then?

[DoubleRose]

24 minutes ago, Rootstock said:

Thanks. I can easily believe this is the case. I haven’t run the numbers, but DEX seems to add quite a bit of attack. Would you keep DEX quite close to INT then?

Int might be slightly higher, but yes they're close. I'll look through old ss to see if I ever saved my build. Con and sen were around level. BC doesn't have crit damage passives, so maxing crit isn't as important. There used to be and probably still is a weapon gem for +30% crit damage. Assuming you can get to about a 40% crit chance, that's a 12% damage boost. Found one SS from when max level was 230 and I had 33% crit chance, so actually it'd be 10%.

My con was actually half my level. You'll want it closer to your level for pvp builds.

If quick medic is still a unique skill, that's a must. I think it was 5 sp for 15% attack speed and 50 move speed.

Edited December 21, 2022 by DoubleRose
adding info

[Rootstock]

32 minutes ago, DoubleRose said:

Int might be slightly higher, but yes they're close. I'll look through old ss to see if I ever saved my build. Con and sen were around level. BC doesn't have crit damage passives, so maxing crit isn't as important. There used to be and probably still is a weapon gem for +30% crit damage. Assuming you can get to about a 40% crit chance, that's a 12% damage boost. Found one SS from when max level was 230 and I had 33% crit chance, so actually it'd be 10%.

My con was actually half my level. You'll want it closer to your level for pvp builds.

If quick medic is still a unique skill, that's a must. I think it was 5 sp for 15% attack speed and 50 move speed.

Great, updated the guide to have a bit more DEX. Glad you mentioned this.

[Nugi]

Great guide After playing a FS cleric as a main char since 2006 till now, I was a bit lost and sceptical when buffs were redistributed to other classes. Just like many are feeling. So with this Rose , I am actually trying a BC build as my main (on my son's urging who also plays the game ) and I am really impressed by this class. Am almost level 70 now, but the damage my char did even at lower levels was impressive  

I think I am almost on point with my build, but with the help with this helpful guide, all I need are a few tweaks and am good to explore all the great possibilities this class has to offer. As this point I don't always get invited to parties and if I do get invited, I definitely inform them that I am not a support cleric. So far have never been kicked out after revealing. So once again, thank you for the great guide and wishing all a goodday

 

 

[Heatfist]

Thanks for the guide!
I made a muse the other day and the offensive wand 1v1 has been very fun. I did realize CON basically did nothing for me so I changed my stats to DEX/SEN to level rest in INT. Looks like the accuracy only helps against “Hunter” type mobs and PVP.

 
As for skills I went with 1 point in mana shield and then maxed the wand attack power and speed passives. Then got the damage buffs maxed out and put 10 points for offensive spells. After that I put points into the INT buff and now I’m working on the INT passive (after INT passive I’ll take the MP increase passive to make mana shield stronger, before maxing mana shield). I’m lvl 61 currently and just melting mobs. Barely have to worry about mana shied upkeep either.

Also once taking active skills it really helps a lot to jobs skill reset for the 2 lightning skills when fighting water type mobs, or the fire skills when fighting earth type mobs as they do increased damage to them. For neutral type or anything else the mana skills are the go to.

[Sneaux]

So I used this guide to experiment, DEX is a power house for my Battle Muse. I've switched to INT for Wand, CON = Level (but may drop to CON = Half Level), SEN = Half Level, rest DEX. I don't add any CHA for now as I primarily solo and with Mana Shield Lv 5 I basically never have to heal.

I have maxed Wand Attack and Attack Speed Passives, maxed Cure and Heal just in case, Lv 1 Meditation so far (going for max), maxed INT Buff, and working on maxed Enhanced Damage buff. My only three attack spells are Fire Bolt, Hellfire, and Voltage Jolt, all maxed. Those three spells alone can bring just about every mob I fight to 1/3rd HP and you can alternate Fire Bolt and Voltage Jolt while Hellfire is on Cooldown. I use the Lv 50 MP Recovery Jewlery with my Lv 1 MP Recovery passive and my MP basically never runs out unless I spam Mana Shield back to back. I've been killing surprisingly fast with this setup and you can still provide backup DPS, lures, and heals in a party scenario.

[Rootstock]

1 hour ago, Sneaux said:

So I used this guide to experiment, DEX is a power house for my Battle Muse. I've switched to INT for Wand, CON = Level (but may drop to CON = Half Level), SEN = Half Level, rest DEX. I don't add any CHA for now as I primarily solo and with Mana Shield Lv 5 I basically never have to heal.

I have maxed Wand Attack and Attack Speed Passives, maxed Cure and Heal just in case, Lv 1 Meditation so far (going for max), maxed INT Buff, and working on maxed Enhanced Damage buff. My only three attack spells are Fire Bolt, Hellfire, and Voltage Jolt, all maxed. Those three spells alone can bring just about every mob I fight to 1/3rd HP and you can alternate Fire Bolt and Voltage Jolt while Hellfire is on Cooldown. I use the Lv 50 MP Recovery Jewlery with my Lv 1 MP Recovery passive and my MP basically never runs out unless I spam Mana Shield back to back. I've been killing surprisingly fast with this setup and you can still provide backup DPS, lures, and heals in a party scenario.

Awesome. I’ve also been adding more Dex than I have written above. It adds more ap than I expected, and dodge rate is nice.

