Sith's Comprehensive Guide to Priests

[weizheng23]

Nice lengthy guide =)

[sithewarrior]

[SEC04.0]
Equipment:
A lot of people will tell you to use full saints set when starting out. I say NO to that because its not the optimal idea.

You can actually improve your survival significantly without sacrificing a lot of magic attack/heal by using half sets.
Use saint ring, necklace, and glove
Use savior chest, helm, and shoes (optional is savage/slayer for speed reasons)
When you need survival, using half a savior and a half saint will give you a lot of defence and hp for a minor loss in magic attack and heal.
for dungeon runs, use saint set with slayer/savage shoes for faster movement.

You might be thinking what happens with gems if you keep a full saint + half a savior, keep the defence stuff on the savior stuff, if you're wearing savior, its probably because you needed the defence.

[SEC04.1]
Fragarach X Skill - Sacred Totem
Place a totem to deal 150% magic damage to 20 enemies in a radius of 500 and stun for 3 seconds.
Every 3 seconds, up to 20 enemies recieve damage equal to 40% of your magic attack and 80% of your heal.
Totem lasts 15 seconds.

[SEC05.0]
Gems:
Helm - Saphire
Armor - Amber
Shoes - Amber
Gloves - Topaz
Offhand - Garnet/Opal (when you have some more crit rate %)
Main hand - Topaz / Garnet (when you can start getting these as soon as possible)
Necklace - Kyanite (not a priority for blood focus)
Ring - Pink Diamond (priority after reaching eidolon 80+)

Zodiac
Sword - Topaz
Armor - Garnet
Charm - Don't remember if you could use jades and/or amber
Shield - Don't remember if you could use jades and/or amber

Past 5-10k def, defence/hp gems are EXTREMELY irrelavent so don't invest too much on them later on.
In fact, you should just be focusing on attack speed and crit rate/crit damage when the stats from other gems become insignificant.

Focus on frag upgrades before gems, you ideally want to hit perfect I before using gems on armors.
Keep in mind you can't socket rings and necklaces that aren't lv 81+ (slayers ring and necklace cannot socket sadly)

[SEC06.0]
Soul - THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

My soul guide emphasizes on damage but will give an alternate route for support priests who want to maximize healing.
In general, approaximately, the first two nodes in each area of soul should be maxed after reaching 3, 5, or 7 in other nodes.
One thing to note about soul is how soul development works. You can either level them all gradually or prioritize certain nodes to reach 10.
A HIGHLY recommended soul guide to look at so you can plan your own development is this guide:
[SEC06.0.a]

http://forum.r2games.com/showthread....pth-Soul-guide
Use this guide to know exactly what nodes will give what stats as I will not be explaining every node.

If you level several nodes gradually, you will get benefits sooner and cheaper.
If you prioritize a node to reach 10, you get greater benefits later but more expensive.

You just need to balance out whether or not you're looking for long term or short term benefits.
As a player starting out, you generally want to get all nodes to 3 or 5 (depending on nodes) before you start prioritizing certain nodes to go to 7 or 10.
However, you also want to max the first one or two nodes in each soul to maximize on some def to allow yourself to solo dungeons sooner.
I will now list nodes and what levels I recommend reaching.
Note that nodes are listed by priority, Just because some nodes have the same level recommendation, does not mean they should be equally prioritized unless I have listed them in the same line.

[SEC06.1]
Ice
Toughness, Preciousness (10)
Stability, Flexibility (5 or 7)

Recommended to get 5 in each first. Nodes beyond that are expensive and recommended to be upgraded later due to ss cost vs benefit
After reaching the recommended levels you can go into the rest of the ice tree or focus on particular nodes.

[SEC06.2]
Brilliance
Vulgarity, Rage (10)
Ferocity (5)
Madness (10)
Cruelty (10) This can be done much later. The only benefit to this is really when you have enough crit to make crit damage significant. In my opinion, if you're pushing 40%+ on crit rate, you should get this soon.

