Team name: Venatic
Server: Telsiai [SEA]
Disclaimers:
This guide is written for players intending to solo CMs, and this often implies some niche decisions for CM. Please do not take it as a “building the best DPS/Support/Hybrid cleric” guide.
I am also a very unskilled player, so please do advise me on any inaccuracies!
Introduction
(TL;DR is the next section 
)
Hi, welcome to my guide on soloing cm with clerics! I’ve always been very interested in soloing CM5-7, but often find myself lacking in proper kiting/skill rotations, so I’ve been trying to find the most brainless builds to solo cm with since IMC made CM easier for rebuild.
These are not always the builds that require the least gear like the old AA inq, or have the fastest clear times, but rather builds that can most consistently clear CMs without much mechanics or fear of dying
TL;DR:
Solo CM 5: 1 Healing class, 1 Damage class, 1 Damage/Support class
OR 2 Damage classes, 1 Support class
Priest/Chaplain/Inquisitor
PD/Exo/Chaplain
[Oracle/Zealot/Inquisitor]
Solo CM 7: 2 Healing classes, 1 Damage class (ideally with synergy)
Druid/PD/Sadhu
[PD/Paladin/Inquisitor]
Damage classes:
S Tier: Inquisitor, Druid (Full lycan) 1, Sadhu 2
A Tier: Exo, Zealot 1 , Chaplain
B Tier: PD, Druid (demi-lycan), Krivis, Diev, Sadhu
C Tier: Monk
1 Possible survivability issues (esp CM5+)
2 MUST be built around
Healing classes:
S Tier: PD, Druid
A Tier: Priest, Kabbalist
B Tier: Paladin, Pardoner
Support classes:
S Tier: Oracle, Priest
A Tier: PD, Paladin, Krivis, , Druid (demi-lycan)
B Tier: Diev
The actual guide
wew, sorry, that took awhile
Contents
- Classes and their purpose
- Deciding on a build
- Ideal gearing
- CM locations
- Personal building process
- Acknowledgements
1. Classes and their purpose
Important classes are those you should always consider when building a toon to solo CM.
Priest
Thoughts on Priest:
- Mass heal is an amazing healing spell. However, in a solo CM context i find this much burst healing less useful than druid’s grass and PD’s healing factor. This is especially true at CM5+, where I often find myself conflicted over holding onto heal and not wanting to waste the cooldown or overkilling on healing immediately just in case i get CC chained.
- Aspersion, Blessing, and Sacrament are all strong buffs in CM. The first 2 are universally good, while sacrament can be easily skipped in non-AA builds. ’
- A cheeky thing to do is to use Sacrament to replace last rites from chaplain, freeing up points for deploy capella, since the 2 do not stack. However, last rites is slightly stronger, meaning this is not an easy choice.
- Reivive is amazing when you’re just starting out on soloing CMs. It allows you to play more aggressively, and also prevents you from accidentally ending your run early. Especially useful against pesky bosses with reflect damage
- Turn undead is not the strongest attack spell, but the bonus instakilling mutants and demons can be marginally useful if you solo CM in a map with these mobs.
- Resurrection is useless in solo CM, since if you die the run is over.
Why Priest:
Pick priest if you have more than enough damage, but are unable to survive physical damage. Or if you’re getting annoyed at dying to reflect damage from bosses. Avoid this class if you lack any damage, and you are not an AA build.
Dievdirbys
Thoughts on Dievdirbys:
- Carve Owl has honestly been underwhelming. It’s not affected by any multipliers, only by debuffs such as Oracle’s death sentence. It clears CM1-5 really slowly, and at higher CMs, keeping the owls alive become an issue as well. If you choose to use this though, stack the statues up and lure mobs to it so they get hit with as many overlapping aoes as possible.
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Statue of Goddess Laima is honestly an amazing supporting skill, giving 20% cooldown reduction. However, unlike pre-rebuild, diev is now 1/3 of your build, and giving a slot to diev just for this is rarely worth it.
-The other useful goddess statues are all buffs, with Statue of Goddess Ausrine having a neat effect of increasing owl damage. However, keeping this statue up is rather difficult even with priest in your build at CM4-5, much less CM5+.
Why Dievdirbys:
Pick diev if you are looking for cool down reduction mostly. As a standalone damage class, it is rather underwhelming unless you have an overall high SPR stat. Even then, it pales in comparison to other dedicated dps classes. Diev shines the most in locations with clustered mobs. Overall though, a rather underwhelming class.
Oracle
Thoughts on Oracle:
- Death Sentence is the single best damage amplifier when soloing CMs, as its “Reset” attribute refreshes the skill on every take down
- Divine Might is really good as well, with a maximum of 15 skills having +1 skill level. Especially useful if you are using a build with many buffs/few active skills
- Twist of Fate is rather useful at bosses, as it takes off a minimum of 20% hp with divine might on. Rather useless during the mobbing stage though.
