Or was that only in iCBT? I remember it was pretty standard to get at least 1 point in Monstrance to buff your party and max Bless.
Is Monstrance looked down on now with the addition of Chaplain, since Aspersio and Sacrament are pretty much required to have maxed? And what of Bless for that matter?
Wondering about this aswell, since im going chaplain 2 
Monstrance is still ok ish with 1 point in it, but there’s a lot less dex builds around now. Esp for clerics.
It’s pretty nice on a spr based chaplain though, but you’d want skill lvl 3-5 so you can more easily debuff several enemies.
Blessing isn’t important at later levels and frankly never has been. You get most of the dmg from the attribute anyway so i’d recommend skill lvl 5-10 ish for a good amount of hits. Maxing it is a waste of points.
It seems like any build I see with Monstrance only has 1 point, but I imagine you could make some good Swordsman/Archer friends if you maxed it out. Probably not worth it though…
Blessing seems to be pretty controversial. A lot of people cite it scaling badly at max level, but then other people still hail it as strong due to it applying on each tick of damage.
I’m only around level 30ish and I maxed out blessing, but the added damage just doesn’t seem to be that impressive and since I get more mileage out of just mobbing and then casting cure/heal on cooldown, it’s seldom worth casting (especially since it’s expensive for a lowbie like me, due to reagents needed). I’m also leveling with a Wizard, so that’s probably part of why it’s not that valuable to me too, lol.
[quote=“Wurmheart, post:3, topic:158284, full:true”]
Blessing isn’t important at later levels and frankly never has been. You get most of the dmg from the attribute anyway so i’d recommend skill lvl 5-10 ish for a good amount of hits. Maxing it is a waste of points.
[/quote]Can’t we just rely on attribute for the amount on hits instead of dumping skill points into it? Just wondering 
You should get that attribute either way, and i’d prefer having a good amount of hits for high atk speed builds like the current archer variants that can attack twice per second or faster.
The answer to this can depend on the purpose/focus of your character & the scenario, but I think Rank 1 Monstrance is still pretty standard - the DEX boost doesn’t increase with higher ranks in the skill - and Blessing is still valuable in many situations.
My current thought on Blessing is that it makes no sense to have more ranks in it than you can deal out hits in 45sec, because no matter what the buff dies after 45sec. The damage difference would be made up by leveling the attribute. At early levels that’s a bad value proposition - like you said, it’s expensive. It’s not too long, however, before you can afford such things. I’m at level 92ish as a Cleric 2/Priest 2 going Monk and have Blessing at 10. I generally play solo, and Blessing + Sacrament yields a significant amount more damage in most situations than without.
In a support role while partying, there’s no reason not to have Blessing if your party is fighting. As a support role I’m not sure that I would have any less than 10 ranks of Blessing, and would probably max it out. It may not be much, but more is more.
Oh good to know, I’m playing with two archer friends o_O