Recommended to get 5 in each first. Braveness and Dominance serve little benefit compared to other upgrades of equal cost and so don't bother unless you got nothing else to upgrade (endgame).
You should be leveling Vulgarity and Rage in tandum with Ice nodes Toughness and Preciousness when you start going for 10.

[SEC06.3]
Void
Simplicity (10)
Deftness (5)
Forgiveness (5) (after reaching scion)

There's not much benefit to this tree in general. You just need those two nodes to get to 5.
When you have some crit rate % (about 40 or higher), you can start leveling this and Brilliance Cruelty beyond 5.
Forgiveness isn't that useful unless you're pvping or soloing ladder, which as a mortal, is not that helpful if you're dying too fast anyway. But when you're scion, it'll be more helpful when you can pvp, start reaching ladder stages with stunners, and start farming nm psych.

[SEC06.4]
Light
Warmth (10), Numbness (5)
Power (5 or 7), Wisdom (10)
Kindness (8), Intelligence (8), Wisdom (7)

Ideally, you want to reach 7 in everything. SS cost wise, the upgrades are under 128 for what I've recomended (except wisdom).

[SEC06.5]
Heart
Patience (5, 7 or 10)
Vitality, Longevity (5 or 7)
Fortune (5)
Harmony (5)
Recovery (5) only if you need the heal stat and after you've rebirthed into scion)
Motion (not until you've developed endurance and leveled enough to have enough base endurance to make this skill worth it)

This is a medium priority soul for two reasons: From the lower nodes, you should have developed defence already, this would just be stacking more if you really needed it. The second is the hp benefit, you can choose to maximize on this at lv 7 or leave things at 5 to focus on other things.
Try to get longevity to 5 or 7 before rebirthing though because you might not be back there for awhile if you're a slow leveler.
Motion and recovery are very low priority because of the benefit from them as a scion and mortal are fairly minimal.

[SEC06.6]
Immortal
It is HIGHLY recommended to reach atleast 5 7 or 10 in recommended nodes before attempting to max nodes in here.
But you're free to get lv 1 in everything before you rebirth the first or second time around. To be honest, my immortal isn't that developed yet either because I've chosen to max nodes in other areas.

Light 10

The rest, do with consideration of the development of other nodes you have.
Immortal tree is very oriented towards maximizing stats you have already been focusing on.
Light being your highest priority because by 150 eidolon, this will give the greatest benefit.
By this point you should be experienced enough to make your own choices.

[SEC06.7]
IN GENERAL
starting out, you will want to get nodes to lv 3 or 5 In nodes I have listed except immortal.
Getting to lv 3 in them shouldnt cost many ss as a whole and will give quick boosts for helping you level and survive for dungeons.
Focus on level 5 in particular nodes for w/e purposes you need (more damage or more defence, etc) before getting all to lv 5.
When you start focusing to level 10 on the ones I have listed, I highly recommend Brilliance Vulgarity and Void Simplicity because they will give a combined boost of 25 movespeed and 20% crit rate (Plus rating)
After that, prioritize def or attack nodes as needed.
Focus on Light when you want to maximize magic attack and heal in the long run. Switch to immortal when you feel the boost for cost is more effective or if you want to plan long term.

[SEC06.8]
The following is the SS cost on light immortal:

28 36 47 62 80 104 135 176 228 297

[SEC07.0]
Sperion

For an in depth guide on sperion and combo's, see Virtue_Sigil's guide:

http://forum.r2games.com/showthread....l=1#post257908

Attack or defence sperion is a preference but looking long term, the defence boost is negligible.
Leveling - use Beast Heart
PVP and survival - 3D Defense or Liturgic Elemental
DPS - Demonic Gift or Blood Breaking Kill (Only while you don't have perfect frag and are not in Avernal Realm)

Please inbox or whisper me in game on corrections on my guide otherwise post

I will add more to the guide when I think of other sections or upon request and I feel it is worth adding.
Questions made in the thread that are relevant to certain sections of the guide will be reposted under said sections.

[sithewarrior]

Sacrifice - Lv 5 - Deals damage to a single target and heals 100% of the damage inflicted. Damage is assumed to be 100% of your magic attack.
Great skill, it can basically heal you back to 100% from near death simply by taking someone elses hp AND dealing damage at the same time.
Also affected by crit. Must max for blood focus priests.

