Archive for the ‘Cleric Guides’ Category

Hello everyone and welcome to my guide to tanking as a cleric. This guide will be based on my own experiences as a Cleric and my understandings of the game.

In my opinion everyone and anyone has the possibility to be the tank. For Fighters there’s mock and kick… for Mages there’s their insane damage output. For Archers there’s their poison attacks. Now what does Cleric have to rival these tanking tactics the others have you may ask? Well the answer is quite obvious, our shiny attractive warm cuddly fuzzy feeling heals… *ahem* yes moving on…

Advantages to the Cleric tanking instead of the Fighter. 

Fighters have the highest hate/aggro gain among the 4 classes… the only problem is they can only focus on a certain amount of mobs due to kick being 1 targeted and mock being limited to 5, 6 once 55+. The advantage Clerics have here is that our heals inflict hate/aggro on all monsters that are attacking the subject being healed. Such as if the Archer pulled 20-30 monsters in aybss Fighters can only maintain control over 5-6 of them with mock the rest will not be affected and will still focus on the Archer. Whereas if we heal the Archer we will gain some of the attention of all the mobs that were on the Archer. Also Clerics have higher magic defense than Fighters so we can survive against magical creatures easier.

Disadvantages to the Cleric tanking instead of the Fighter. 

While Clerics excel in major mob tanking, we are rather lacking in the single/few mob tanking department. Fighters will easily be able to overturn the hate we gain by healing by using mock or kick. Fighters also have the highest hp/def potential among the 4 classes so they are usually more sturdy than us Clerics. It varies though depending on our equipment, build, what we prefer to do. But when put with the same status/gears Fighters will always have better hp/def than us Clerics.

Understanding how our skills work and how we can utilize them to our favor in gaining control of the monsters our party fights.

Our basic way of making monsters prefer us to the others in our party is to use Heal. The simple Heal gains a set amount of aggro when we cast it on any subject the monsters are attacking. It is basically the Cleric version of Fighter’s sneering kick. Only alot less potent but with less cooldown time.

Our next tool to tanking is gained at lv40 which is Rejuvenate. A big heal with big aggro gain but with a rather long cooldown. It basically functions the same way as Heal in gaining aggro but gains more aggro since it heals alot more.

The 3rd tanking tool Clerics receive is a big one… gained at lv60 is the Cleric tank’s dream mock, Recover. It is our first AoE heal learned and gains a rather high amount of aggro. (Not quite as much as Mock but still rather good amount of hate.)

The 4th tanking tool which is rather overlooked alot is learned at lv67. Quicken which allows us to cast any skill of ours and ignore the next cooldown. The rather popular combo for Clanking is to use Quicken to double cast Recover.

The 5th and most potent so far of our Cleric tanking tools is waaaay high up at lv85… Awaken. It is basically an improved version of our lv60 Recover. Awaken is instant cast with a rather speedy cooldown. (Faster than Recover or even Rejuvenate.) The only downfall to the lv85 AoE heal and our old lv60 AoE heal is that the 85 one heals less hp for more sp cost. But still in my opinion it is far superior to the 60 one. Plus it looks awesome. ^_~

More detailed information about our tools and how they work.

Heal: Each and every Heal has a certain amount of hate it gains when casting it on a subject that the monsters are lured on. Powering Heal up increases that set amount of hate it gains. The way to use Heal is to think of it as kick… but on the ally side. You cast it on your member who is being attacked instead of the monster that is attacking him/her. Heal gains the same amount of aggro wether you actually heal any hp or not. You may still cast Heal at full hp and you will still gain the same amount of hate as you would have if you had healed your lost hp so be happy with Heal and spam it like nuts!

Rejuvenate: Same as Heal just higher aggro gain. Use this when Heal is on cooldown to gain extra aggro.

Recover: The big hate grabber. Normally you gain the attention of the monsters that are attacking your party if you just heal them with it but sometimes they might not notice for some reason. If that should happen cast Heal or Rejuvenate on the target that is being attacked, then use Recover. That should link you to the monster’s attention.

Awaken: The ultimate Cleric tanking skill. Same functions as Recover. It should make the monsters notice you if you heal the member that they are attacking but some may not for a reason. Again if this happens use Heal/Rejuvenate on that member then cast Awaken. This should fix that problem.

Building your Cleric to become a tank.

The most important and first stat you should seek to improve is END. END END END… With low hp and low defense you will not last very long against a big mob of hungry Orcs. I reccomend putting at least 50points into free stat END if you plan on being a Cleric tank. If you truly wish to do nothing but tank as a Cleric then put all your points into END. If you want a more balanced build for soloing as well as doing some tanking, END/SPR or STR/END/SPR are the builds for you. The SPR in free stat helps you deal more criticals as well as lessen the magic damage you take. STR is basically just to help you kill quicker. Mainly used for soloing but can be useful for tanking 1 opponent at a time.

Equipment stats you will want is END as a 1st, DEX/SPR as a second. The best tanking equipment is END/DEX/SPR as it will make you hard to kill. END will boost your hp/defense to deal with the majority of the mobs in Isya, DEX to help boost your evasion which will make you hard to hit. After all, what good is super strong attacks if they can’t even hit? ^^ SPR of course is for the magic defense boosting and the extra SP may actually save your life. During tanking you may forget to stone and run out of SP rather fast as a Cleric and having higher SP will prolong you from reaching the bottom.

Which items to enhance and which power ups to buy.

Now certainly if you are going to be a tank you will want to enhance your items as to boost your defense… but don’t know which items to enhance? First of all you will want to enhance the chest piece first as the chest piece gains the highest bonus defense in a set. The next piece to enhance will be pants. They gain the 2nd highest bonus defense from being enhanced in a set. 3rd you will want to enhance is your shield, 4th helm, 5th boots.

For which items to buy, first you will want HP potions. In case you take on more than you can handle or get stunned, the only way to keep yourself alive is HP stone and HP potions. Next for power ups, you will want Vitality, Defense, Magic Defense, Evasion scrolls. Defense/M defense potions are nice as well if you can afford along with dexterity potions.

If you can use cash shop and want to power your tank up more, the first item I suggest getting is 30day 150% hp/sp extender. It helps quite alot. 2nd you may want to invest in a few 120% defense charms as they boost both defense/M def. Tough Cookie Pack is awesome for Charm of Might but only use it for special occasions as it isn’t cheap.

Credits go to Seraphia’s.