Tree of Savior Forum

Potential consideration for aspiring priest-3 plague doctors (pandemic)

Class and Rank Cleric
#1

Just thought I’d share quick tip for newer players in my position who are planning on rolling Plague doctor after 3rd circle of Priest. I recently got to 8th circle on my Cleric2 Priest 3, Chaplain Plague Doctor2 and came to the realization that Pandemic doesn’t spread any of my debuffs.

Previously, I’d heard that Monstrance could be spread around, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Yes you can spread Black Death Steam but this skill spreads to enemies around it automatically. You can poison a whole mob easily just by kiting around a bit, no need for Pandemic.

So unless you plan on using Pandemic solely for team support, there’s no need to take it for solo play. You could drop a tier in cleric for Krivis, then it might be worth having, but other than that I’d say Pandemic is only for the Bokor into Sadhu path.

Hope that helps some upcoming cleric players make better decisions than I did, It can be hard to find relevant up to date information sometimes.This is probably common knowledge to a lot of people but I seriously went the whole way thinking that Monstrance was spreadable through Pandemic because of misinformation. It’s also kind of hard to understand just how good Black Death Steam is at spreading itself without actually using the skill. Youtube vids don’t really do it justice and I was lead to believe that plague doctors I was looking at for reference were using Pandemic to spread it around.

edit: read the rest of the topic for counter-arguments FOR taking Pandemic. Lots of good info being dropped.

#2

Or you don’t Max pandemic and use the attribute for good range to save both points and do more ape.

1 Like
#3

I feel like you missed the point of my post. Getting pandemic at all is a waste with this build, it has no real synergy with any of your skills unless you strictly use it for group support for spreading other people’s status effects. I was under the impression that I’d be able to use it to spread the Monstrance debuff and also underestimated Black Death Steam’s ability to spread itself.

#4

I’m also Chap-PD2 built Cleric.
(In my opinion though) Pandemic is still useful to spread the Black Death Steam as (in my case) it kills mob too quickly before the plague even infect the monster next to it. If it’s not deadly enough, it’ll spread for sure. But it takes the debuff duration from the former monster (mind you, I want to maximize the blessing I have) so longer duration Black Death Steam = more damage incurred, more +blessing triggered.

#5

I see what you’re saying. I might change my mind on it when I have the range improved, but as it is now, by the time I walk over to use pandemic, the mobs have already ran past me and infected everything nearby.

#6

Then get the kitten range improved…i don´t understand how you aren´t even using the cheap attribute and yet judging a skill and posting “do not take this newbies” which can result in a new or returning player to ruin his build.

You can´t infect a full room of 290dungeon without pandemic. That and what @wheresmymulah said.

#7

I’ve already done 290 dungeon and you absolutely can easily infect a whole room just by spraying the first few mobs and then running through the pack. Are you sure you’re not the one posting misinformation here? Pandemic is just unnecessary and non-synergistic unless you’re taking bokor or krivis somewhere in your build.

#8

Pandemic is still a super handy skill.

There’s a limit of how many mobs that can follow a single player at a time (i think it’s 10 mobs?). When you’re in a party, you can easily lure the whole room together (because each player will lure ~10 mobs for a total of 50 ish mobs aka whole room), but when you’re solo, you can only have ~10 mobs following and gathering around you while others will stand still. Mobs standing still will make Black Death very hard to spread by itself. That’s where Pandemic comes in hand.

Pandemic is also good for hitting tiny group of mobs further away or simply spreading the debuff much quicker, maximizing it’s dps.

I have both Sadhu3 PD2 and Chaplain PD 2 and I got Pandemic on both builds, where the only thing I spread with it is Black Death itself.

Pandemic without the increased area attribute isn’t all that useful, though.

EDIT:
As a sidenote, I’d like to mention Monstrance has a graphical bug where the circles disappear once a monster comes in contact with them but their AoE on the ground doesn’t really vanish (haven’t tested this bug after combat patch, but I believe it still exists).

Monstrance’s circles respawn area is very limited. At very high skill levels circles will often overlap eachother. Since their effect doesn’t actually vanish even when monsters step on them, there’s zero effectiveness of having a circle overlapping another.

In short, lvl 5 monstrance works about the same as Zalciai, debuffing all monsters that come into the AoE even if all magic circles already disappeared.

This means Monstrance higher than level 5 is actually as useful as just level 5, since most of the area will already be covered at skill lv 5. Getting very high levels is also a pain due to the skill’s increasing cast time with skill level.

If you’re a Chaplain -> PD2, I recommend using Exorcise -> Magnus -> Incineration instead of monstrance. It deals some damage and Magnus’ AoE debuff is much more reliable to use Incineration.

