Tree of Savior Forum

A Monk(1)'s Dungeoning Life

Class and Rank Cleric
#1

As a Monk, I’ve gone through the lv115, lv130, and lv145 dungeons.
I don’t have much time in weekdays so I only have time for dungeoning, so I actually haven’t had time to solo much as a Monk.
I’ve noticed some interesting experiences being a Priest3/Monk that I want to share.
It’s strange because it’s exactly what I expect it to be but I didn’t expect to be faced with all kinds of situations.
The first word that comes up - versatility.

  1. Sole healer
    A good half of my dungeon runs are where there’s no other healer.
    Most often, what happens is I just drop my Monk mindset and back to be a full Priest. I get focused in buffing and healing.
    Today I found an exception. In the lv145 dungeon, the mobs can get excessive and pretty strong. My party expects me to take care of them, but I often notice they let their health drop pretty low to the point I was panicking.
    As I drop heal tiles, they ignore it and just keep whacking. I was glad I got mass heal, because they ignored 60% of my heal tiles. But because of this - Palm Strike and Hand Knife suddenly became really important.
    When the crowd gets too much that I can barely handle the heal, I start using Hand Knife and Palm Strike to screw up the mobs so they get interrupted, almost like a stun but basically give me time to reorient what’s going on.
  2. 2 clerics
    This case is actually pretty interesting. It really depends on what the other cleric build is and whether they know what they’re doing. I’ve had this chaplain I get auto-matched for like 3 times and I trust her a lot, so in her case I completely focus on DPS and help her with Stone Skin for 100% uptime.
    Otherwise, most of the time I try to do part time DPS/support. I’ve partied today with a Chaplain that has +79 Blessing at lv153. Often you can’t expect the other cleric to always be more optimized than you.
    If the other cleric is Cleric2, I would usually let them focus on healing while I do all the buffing, and because buffing doesn’t take much attention, I would keep punching too.
    If the other cleric is Priest, I would make sure that their blessing is comparable to mine. Although I find that 1/3 of the Priests I party with don’t even pay attention to keeping up Sacrament or blessing or revive so… Usually I ended up treating as they don’t exist… They’d heal or mass heal sometimes but I usually can’t rely on that…
  3. 3 cleric
    So far this is the least I’ve partied with. I’ve had also a lot of interesting situations.
    One was when I was in a lv130 dungeon. An archer quit on us, and one cleric said let’s just rush the boss. A wizard in our party couldn’t do the jumping thing in the lv130 dungeon. What did we do? Us 3 clerics (I think it was a Cleric3/Paladin/Monk, Cleric2/Priest3, and me Cleric/Priest3/Monk) went and beat the boss up ourselves. At this point I was more focused on dealing damage than buffing because… hey it’s us 3 clerics. And we have enough dps to deal with the boss ourselves.
    In another case, we had 3 clerics and one quitted halfway. In this case it gets slightly different. We really have 2 clerics but we only have two people to support. At this point I’d focus on DPS because having 2 dps in a party of 4 just wouldn’t do.
    Other times, usually as a Monk, if there’s another Priest between the two other clerics, the only thing I did was Stone Skin - the rest, just keep punching like there’s no end.
  4. Quitters
    Quitters changes everything, although some cases I already mentioned above.
    Usually when someone quits, as a hybrid support cleric, you pretty much have to learn to be more versatile. If you’re the sole cleric, most likely you can focus on support. If you’re a secondary cleric, most likely you want to focus on your dps side because it just wouldn’t do to have too many on the support role. This is especially true in dungeons where it actually takes about an hour - because dungeons have 1 hour limit.

