[Guide] In-depth Full Support/Max healing skills Priest [New improved skill build - May 8]

Hello everyone,

Welcome to this little guide I'm making in order to answer some of the usual question I have been seeing in-game lately related to the keeping-your-party-alive-class.
Please feel free to leave any feedback and comment. Questions are also welcomed and I will try to answer them as soon as I can.

Beware! This is pretty TL;DR, but is worth it!

1.STATS

This build tries to make the best out of every single healing skills, but at the same time, will try to give you a little more sustain than usual.
This is why the build you will be using by level 50 is 45 INT 33 AGI 10 VIT base.

Focus on getting your INT to 30 first then move into adding VIT to 10, after this, switch back into adding INT then once you hit the 45 INT mark, start adding AGI.

Why adding AGI so late you may ask?
Even though AGI plays a really important role on critical heals, until later on in the game, there will no be extreme situations that depends on the amount of healing AGI can add to your criticals, Coluceo Heal will work in those cases meanwhile.

2.SKILLS - HEAVILY UPDATED (May 8 - 2013)

Acolyte phase (Lvl 1~24)

First of all, skip maxing healing spells at first since it will be high unlikely that you will party until around level 20 when you reach the Wolf Cave dungeon.

You should add 1 level into Increase Agility, then 1 point on resurrection, this will unlock Aqua Benedicta. Learn Aqua Benedicta then directly max Aspersio. This along Holy Light (Which will remain forever at lvl 1) will be your main combo during all your stay in this character. By when your character is level 6, you will have gotten all these skills.

The combo is simple: Caste Holy water (Common mistake: Holy water doesn't summon items on your inventory, is just 3 energy loads on your Aco left side):

Aspersio consumes 1 Holy Water when casted, and you can use one Aspersio each 20 seconds, 3 Aspersios can be casted during the coold down of Holy Water so they perfectly Sync. Aspersio will make your Holy Water and your healing spells (Not your regen skills such as Renovatio or Sanctuary even though for this last one it has an added effect likea short extra Blessing) to deal critical hits and higher damage/healing, so the combo will always go around like this:

Holy Water-Aspersio-Spell(x3 if it is heal or holy light)-Aspersio-Spell(x3)-Aspersio-Spell(x3)-Holy Water and so on.

This will be your may combo for... forever.

By lvl 7, learn Renovatio (Is a 11 seconds regen which you can caste over yourself or your party members) and for the next levels, max it. Just after you are done casting the 3 spells with Aspersio effect there will be a window of 5 seconds of no Aspersio effect, use these seconds to keep Renovatio over yourself, this way you will not use ANY kind of pot at all. Seriously. Renovatio will keep your health full all the time and Holy Water will keep your SP filled.

Now go back and max Heal, add one level to Meditatio and max Highness Heal.

By now you will have all the skills you need for your Acolyte era and you should stock up the points. You will become a Priest with 5 points on yourself.
About Blessing: Yes, you will need this maxed later, I don't consider you need it early and those stocked up points will be of a lot of help, keep further reading.

Priest phase (25-Max lvl)

Remember those points I made you stack? Well, right after you are done with your job change (For people who doesn't know is in the usual place: Prontera church at Lvl 25) get Sacrament Lvl 3, Coluseo Lvl 1, Lvl 1 Assumptio and when you get another level get Lvl 1 Sanctuary. This way you will have a head start when it comes to healing as a Priest, sacrificing just the blessing effect for a few more levels. These spells are extremly handy for the dungeons you will have to do in the 25~30 way (Such as Sea God). The next 2 levels focus on maxing Sacrament THEN move into maxing blessing. Done with blessing? Move into maxing Coluceo and Assumptio, one point per level on each to keep them balanced. By the point you have these two skills maxed, max Sanctuary and finally move your last points into Gloria Lvl 3, Recovery lvl 1, Suffragium Lvl 1 and Angelus Lvl 1

By when you reach Max lvl your skills will look like this:



Some questions you may have:

Why Suffragium just level 1?
We made calculations in other topics and the benefits from that skill are just not worth the points, 2% from it's level 1 is more than enough on a full healer, really.