I also changed my mind about phantom swords, they’re good stuff at maxed. And clerics apparently have awesome summons so good to get used to using summons.

One other thing I noticed that it’s pretty good to just unlock the offhand item defense/mdef passive and keep it at level 1. The first jump is significant and the rest is incremental. With a good offhand item it’s sort of worth it.

And yeah, Fire Bolt and Hellfire do some nasty damage. With high aspd you can also fit in a number of regular hits between the cooldowns.

I’ll update the guide for lvl 1–100 soon, but all in all battle muse is IMO very viable.

 

[Rootstock]

Hey, just bumping this up because I updated the entire first post. I'm level 135 now, so lots of new stuff to share.

[Sneaux]

Thanks for the update Rootstock! I've been experimenting with the Muse side of Battle Cleric still, and I really enjoy it.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Sneaux

[Heatfist]

xD my muse at 72 was tankier than my 92 soldier. I’m loving how OP wands are, being ranged and having no ammo cost they just melt mobs. Luring and first hits are super easy too!

Thanks for the update! 
 

[Rootstock]

9 hours ago, Heatfist said:

xD my muse at 72 was tankier than my 92 soldier. I’m loving how OP wands are, being ranged and having no ammo cost they just melt mobs. Luring and first hits are super easy too!

Thanks for the update! 
 

Thanks, updated once again to add a note on elemental damage resistances. You have lots of elemental damages to choose from as a Cleric, so use those perks wisely!

[darthtomski]

On 12/30/2022 at 1:10 PM, Rootstock said:

Hey, just bumping this up because I updated the entire first post. I'm level 135 now, so lots of new stuff to share.

I love your guide sir!

I'm following it a tad but making my own adjustments. My adjustments preserve as much of the DPS as possible whilst taking a few support points (bons and heals). I prefer to play more of a hybrid. I can do similar damage but I can save my friends and throw out bons for people. I think playing cleric without any support spells is such a shame because we're the only class with most of these types of spells.

For example (as far as I can see) the bons regen is a flat % not affected by any stats. Your throwing away the ability to literally regen your whole party's HP and MP at a rate of 6% (if I'm not mistaken) every 10 seconds. Just to have those awful sword summons. In my opinion we can pump out DPS, even lure and still offer tons of support. It's our greatest strength.

 

I love your build and I'm having tons of fun with it.

Kindest regards.

 

[Rootstock]

22 hours ago, darthtomski said:

I love your guide sir!

I'm following it a tad but making my own adjustments. My adjustments preserve as much of the DPS as possible whilst taking a few support points (bons and heals). I prefer to play more of a hybrid. I can do similar damage but I can save my friends and throw out bons for people. I think playing cleric without any support spells is such a shame because we're the only class with most of these types of spells.

For example (as far as I can see) the bons regen is a flat % not affected by any stats. Your throwing away the ability to literally regen your whole party's HP and MP at a rate of 6% (if I'm not mistaken) every 10 seconds. Just to have those awful sword summons. In my opinion we can pump out DPS, even lure and still offer tons of support. It's our greatest strength.

 

I love your build and I'm having tons of fun with it.

Kindest regards.

 

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, you can definitely get some support skills without losing much offensive capacity.

I also used bonfires until level 100.

One problem I’m having with bonfires (or Salamander flames) is that I tend to play a very mobile role in parties, running around (with Gale/mspd gear) luring mobs with my ~30m range. So when I move around like this my fires disappear really quick. It really depends a lot on where you are leveling. If it’s a more stationary spawn then fires are definitely worth it. Fortunately we can reset to optimize our builds.  I just respecced to Salamander/Mana flames yesterday.

[xLUx]

I'll try this guide when I reach Lv250 later this night stream.

[Rootstock]

Just pointing out that when I started writing this guide, people were dissing the new cleric and calling it useless.

Today, I see many people calling Battle Clerics to be nerfed because they are ”too OP” for soloing. Ahem!

”How the turntables…” as Michael Scott would say!

Anyways, would be glad to hear if anyone has improved on these early build ideas. Especially endgame tips are welcome here since I’m not quite there yet.

[DoubleRose]

On 1/23/2023 at 3:01 AM, Rootstock said:

Just pointing out that when I started writing this guide, people were dissing the new cleric and calling it useless.

Today, I see many people calling Battle Clerics to be nerfed because they are ”too OP” for soloing. Ahem!

lol even though battle clerics got buffed and quick medic lost 7.5% attack speed. Swords give them a strong early game, but too op for soloing is an oxymoron. Parties are significantly faster than soloing, so a class that can solo well still doesn't level fast. Bc lacks the aoes to be an op pvm class.

[eenchick]

Thank you for this! I'll def give it a tryyyy!  

[Riconnect]

Sort of following this build currently. Still deciding between the mana bolt/spear/wave or DOT fire combo. 
Have salamander so it's easier to get into parties without a cleric and works for solo leveling in case there are no parties.
Currently lv 110 and working on getting the cleric passives up.

 

[Baho]

For those lv200 and up, what wand are you using?

[Aquil]

On 2/10/2023 at 12:49 PM, Baho said:

For those lv200 and up, what wand are you using?

probably valor 225 courage

[kami]

ist it worth going for Valor eq with Crit ? or better stay at dark orlean ?

anyone on valor eq as BC ?