Overview

Clerics are the premier healer: a versatile, faith-powered support class built to keep their group alive, while still bringing holy damage and utility to the table. With this update, we've given Clerics an entirely unique toolkit (several of their core spells used to be shared with other classes), rounded them out with a few new spells, and added some polish to existing spells.

Overall, Clerics remain close to their current form as a strong group healer with useful utility (cures, dispels, resurrection), a damage kit that leans into holy and anti-undead themes, and a few unique and valuable buffs. We've expanded several existing spell lines with more ranks to make the pace of upgrades more consistent, added new spell lines to fill in gaps, and removed a few spells that felt redundant or underused.

Clerics have also picked up a new starting trait: “Blessed.” As a class so tightly bound to their faith, Clerics enjoy a favored status, and thus may occasionally receive divine help on their adventures.

Defensive Upgrade

We've changed the way our armor class system works to provide more defense to heavier armor types. This means that plate armor is more effective at reducing incoming damage than it was before.

We've also given Clerics the Block skill as part of their Prayer of the Faithful self-buff. This increases the defensive benefits you get from shields by reducing incoming damage when you block a hit.

Heals

Healing is what Clerics do best, and they now have Cleric-specific versions of their core heals rather than sharing generic spells with other classes.

Heal

• Heal your target, restoring Health. (This is your bread-and-butter single-target heal, with a moderate cast time and heal amount.)

Circle of Healing

• Heal your group, restoring Health. (This is a strong emergency group heal on a cooldown.)

Healing Light

• Shine a healing light on targets in a frontal cone, restoring Health. (This is a great way to top off a group when multiple people are hurt. It now has a cast time, so it's a deliberate choice rather than a free upgrade over your single-target heal.)

Promise of Mending

• Bestow a promise of mending on your target, restoring Health after a few seconds. (This is a delayed heal, handy for topping someone off ahead of an incoming hit. This spell line was renamed from Impart Blessing; the spell itself works the same way it always has.)

Blessed Barrier

• Shield your target with a blessed barrier, absorbing damage received. (This is best applied before damage lands, rather than after. The barrier only lasts a short while, and any unused absorption is lost once it expires. Its mana cost per point of damage mitigated is roughly equivalent to a standard heal, so you’ll want to weigh its instant cast time against the risk of wasted absorption.)

Damage

Clerics aren't a DPS class, but their holy magic gives them real teeth, especially against the undead.

Rebuke

• Strike your target with divine energy, dealing Holy Damage. (This is your standard nuke that works on all target types. Formerly the Shock line.)

Smite the Dead

• Smite a target undead with holy light, dealing Holy Damage. (This hits noticeably harder than Rebuke, both per-cast and over a sustained fight, but it only works against undead targets. It was renamed from Repel the Dead and its damage has been improved.)

Holy Strike

• Strike down your target with holy energy, dealing Weapon Ratio Damage plus Holy Damage. (This is a melee-based attack learned at level 1, giving you something to do in combat besides casting. It also has a small chance to channel the wrath of your faith.)

Buffs

Holy Fortitude

• Bestow holy fortitude upon your target, increasing their maximum Health. (This spell is largely unchanged, but it now automatically heals your target for the amount of health gained, so you don’t need to top them up after casting it.)

Hymn of Fortitude

• This is a group-wide version of Holy Fortitude. It requires a reagent to cast.

Blessing of Devotion

• Bestow your target a blessing of devotion, increasing their maximum Health. Additionally, if your target falls to low Health while the blessing is active, it restores Health and the blessing fades. (This buff also increases maximum Health and stacks with Holy Fortitude. It provides an emergency heal when things get dicey, but requires a reagent to cast.)

Prayer of the Faithful

• Call upon your faith, increasing your Strength, Mana Regeneration, Secondary Mana Regeneration, and Block, granting you a chance to activate Fulfillment on melee attacks and the ability to see magical effects when considering targets. (This is the Cleric's signature self-buff, rolling several older spells, including the old Supplication line, into one long-lasting package.)

Divine Aegis

• Surround yourself with a divine aegis, granting you immunity to all incoming damage for 15 seconds. (This is your emergency panic button.)

Inhibit Pain

• Inhibit pain in your target, reducing all damage received for a few seconds.

Retained Spell Lines

Most of the Cleric's utility was carried over from the current version of the class. Some of these have picked up fresh Cleric-specific names and a few extra ranks along the way, but their core functionality hasn't changed.

• Atonement

• Blind

• Corruption / Disease / Poison Protection

• Cure Disease & Cure Poison

• Dispel Magic

• Fear the Dead

• Gate

• Invisibility versus Undead

• Pacify (renamed from Placate; now limited to a single target at a time, rather than several at once)

• Polar Alignment: North

• Redemption (renamed from Resuscitation; your resurrection spells)

• Shackle (renamed from Root)

• Soulbind

• Stun

• Summon Food and Drink

• Summon Hammer

Removed Spell Lines

We tightened up a few areas of overlap while working on this update:

• Supplication - This spell's effects were rolled into Prayer of the Faithful.

• Oath of Protection - Clerics already carry plenty of cooldown-gated defensive tools between Divine Aegis, Inhibit Pain, and Blessed Barrier.

• Oath of Freedom - Though there was no direct replacement to this spell, Clerics instead gained Circle of Healing, which felt like a more useful cooldown overall.

• Snare the Dead - Clerics already carry a dedicated anti-undead nuke and fear, and can fall back on their normal root against undead targets.

• Cure Blindness - This spell is being removed across all classes as we revisit them. Blind effects are typically short and low-threat, so a dedicated cure spell wasn't pulling its weight.