Why maxing Sanctuary and not Angelus ?
Even though Sanctuary is pretty situational (Can't be used on some bosses since you have to move around a lot or can't stand in the same place) I highly belive the benefits are way better than those given by Angelus (Short duration effect, high cooldown) and Assumptio has a better effect on making the tank survive on raids, while not everyone will be needing blessing at the same time, you can consider sacrificing Gloria points and move them into Angelus if you want, but I prefer the permanent effect of Gloria on me. If you are skilled enough Sanctuary can even become a great savior on extreme situations. In fact, this build considers VIT as a very important stat because of Sanctuary. With 1.4k+ M. Attack, Sanctuary can heal 1.6~1.8k per heal, amazing isn't it?
It does make static bosses a breeze (Which you will face a lot while doing RHD).

In close combat bosses it does wonders, example:


Why maxing coluceo?
Coluceo is your panic button, it will save your tank or a party member extremly easily, and at max lvl, is just 3 minutes cooldown. Is wonderful, you can't afford people dying with a resurrection skill that has 45+ mins cooldown.

3.LEVELING

There's not many tricks around leveling a priest, but here are a few tips:
-Do all your quests, storyline and sidequests, just skip dungeons that you cant find a party later on.
-Use your combo properly, as I listed it on the skill section, is the fastest way you can kill, if you don't do it, you will kill even slower.
-Try to get a partner, if you are lucky enough someone will help you on early level, if not, you will be fine, but slower. Don't get frustrated over it.
-Don't get too obsessed with farming early game: that's not the purpose of your class, the higher your class is, the better healer you will be. Focus on leveling then you can do all the mats farming you want easier (Since better equip means better Holy light damage).
-Always do your Kharas that gives zeny and exp. You can skip the item drop kharas, but make sure you always do all your exp kharas, it does helps a lot.
-Use monster busters. Yes, little exp, high cost, then why? Because every single exp point cost and if you happen to have to fully solo, it will make up for the lack of partner (Since no partner means killing slower, which means slower exp). But be careful: just do buster that will complete along the completition of a normal quest. There's no point in doing busters by themselves.
-Keep your Khara titles always up to date with the map starting on lvl 30. Do at least one of the field bosses title khara of your current map, so your stats will not fall behind.
-Skip dungeons if you don't find a party. Except for Wolves Cave and Izlude Cave, dungeons will not interfere with your questing or leveling. Yes, they are nice exp boosts, but you will gain the same amount of exp in the same time if you are leveling on the field.
-Getting a Battle Manual helps, if you can afford it, go ahead. It lasts 24 hours for a 20% of extra exp. And it is playtime not constant time. 2 of them should be enough to get to 50 if you do nothing else than leveling. (Yes, getting a priest to max level by questing+busters is about 50 hours with battle manuals, if not, around 60~70). Battle manual comes from Adventurer's pack on Kafra shop for the cost of 300 points, most of the rest of the stuff is kinda useless for a priest but oh wells.

There's no many secrets besides this, since most quests can't be missed, the game will walk you through them, just do them. Maybe you will have to do some research about some monster locations for some Kharas, but shouldn't be much of a trouble.

4-WHILE IN PARTY

At low level
Keep renovatio over your tank all the time, use heals with Aspersio effect on it carefully.
A common mistake: spamming heal just makes things WORSE. If thing are getting rough and you start spamming heal like crazy all you will do is generate a lot of treat over yourself, making your character get aggroed and everyone dying in the process. Be calm, pay attention to the boss damage and who is it damaging and heal calmly.

At high level
Always make sure that you have blessing on all your party members and Sacrament and Suffragium over yourself.
Renovation goes over the tank as before. Chose wisely when to use Coluceo/assumptio: remember you will have 3 minutes without its power if you do. Tank and you are always the priority when it comes to sacrificing Coluceo. If you are gonna use Sanctuary remember to caste Aspersio aswell to maximize the effect (With 1500 M.Attack this combination can heal 1.6~2k HP!). Once you learn the patern of the boss you are farming you can start casting Assumptio over your tank to protect him a little more. Highness heal is your key for your party survival, dont make the mistake of casting it over yourself, always pay attention to your teamates position and use it wisely. If you are experienced with healing classes in other mmos you should learn all this quickly, if not, is just a matter of practice, don't worry about it and if you are newbie to healing don't worry: just let your party know.

Also: always remember your party members to also use pots, Priests aren't miracle healers, there will be situations were they MUST help the priest job by using a pot. As for you, always remember to check your SP, you usually will not run out of SP but there will be a few situation were is possible to run out of it.