Highly Recommended.

[SEC01.7]
Curse Tree

Curse Mastery lv5 - Max hp increased by 10%. Allows use of Lv5 curses.
Must max for two reasons: the ability to use lv5 curses and the passive 10% hp boost.

Curse of Weakness lv5 - decreases enemies atk/m.atk by 25% for 2 seconds and deals 35% magic attack per 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
The debuff effect refreshes every 0.5?sec as long as they are in the radius of the curse. Must have to reduce incoming damage.

Ring of Decay - lv5 - Decreases enemies def/mdef by 35% for 2 seconds and deals 35% magic attack per 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
The debuff effect refreshes every 0.5?sec as long as they are in the radius of the curse.
I do not recommend maxing this skill and I will explain in the following section after the next skill.

Phlegmatic Curse - lv5 - decreases enemies move speed by 65% for 2 seconds and deals 35% magic attack per 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
The debuff effect refreshes every 0.5?sec as long as they are in the radius of the curse.
Recommended for kiting and pvp.

[SEC01.8]NOTE ABOUT CURSES -
In pve the only curse that doesn't appear to have an effect is ring of decay.
I have gone to attack various mobs and bosses and have not noted a difference in my damage between mobs before and after the skill is applied.
If someone can prove to me otherwise or show that there is a significant damage difference, I will note it, but my guide will not endorse the maxing of this skill.

In pvp these skills only affect BASE stats so you will not literally decrease your targets overall atk by 25% or def by 35%. The actually value is much less as the targets have more multipliers.
Endgame pvp, useless for reducing stats.

ALL CURSES bypass defence and reduction of players.

UPDATE 11-08-2013 - R2 has acknowledged curses aren't meant to be affected by critical

[SEC01.9]
SCION (HOLY) - Heavenly Protection - Lv 5 - grants 40% stat boost to all stats to allies and self for 30 minutes.
Like any buff, max it.

SCION (BLOOD) - Death Cometh - lv 5 - Increases hp and magic attack by 24% and gains drain coefficient of 64% for 10 seconds. Grants daze immunity for 10seconds. CD 30sec
Let me just say that THIS is the holy grail for priests in pvp. Unless you're getting 1-2 shotted in under a second, this skill makes you a god so long as you're attacking.
The large drain coefficient will allow you to keep healing the damage you take and you can't be stunned so as long as you're targets not running, you're good.
PVE + Frost is truly god mode. It can allow priests to tank 66 if they have enough hp to survive the initial attacks and give them enough time to cast/group/attack the phoenixes.
A MUST max skill.

[SEC01.10]
Eidolon (HOLY) - Sacred Space - lv 6 - Heal ratio 175% - 10sec cast time - 0.9sec duration - 10sec CD
This skill is a channel heal, meaning you will stay in casting to heal, and canceling the channel will stop further healing. Assuming you cast for the full 10 seconds, you still have to wait 10seconds to use this skill again. Highly recommended heal for parties and not suitable for solo healing because light heal can and will out heal this. This skill, if casted before being stunned, will continue to channel and heal.

Eidolon (BLOOD) - Bloody Acres (AKA "Cage") - Traps a random target in an enclosed area. Enemies/allies nearby of the random target will be enclosed with it. Allies, enemies, and attacks cannot go through or between the barrier. Lasts 13sec CD 45sec.
This skill is very difficult to use but has a wide range of applications.

This skill is difficult to use because it will target a random target. BUT if there's only one target in the cast radius, it WILL get him.
However, due to the fps limitations on the game and how high move speed can get, you may miss a target and cast cage onto an empty area if there's enough delay between your casting and how long it takes the server to get that.
In other words, if you lag and cast this, it might appear 3 seconds later where the target was at the time you casted it but the server didnt get it until after target moved away.
The other scenario is where the target's movespeed is high enough to trick the servers. You could cast it but while it looks like theyre in one spot on your computer, their computer shows theyre in a completely different area and the server takes their location over yours.