This is partially a rant and I’m sure I’ve ranted somewhere one way or another. I don’t know if this will be useful for anyone, but I hope one takeaway is - any build you have, even if it’s not the best builds or popular builds, it matters how you play, whether you love it, and adapting to situations is really important when you don’t have a set party to play with.
I’m in no way an exemplary cleric. I’m truly a newbie and I haven’t clocked that many hours. I didn’t play in CBT so my experience are really limited.
But I’ve seen a lot of people so focused on their builds and I kept wondering - do they actually know how to play it? Or they just hope one day, as long as they can get the levels, it’ll work out somehow?

This truly is a different experience than other MMO games I’ve been before, especially focusing on the healer class. Never have I played a healer class so versatile before that it amazed me.

Maybe I’ll have more stories to tell later… But hey the next dungeon’s lv160 so most likely there won’t be anything interesting for a while x.x

2 Likes
#2

i dont know about priest3 but for cleric2, diev2 while your heal is cd you can cast world tree or laima so your team will kite around or you can also cast owl so that the mobs will attack the owl instead of your team.

#3

I’ve seen dievs doing this in fedimian siaulau but the swordies has passive provoke that pulled them away.
Owl and world tree and laima never worked when the party kept running around freaking out and pull the boss around.

Sad fact - us cleric won’t get main dps hence we can’t hold aggro

LF smart parties.

#4

unless its not your party mate usually they lure it away because of the damage it does. if its your party you need to tell them to lure it into the owl.
for laima it still good if they freak out as the boss will move slow following them while your heal is in cd. for the holding of aggro yes you can lure all cast SZ crave world tree. even swordi cant hold aggro without heals.

some players are not educated enough in some skills and need to be told.

and yeah you need smart teams :slight_smile:

#5

I have been able to do it quite a few times in dungeons. It requires me face-tanking & dodging what the boss throws at me. Which isn’t so hard with safety Zone & Stone Skin.

But as long as I pop stamina pills constantly an keep my rotations up alongside constant double punch I’m able to hold aggro. Obviously it depends on my team, I have come across DPS that are just better than me at DPS.

But I’d say a good 60% of the time if I want to be ballsy enough to tank a boss I’m more than capable of doing so. That said I’m circle 3 Monk so my experience might be different & I have +40% damage enhance on max rank Energy Blast + Double Punch.

#6

@Menech Don’t we still lose to that passive provoke swordies have though? Often i would be kiting a boss so my party can deal with the other one. But then suddenly the boss changed direction and went off to the swordie. He wasn’t even in my screen yet.

@Azama actually the interesting case, the useful dievs in my parties often run ahead, set the statues, solo it until the party members come to help. And at that time you know the diev don’t even trust the party members :stuck_out_tongue:
but yeah as much as i love seeing dievs in action, i don’t get to see them often, the smart ones even rarer, and an ignorant party can easily render the diev’s efforts useless

#7

We aren’t talking about when a character actually specced with the ability to provoke a boss. We’re talking about when a team is lacking someone with the ability to provoke.

At that point a Monk can make a decent tank, although yes it’s definitely ballsy an a little risky. As it’s quite easy to be 2 shot with Monk if the boss gets a nice hit.

#8

Ah I see. Yeah unfortunately i can’t outdps archers atm and you know they never stay still, so rip aggro or keeping boss still.

Suddenly reminded me. There was one time I got automatched with 4 wizards :joy: (it actually went well o_o)

#9

@acolyte
For Cleric2->Dievdirby2 builds, to help a party you can cast Laima, followed by a Fade. Fade’s tooltip need some changing, it affects the entire party within close proximity instead of just the cleric alone. The skill drops and resets ALL aggro of the cleric and the party members. Do take note when using Fade though, since it resets aggro, using it when the tank has and wants to maintain aggro will have some detrimental effects.

Communication is key, do let your party members know when you are intending to pull the mobs or boss away so the party members can stop attacking while you reset aggro.

@Menech
Yeah. clerics have the capability to hold aggro of the boss (tank the boss) if the team lacks a party member that can provoke and tank the boss. It is definitely not easy, but it is doable. Tried it once while performing double duty as the sole healer of the team,it was so scary but fun.