5-EQUIPMENT & CARDS

Equipment:

At low level there's not much to do about it: just use watever you get while killing mobs and questing. Try to get the Payon Dungeon gear (The quest one) it will be good enough to reach lvl 50.

As for level 50 is where the fun beings:

RHD - Goblin Leader:
RHD stands for Random Hard Dungeon (Yes! Now you know what it means when you see people shouting about RHD) these dungeons are just harder versions of the dungeons you are already visited. Every boss you knew now drops a single piece (At least) of the level 50 blue gear each time you kill them, so is all about of doing all of them all the time till you complete the Heart of Black Wind item set. It will be the first set you will need complete if you want to run raids like Baphomet properly.



As for your first level 50 weapon you will want to get the Dissapearing Blessing Mace which is drop by the Goblin Leader (Which also gives the Khara for one of the nicest titles right before the Bapho one!). Each time the Goblin Leader dies, you will get a weapon for lvl 50 with 100% chance, is just a matter of luck and time to get the priest one to pop up (Took me 17 tries, for example).



The Goblin Leader location can be seen in the screenshot that follows:



Once you are done with this gear there's not much to add: move into raids such as Baphomet, get their titles and sets, and well, you will be all geared up and good to go to do watever you want in the game.

Cards:

The cards has to be a combination of AGI-INT-VIT with VIT being the highest stat on it at least.
A nice low level card is the Brown Rackuf Card.

Once at level 50 you have to move into trying to get Poisona cards (Scratch Thief Card also works but is no better than Poisona):



After this, well, enjoy fusing and farming ultra rare ones such as Fatal Mesmerizing Ramos Card.



Jewelry:

The only secret that comes with Jewelry is knowing which kind to use: Get Hit/Vigor/Haste stated ones, ignore Parry/Dodge ones.



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All this information should be enough to guide you through to the process of becoming a full healer priest, if you feel like something is incomplete, want further info into something or got any question feel free to ask it here.

If you are going to copy this guide somewhere else, please give me credit and let me know through a private message here with a link

Also if you have questions and I'm not busy feel free to whisp me in-game.

Hope it helped!
Ryogure

Edited by Ryogure, 17 May 2013 - 09:06 AM.

With 1.4k+ M. Attack and lvl 1 Archangel, Sanctuary can heal 1.8k per heal, amazing isn't it?

May I ask how you calculated that because I seem to be getting a different answer..

May I ask how you calculated that because I seem to be getting a different answer..

Take 1500 matk with Lv 5 Sanctuary.

87% of it makes 1305. Sacrament Lv 5 further boosts this to 1435. However, this is where the problem starts...

In actual tests, my Sanctuary does between 1600-1950. Perhaps the skill is incorrect? Maybe this skill needs to be looked into further. Good if Ryogure posts his Sanctuary healing range too.

May I ask how you calculated that because I seem to be getting a different answer..

Personal experience, I didn't really calculate it.



Just self buffs, no items (Except VIP) and aspersio in that screenshot.

Take 1500 matk with Lv 5 Sanctuary.

87% of it makes 1305. Sacrament Lv 5 further boosts this to 1435. However, this is where the problem starts...

In actual tests, my Sanctuary does between 1600-1950. Perhaps the skill is incorrect? Maybe this skill needs to be looked into further. Good if Ryogure posts his Sanctuary healing range too.

I belive it has to do with Sacrement and Aspersio. Probably Aspersio rises the healing power of it and is not being specified. I also experience inestability on it's healing power but my base is 1.7k.
I also double checked and I have no Magic Oil or Dragon Embroidery on, so if I were to use one of them it would go a little higher, just a little though.
I will check its range when a friend log-in to test it.

Edit: Here you go, my party was willing to test it:
Member being healed was 3.9m away from me. The member who isn't getting healed was 6.2m away from me.
Also as you can see, I didn't caste Aspersio and the damage was as mentioned before, 1.5k, so is probably related to Aspersio in some way (Maybe Sanctuary critical damage?).

Edited by Ryogure, 08 May 2013 - 02:33 AM.

Already checked the range of Sanctuary, it has a radius of 4.5m (or a 9m diameter) and not 10m as what it says (I think they meant diameter but they are also wrong on it). I have submitted a ticket to investigate and "fix" the issue. I have looked into my sanctuary range and it's between 1570-1980. The usual value I hit is at 1780.