- Foretell is interesting, in CM5+, as invulnerability can buy you time for your skill cooldowns, or your potion/heal: linger ticks. Exceptionally useful with DoT moves, as they continue damaging while you’re channeling.
- Counter Spell is surprisingly strong in a solo CM setting, as you tend to be more stationary which suits the magic circle buff style well. More useful in areas with more magic mobs, such as the memorials.
- Arcane Energy is a qol skill, you will likely not feel the SP recovery effects unless you are zealot. The 10% damage reduction from its attribute is minor, but a nice bonus.
- Prophecy is sometimes useful at CM5+ where elites appear carrying CC. Not amazing though, due to its low uptime.
Why Oracle:
Pick oracle if you have sufficient healing, and have strong damage classes with minimal downtime on damaging skills. Oracle lacks any specific synergy, so it is often paired with strong stand-alone damage classes.
Druid
Thoughts on druid:
- Chortasmata is one of the best healing spells to have in a solo CM context, as it has rapid ticks, with a good overall amount. It also does not suffer from the “overkill” trait you see from priest’s mass heals, as the heals are well spaced out.
- However, Chortasmata also changes mobs into the plant type, which has very high crit def. Try not to go for crit reliant builds if you are planning to use grass.
- Carnivory is amazing in soloing CM, as you will be rather stationary, allowing you to maximise the use of the plants.
- Seed bomb is good because carnivory is good, and a fire-and-forget spell is always nice. Good bonus, nothing amazing.
- Thorn is very useful in CM5+, as the CC allows you to separate the mobs and not have them swarm you. Otherwise just a nice damage bonus.
- Sterea Trofh is a good spell that is held back by chrotasmata raising mobs’ crit def. Wouldn’t use it at all in solo CM setting, chrotasmata is too good to pass up in this context.
- Transform and Shape Shifting are weaker than lycantrophy. Don’t do it.
- Lycantrophy (full lycan) refers to the skill without the “Human Form” attribute. Amazing dps source, but stick to the first 2 skills for mobbing as they have the largest AOE attack ratio. Note that you cannot use burst heals during this period, and I often end up having to transform back prematurely to heal even with potion & elixir spam. Thus, I would either keep it to CM5, or pair it with a long duration heal-over-time such as PD’s healing factor or Paladin’s restoration (weak).
- Lycantrophy (demi lycan) is the skill with the “Human Form” attribute. Good buffs throughout, but nothing to build around. This is also what makes druid so versatile, as no build would mind having this form. Choose this if you are mainly using druid for its other spells.
Why Druid:
Pick druid (full lycan) if you are looking for a consistent source of damage with respectable uptime, and have enough heals over time as opposed to burst healing.
Pick druid (demi-lycan) if you’re lacking some healing, and yet also missing some damage. A very versatile class in cm overall, fits well into most builds. Special synergies with builds that rely on DoT.
Plague Doctor
Thoughts on Plague Doctor
- Healing factor is amazing. Maxing it is often overkill though, so it’s more of a dump your spare points into this kinda skill. This skill can often keep you alive at higher CM stages by itself.
- Incineration and Black Death Stream are good damage spells; incineration especially. Their hitboxes can get a little wonky though, but these skills are definitely important in CM as bonus damage is amazing, especially fire-and-forget skills like these.
- Pandemic is a skill that remedies the wonky hitboxes of the 2 skills above.Very nice bonus, but nothing too crucial. CM locations with slightly looser packs of mobs would value this more, since you won’t be able to land incineration or BDS easily.
- Methadone and Beak Mask are both great utility skills in cm, if a bit niche. Methadone is especially useful in areas like baryn87 with mobs that knock back, and against bosses. If you have gazing golem cards, you can use this to buy time between procs. Beak Mask is mostly for CM6-7, as elites often carry CC.
- Fumigate and Modafinil are mainly for party play. Modafinil does let you kite easier though, if you require that.
Why Plague Doctor:
Pick PD if you find yourself dying so fast you can’t even get off any heals, or if, like me, you just don’t have enough skill to watch your HP bar and the mobs at the same time. PD has the single best healing spell for soloing CM, and a little bonus damage to boot.
Inquisitor
Thoughts on inquisitor:
- Breaking wheel + ripper is the single best burst waveclear in CM, but has a long cooldown. Reliant on “Torture Expert” attribute to lower its cooldown
- Breaking wheel damage scales badly though. However, might be worth maxing it if your toon is only meant to solo CM a higher wheel damage does mean more kills = more cooldown reduction
- God smash is an amazing bossing skill, and is good waveclear when combined with breaking wheel. Not always optimal to spread it with wheel though, as god smash kills do not count for “Torture Expert”
- Judgement is a great one pointer, as inquisitor skills get bonus damage on demons
- Rest of the skills aren’t particularly useful in soloing CMs.
- "Inquisitor: Burn" attribute is also amazing in tight spaces, as the flames can almost always proc on the maximum 5 mobs.
Why Inquisitor:
Pick inquisitor if you have a single circle left and somehow have no damaging skills. Inq is likely the strongest stand-alone damage class. Try to let the wheel kill mobs by itself to lower ripper + wheel CD, and always try to use wheel and ripper together. Inq flames shine the most in tight spaces.