Another good thing about this is being able to randomly target a stealthed target (this may often cause you to think you casted on a random plot but when theres no target available, this skill will just take your hp away.)

Finally, the third application is splitting mobs. This is difficult to do because of resetting mobs. But in pvp its not an issue and can grant you and whoever nearby, sanctuary (lol).
Hell, you could defend your enemies crystal from being destroyed by all your allies when theres no one on the other team to defend.

This skill's application is only limited in your own ability and knowledge on how to use this skill. IT IS NOT USELESS.

[SEC01.11]
NEW SKILLS (HOLY)

Magic Blast (lv 130) - lv 5 - Deals damage and heals equal to 130% of your healing to 13 targets in a range of 300. 0.5sec duration, 2sec CD.
This skill, when dealing damage can crit, but healing does not crit still. AOE effect is rather small and possible smaller than it says it is. It can proc passives.
IT IS CURRENTLY GLITCHED see: http://forum.r2games.com/showthread....0-skill-BUGGED
UPDATE - (Date needs confirmation) Skill is no longer glitched. It does not activate passives anymore such as debuffs. Cannot self proc frost anymore if there are no mobs to hit. Need confirmation if it procs on mobs (sorry guys no sots).

Virtues (Lv 140) - lv 5 - all attacks deal 15% extra dmg as splash damage (150 range). (Passive) When hp is less than 50%, increase attack speed by 100% for 3 sec, 15sec CD.
This 15% is not affected by crit damage in otherwords it's equivalent to just adding 15% crit dmg. Splash damage radius is rather small and may proc frost (hard to prove).

NEW SKILLS (BLOOD)

Blood Blade (Lv 130) - lv 5 - deals magic damage equal to 140% of your magic attack. 50% chance to increase attack speed, hit rate, crit rate, and dodge by 15% for 3 seconds. Duration 1sec, CD 1.5sec.
Great skill to add for dps, I wouldn't put this in default attack though because theres still a CD which becomes significant with greater attack speeds. (E.g. if you had 300% atk speed you could cast 2 blood beams after a blood blade vs only casting blood blade when all other attack skills are on CD)

Blood Pool (Lv 140) - lv 5 - prevents enemies from using any skills and causes them to lose 100% reduction for 5 sec in a range of 300.
This skill's description is not entirely correct. I've changed "additional damage dealt" to "reduce reduction" in my description.
You cast this skill like using curses, pick and place.
GMs have not acknowledged whether this is a typo but currently it does exactly how I've described.
It will not give targets negative reduction but I do believe its possible for players to still have reduction after this skill is used if they're able to accumulate over 100% reduction or in the case of knights with 75+ reduction, using titan's guard shortly before/after blood poool is casted on them.
While reduction is capped at 0 and 75%, I believe that they only round after adding/subtracting stats.
In anycase, it's really fun to destroy a 75% reduction tank in seconds because of this skill AND it silences them.

UPDATE 11-08-2013 - Radius was increased (or fixed) and silences all skills properly.
Note about new skills: You cannot learn both blood and holy trees like in scion and eidolon.

[SEC02.0]
SKILL BUILDS

Builds are seperated into two categories (in my builds anyway): support and blood focus, but both builds are hybrid nonetheless

[SEC02.1]
Support Hybrid Mortal (1-80):



In my opinion, there's no benefit as a blood focus until you have the skill points to get the skills needed to effectively be one, so I won't go into details unless requested to post one.
Not to mention the buffs are very beneficial as a beginner with minor modifiers.

[SEC02.2]
Scion:
Support Hyrbid (1-100)



[SEC02.3]
Blood Focus Hybrid (1-100)



You might be wondering why 5 in basic blood beam but not in master. I've said it before in the skill analysis section but here's a reminder, it's glitched and does more damage than improved and master.
As for why their are dividers in the blood attack section, I provide a choice of two alternatives. You can max improved blood pact which is extremely beneficial for dps when you don't have a lot of m.atk. Reason being that the dot under the best circumstances, is worth 10k damage over time while basic is only 2k. Pick the 2nd path of using just basic blood pact to save 3 points put elsewhere if your magic attack is high enough to make the difference in damage over time negligible.