Heavily update this for a way better skill build:

Update info (May 8):
-Removed Meditatio from the skill build after we proved is useless. (Topic: http://forums.warppo...5444-meditatio/)
-Added Max Assumptio to the build (Making raids a breeze now!).
-Removed Archangel from the build and added Gloria (Or Angelus, that depends on you) to the remaining points.

Enjoy!

Other high level priests: how do you feel about this new build?

For those who are curious, even without Archangel, Sanctuary works great:

Edited by Ryogure, 08 May 2013 - 06:01 AM.

Well, the build is pretty similar to mine, but I'm just messing around in my skill build before tuning into a more serious build.

Tested the build with the new set of skills and it worked perfectly fine on Bapho and arena:

I'm assuming those dead people are the ones who got one-shotted. If not, then that is not a good sign of a good healing build.

I'm assuming those dead people are the ones who got one-shotted. If not, then that is not a good sign of a good healing build.

The other Priest didn't had RHD parts, nor Goblin weapon, so I did most of the job, she died once and that followed to quite a bunch of people dying, had to res her and we finished like it was. Plus yeah, most of those dead bodies is undergeared players with not enough RHD parts. The tanks didn't die, nor did the DPS with full RHD gear. Plus we didn't had spinels. Oh, also, it was the first run ever (Most didn't play SEA before) for most of the people in it.

Edited by Ryogure, 08 May 2013 - 11:14 AM.

Think when I did Bapho run, I was 3/5 RHD with a lv 47 green. Our other priest was 1/5 RHD but a lv 50 goblin weapon. However, our tanks were extremely geared (7k hp).

Think when I did Bapho run, I was 3/5 RHD with a lv 47 green. Our other priest was 1/5 RHD but a lv 50 goblin weapon. However, our tanks were extremely geared (7k hp).

I'm running Bapho with just 3/5 RHD And goblin weapon. And yeah, our Tanks were geared aswell (That's why both ended alive) the problem is that if the HP of the members isn't higher than 5k they tend to die, specially if one of the healers is not yet geared enough (Since I had to focus on the tanks, our secondary healer had to heal people who didn't had gear either, so that snowballed into us). So yeah, right now the biggest problem when it comes to raids is getting properly geared people, specially for Arena.

Thanks for this guide! I love the leveling and skill selection part.

However, I think you may have counted wrong in the acolyte section. You will only have 5 points to spend at level 25 when you job-change to priest. You get your first point at level 2, not at level 1 when starting out. At level 20 you spend your last point in HH, and thus will have 5 points left over at 25.

I also use your skill build but as for stats I'm going for 40int and 40agi. Is this makes this build look bad if I go with this stat build by the way? I'll try to get vit from cards or equips if possible but anyways pure int/agi is still lovely though you have low hp -w-''

Thanks for this guide! I love the leveling and skill selection part.

However, I think you may have counted wrong in the acolyte section. You will only have 5 points to spend at level 25 when you job-change to priest. You get your first point at level 2, not at level 1 when starting out. At level 20 you spend your last point in HH, and thus will have 5 points left over at 25.

You are right! Thanks, I will fix it!

I also use your skill build but as for stats I'm going for 40int and 40agi. Is this makes this build look bad if I go with this stat build by the way? I'll try to get vit from cards or equips if possible but anyways pure int/agi is still lovely though you have low hp -w-''

I don't think there will be much of a difference, but you may be on a tight spot if you don't have VIP though (Mainly talking about raids)

Edited by Ryogure, 17 May 2013 - 08:41 AM.

No matter what you will need a VIP for hard mode bapho. Being without it would almost require you to be a full STC at the minimum with at least normal raid gears. If you got 6.4k hp, you are technically good for bapho should a fire come your way.

No matter what you will need a VIP for hard mode bapho. Being without it would almost require you to be a full STC at the minimum with at least normal raid gears. If you got 6.4k hp, you are technically good for bapho should a fire come your way.

If we take in account that you can get Colo equip now and there's always upgrades, It may take longer but -technically- you will be able to run pretty much everything without VIP. Plus you can always work harder and get Scratch Thief cards Normal + but yeah, there's a lot of farming and the such involved.
I may update these things later on the weekend.

Edited by Ryogure, 17 May 2013 - 01:47 PM.

