yea like suddenly people realized ab's should stick to being a support class and not try to be battle priests lol
Battle build for ABs actually does work, if you have the right equips and stats - not to mention with all the stat points you have, it's quite easy to be battle build but still have a decent heal and buffs. Battle build for regular priests though? That really depends on your style of gameplay. It's probably considered more of a solo build, though I never had trouble finding parties on my battle priestess.
But yeah, pre-renewal and pre-third classes, battle priests were kind of rare in general. I had one, didn't get anywhere near to rebirthing and becoming a high priest. Ended up taking a break from RO, came back with all the renewal stuff in and quite easily levelled a battle aco to battle priest, rebirthed her and levelled her up to a 99 High Priestess in the space of 3 days lol.
Funny thing is though, after finally getting myself a battle AB... I ended up working on my regular FS priest whom I had been neglecting...and I fell in love with playing him instead ~_~ I love his fatty vit (even if vit on a AB isn't as awesome as it used to be pre-renewal).
But now I'm kind of getting off topic >__>