#9

just to add to the usefulness of pandemic as stated above:

in 290 dun? sure, monsters there are already arranged properly so tagging them with bds alone is easy…

try farming hg 320 using bds without pandemic… monsters in hg 320 spawn irregularly at unpredictable distances… we’re also dealing with different types of monsters, melee, magic and range… magic and range monsters usually don’t follow us around unlike melee monsters so spreading bds without pandemic can be difficult…

not to mention that the more we wait for bds to spread the more we lose dps… pandemic spreads bds instantly, it increases qol in terms of aoe and dps…

#10

Actually the priest3 pd2 could be the good option for pve/pvp. The main selling of this build is blessing, which could boost the bds and inci ticks. Since the balance patch, the blessing damage boost is flat bonus that doesnt be reduced by enemies pdef and mdef. Thus, this is good for pvp.

Speaking of pandemic, this is your the bread and butter combo with bds. Sure the bds can spread, but only with in contact. To reach more mobs, use pandemic then use incineration. The main use of pandemic is spreading your bds so you can make them to spread more or more importantly, to inflict more damage because of early spread means more ticks. Bds and pandemic are also good to aggro mobs towards you, makes mobbing real easy.

#11

Yes i am sure and all the other people commenting in here are sure too.

#12

A lot of good and useful posts here. I guess I don’t feel so bad about having taken points in Pandemic now, though I can’t say the same about Monstrance. I already use the Exorcize/Magnus/Incineration combo and it does the job way better. Part of me wants to think that monstrance is good to have around because it gives me some accuracy in a low-dex build, but I could drop it completely and take points in Mass Heal or something.

Still, I reckon if you didn’t want to take pandemic on this build because of low synergy you wouldn’t miss it much. I haven’t had any issues so far and while it misses a few ticks of damage, it’s usually enough to get off an incinerate on a pack and then finish them off with Aspergillum. More points in healing factor or Disenchant.

#13

Wait hang on so you didn’t get the super cheap increased range attribute yet made a PSA about how useless Pandemic is? What?

I suggest you rename your thread to avoid misleading other people.

#14

No need to rename it, I have it now, but while it’s nice to have, I still don’t feel like it’s necessary nor does it synergize particularly well with this build. Having more range on pandemic doesn’t change the fact that you can’t spread any of priest’s debuffs and as a Chaplian you don’t have any problem killing scattered mobs anyway.

Also, anyone who’s interested will read the comments anyway and get all of the insight that’s being shared.

#15

It’s almost like chaplain and PD have no synergy at all or something.

Who could have possibly predicted this would happen?

#16

Well that’s not true at all, Chaplain plague doctor is nothing new and continues to be strong and solid, with magnus exorcismus and exorsise playing together very nicely with Incinerate and Healing Factor giving Chaplain all the sustain they need in order to charge into mobs and auto attack. But that’s not a topic for this thread.

#17

Monstrance is indeed a very lackluster skill. Most builds will take it at most lv 1 for the DEX buff. I’d also like to mention that the DEX buff depends on your DEX (it’s +30% + 10 DEX, if i’m not mistaken) so for most chaplain builds without DEX it won’t make much difference (though you can support other DEX characters).

Chaplain -> PD2 is a very popular and very good build. Having played almost all cleric classes after combat patch, I can guarantee you that Black Death is by far the best AoE dps skill in whole cleric tree. Other skills like Carnivory or Possession can still deal a lot of damage but are limited to a concentrated much smaller AoE while Black Death will easily spread to all targets in your screen.

Having taken Chaplain instead of Sadhu3 or Bokor3 does lower your dps substantially. But it’s still a reasonable trade-off between damage and supportiveness. In many occasions the total party dps with Chaplain PD will surpass the dps as if you were a Sadhu PD (i.e. if you have SRs in your party, Blessing + Sacra + Last Rites buff their damage by a lot). Not to mention that even if party dps isn’t better with Chaplain, you still have Revival, Ressurection, Mass Heal, etc.

#18

Even better than Inquisitor’s Wheel? At least in terms of burst, I’ve noticed that Wheel (with spammed Godsmash and Chaplain AA) seems to clean up mobs fastest (observed this particularly in Uphill).

#19

Old, but still useful

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#20

Depends on situation. For uphill Black Death is surely better, it can clear a whole wave (at last waves it’s even better) just with one overheat. Wheel can do that too but it may miss a few mobs that come later after wheel disappeared.

Its very hard to compare both skills but the thing is, Black Death feels easier to use since it has lower cooldown and one overheat, coupled with the capability of hitting mobs across the screen. It’s more about the mechanic of Black Death than the damage itself (the damage is nowhere near bad, tho). Wheel might miss a few mobs that aren’t within range and enter the cumbersome cooldown.

If you’re talking about bursting a boss, Breaking Wheel will obviously do a better job. I don’t like to rely too much on the wheel tho because depending on the rest of the party the wheel can disappear in an instant (i.e. if you have 1~2 SRs in your party which will hit the wheel and make it vanish super quick).

But yeah, as AoE dps, I feel Black Death is more reliable and overall better. Wheel excels at bosses or (somewhat) grouped up mobs.