Or you can forego it all and get a tuxedo or wedding dress. I should have bought one when it was 2k! LOL Great guide though, very helpful. It helped me get over the guilt of changing up my stats to pump more VIT.

Edited by vonnegut, 17 May 2013 - 01:54 PM.

You are right! Thanks, I will fix it!



I don't think there will be much of a difference, but you may be on a tight spot if you don't have VIP though (Mainly talking about raids)

So you are saying that it comes to pay to win again when you want to strengthen your equips? Maybe I should put vit related stones on my rune slots and get banuses from cards but the problem is it's hard to farm Poisona alone if you are full priest and unless you are in a guild or have a friend to help you then there is no way to get good equips for your character. I like to play alone and sometimes tag along with my friends but farming bosses are tiresome and it's hardly they drop card at all. I remember I spent my entire day two days ago to kill Poisona and didn't get any card let alone decent items and the price of this card is more than 700gold which I find it a bit expensive. If you are priest you can make good money since you can farm monsters but only from selling things from your second job -w- Ahh anyways.

So you are saying that it comes to pay to win again when you want to strengthen your equips? Maybe I should put vit related stones on my rune slots and get banuses from cards but the problem is it's hard to farm Poisona alone if you are full priest and unless you are in a guild or have a friend to help you then there is no way to get good equips for your character. I like to play alone and sometimes tag along with my friends but farming bosses are tiresome and it's hardly they drop card at all. I remember I spent my entire day two days ago to kill Poisona and didn't get any card let alone decent items and the price of this card is more than 700gold which I find it a bit expensive. If you are priest you can make good money since you can farm monsters but only from selling things from your second job -w- Ahh anyways.

I think if you are lacking on the VIT department, Thief cards are better because the base VIT for them is way higher (Even better if it is Normal+) and you can use INT runes (Which are cheaper) so far the best way I found as a priest to get money is to RHD all day, dissamble all the loots you get and selling the mats (Obviously, besides crafting).

Would it be ok to use 5 Brown Rackuf cards until level 50? Or is there something better to use before level 50?

Would it be ok to use 5 Brown Rackuf cards until level 50? Or is there something better to use before level 50?

There is better cards (Like Edze) but tbh, I used very newbie cards until level 50 moving directly into the good ones, farming cards takes time, and sometimes money, just use the cards you find along the way and you will be fine until you reach level 50 (By 50, yeah, you will need good ones).

Scratch Thief Card's price around these days more than 200k gold. What the hell. One week ago I saw people were selling it for around 50-100k but even though they say the drop rate is low but when I looked the friggin auction house there are guys who have more than 10 or 5 Thief card on their store. I sometimes suspect those guys are just cheating or not because even though you had them store for a long time it doesn't mean you have to sell them for a high price. I'll either farm my cards with the help of friend or I'll just buy it with the old price. This is really irritating. The economy is sucks.

edit: Just looked AH again and they are selling it more than 300k and there are wise guys who is selling it for 500k lol.

Edited by Qpax, 20 May 2013 - 11:07 AM.

Scratch Thief Card's price around these days more than 200k gold. What the hell. One week ago I saw people were selling it for around 50-100k but even though they say the drop rate is low but when I looked the friggin auction house there are guys who have more than 10 or 5 Thief card on their store. I sometimes suspect those guys are just cheating or not because even though you had them store for a long time it doesn't mean you have to sell them for a high price. I'll either farm my cards with the help of friend or I'll just buy it with the old price. This is really irritating. The economy is sucks.

edit: Just looked AH again and they are selling it more than 300k and there are wise guys who is selling it for 500k lol.

Sadly, the problem is that there's many people reaching lvl 50 atm, so there's extremly high demand for those, so people who have them will raise the price as demand keeps going bigger, and the era of ex sea-players reaching 50 is over, new people will get to 50 and will have close to no idea how the market works so they will go ahead and afford those prices with the zeny they got from questing. I belive the price will hit a roof and when most of the population is level 50, it will start dropping (Or we can hope)
I'm glad I was able to get them by when they were 80z each >_<

Edited by Ryogure, 20 May 2013 - 11:43 AM.

I should have also bought back then but my level wasn't that high so I just thought I'd buy it when I hit lvl 50 but when I hit max level it was too late to buy it now since the price of this card is so expensive -w-' Anyways I'll just wait for a day when they lower the price or try to farm card myself if possible ;3