Reminder note about death cometh: It's not a dps skill, its more about its survival capability. You should consider using Heavenly Protection until you need to use death cometh more like for tanking in ladder. Heavenly protection will also help more for leveling faster and dealing more dps when no buffs are actively available. You may want to start out as a support hybrid and switch into blood focus at a certain level.

Eidolon:

I won't cover the sps used between 122-150 because its just 2 new skills you will likely max + 5 left over so it's really up to you. At this point you have more than enough experience to make the judgement anyway.

[SEC02.4]
Support Hybrid (1-120)



Note: Pure in Heart 2 is optional so you can purge all your allies at once but you'll need to take 1 sp out from somewhere else. Also keep in mind you have maxed goddess embrace which is what you're more likely to use anyhow.

[SEC02.5]
Blood Focus Hybrid (1-120)



I'm sure you have lots of questions this time.
In this case, the dividers indicates optional choices of SP.
The bonus of being a blood focus is having a lot of extra SP due to having fewer necessary skills.
So I'll leave it up to whether or not you want dps, pvp versatility, or survival, etc.

Another note about spirit infusion and why I included its improved counter part: The cooldown is likely glitched and they can be used independently of their cooldowns. This means that you don't have just one hard hitting skill, you have TWO! Isn't that awesome? For a short time, the basic version was also hitting more than improved yet both were still stronger than basic blood beam so no hard done.

If you need to figure out how to spend the rest of your sp, read back on my skill analysis section to give you a better idea on how you want to build yourself.

Reminder note about death cometh: It's not a dps skill, its more about its survival capability. You should consider using Heavenly Protection until you need to use death cometh more like for tanking in ladder. Heavenly protection will also help more for leveling faster and dealing more dps when no buffs are actively available. You may want to start out as a support hybrid and switch into blood focus at a certain level.

130/140/150 Skills and SP

After the 10 skill points going into 2 of the 4 new skills, you'll be left with 5 sp. Do as you will because you already maxed all the necessary skills awhile ago so have fun.

[SEC03.0]
AFK MODE

When grinding, only have NON curse skills in the afk skill slots. Curses slow your killing. Why attack a mob for one attack and a third of an attack and another attack to kill when you can use two attacks to kill?

When in av, same as above. Curses do not crit and do not proc frost so why waste the chances of procing crit or frost on your regular attacks?

When in dungeons/training ground, blood pact + Curse of weakness (Only while damage is an issue)
When in training ground, it's optional to use all three curses if your frost proc is weak, but you'll likely be kiting, curses, and blood pacting if you're too squishy to spam heal to survive.

When in ladder, blood pact + curse of weakness + phlegmatic curse + aoe heals available.

As for healing, use one of the following combinations:
potion + heal skill
Use light heal when you need to spam heal, otherwise healing wave or circle of healing if you can survive between heal cooldowns
heal skill with longer cooldown + heal skill with shorter cooldown
Always have light heal in the 2nd slot when spam healing is needed to survive at times like tg
If this is the case, you may set healing wave in the afk skill slots so that it always casts when its available but keep in mind if you're attacking a ranged foe from afar, you may not get healed.
Set hp value as approprite to the situation.

For blood users, sacrifice + death cometh should satisfy your needs most of the time. Set hp to 70% because you always need 70% or more hp to retain the 15% extra magic attack from your passive skill.
You may put sacrifice to the afk skill slots and set death cometh to the first slot and a heal in the second slot if for some reason the heals from the two skills are not enough such as when fighting Exerlorn boss Sin without the drain and anti-debuff totem.

Switch to manual play on levels that require more focusing on healing and rooting.
You want to manually cast curses for three reasons:
1 - timing, so you can root mobs longer
2 - timing, so you actually root all mobs
3 - agro, you don't want your first move in ladder to take agro off the person tanking who hasnt proced a frost or aoe yet.
Never switch to afk mode for any reason when you start manually playing because it's crucial to time your heals, res, and curses.

In summary, never use curses for the purpose of dps or grinding, they're meant to improve your chances of survival.