Do note that going trying to emulate the old aa inq is usually sub-optimal as spreading your AA with the wheel does not lower the the cd of ripper + wheel combo. Flames also don’t seem to proc AA lines right now.
It is also possible to use PD’s incinerate on the wheel to spread wheel attacks, which can proc “Torture Expert”’.
Chaplain
Thoughts on chaplain:
- Last rites is a good buff, but it is often overshadowed by aspergillum. Usually you’d want points in both though.
- Binato is exceptionally important in CMs, as you will always have something to hit. Attack speed is a godsend for AA builds in more stationary content like CM.
- Deploy capella is mathematically amazing, due to doubling aspergillum and skills such as exo’s rubric. However, its animation cannot be canceled. The 2 seconds you spend setting it up can be deadly in the higher stages though. Exceptional for chap/exo builds, you’d be hard-pressed to find a good time to use it otherwise.
- Paraclitus Time is tempting for those pesky bosses and even mobs at baryn87 for example. Chaplain is starved for points though, not worth it imo.
- Visible talent is amazing in CM. Spam it early on in a stage, try to time the massive hit for the boss later on. Often oneshots bosses since rebuild greatly lowered their HP.
Why chaplain:
Pick chaplain if you are looking to emulate the old AA inq playstyle, or if you want to boost the damage of Exo’s rubric. I do find that an AA build is much weaker than before, but with enough Centaurus cards it might match up to other classes. Can also 1-hit bosses if you time visible talent properly. Definitely worth a try.
Skill points are very tight in this class tho, either give up deploy capella for last rites if you find it clunky, or ditch last rites for a higher damage ceiling.
Paladin
Thoughts on Paladin:
- Stone skin and Resist elements are both decent buffs, but you’d be starved for points if you tried to go for both. Personally I find stone skin to be the more useful buff in a CM setting, as it reduces all damage sources. The fact that it has a longer duration is also a nice qol benefit, especially at the higher stages where things get hectic
- Restoration is amazing at the lower CM stages, but rapidly falls off in usefulness at higher CM stages as you can easily get swarmed and killed in the 3s it takes for it to tick.
- Conviction is an amazing skill, the +damage debuff is worth it by itself, and it boasts decent damage by itself to boot. Even better if your build relies on elemental damage.
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Sanctuary is useful in a party setting, but only important in soloing CMs if your build incorporates any DoTs, since it is a channeled skill
-Barrier is very useful in buying time if your build relies on skill rotations with significant downtime. Otherwise it’s just there to lower your durability loss. - Demolition is a bland damage skill. Useful if you are lacking skills in your rotation, but otherwise meh.
Why Paladin:
Pick paladin if you’re having a small lack of damage, a small lack of healing, finding yourself waiting around for cds and dying to mobs, or mostly importantly have your gear red all the time. Paladin does a lot of things, but doesn’t do many of them well enough to form a niche.
However, it is definitely possible to build around Paladin’s sanctuary with 2 classes that deal high DoTs, especially if you have high def, so there’s that. Build around it, or splash it onto a build if you can already carry yourself with the other 2 classes.
Sadhu
Thoughts on Sadhu:
- Prana is the main reason you pick Sadhu. It adds additional damage to every hit of damage, which works very well with DoT spells. In fact so much of Sadhu’s power lies in this skill that I would only pair Sadhu with DoT classes.
- Out of Body is used to activate some of your other skills, not much use by itself.
- Possession is your main damage skill in Sadhu. Try to time its cooldown so that you get 2 uses out of it during Prana’s duration.
- Prakriti and Astral Body Explosion are your secondary damage sources. Without Prana, they do not do much damage at all. Thus, while you can max either, I suggest maxing Prakriti as it gives more ticks of damage overall, which maximises Prana.
- Using Astral Body Explosion to knock back mobs and isolate the elites is very useful at CM5+, as it ensures spells like possession always hit the elites and kill them ASAP.
- Vashita Siddhi is an underwhelming spell. Use it as a filler in between rotations, but it might be more worth while to jump around waiting for your cooldowns at higher CMs.
Why Sadhu:
Pick Sadhu if you’re planning to build around it with classes that have many, many hits. The main draw of Sadhu is Prana, and if you do not maximise it, there is honestly no reason to pick Sadhu, since it is underwhelming as a stand-alone damage class.
Zealot
Thoughts on Zealot:
- Immolation with attribute "Fire Property Attack** as well as Beady Eyed are both great buffs. Nothing special, feel free to spam them as needed to refresh these buffs.
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Immolation and Emphatic Thrust are decent damage skills, but aren’t amazing. Emphatic Thrust can also be spammed off cooldown, and is mostly a filler skill, while it is better to treat Immolation as a buff skill (see above).
Blind Faith is strong at bosses, especially the crit damage debuff. However, with the high turnover rate of mobs at the mobbing stage, the crit debuff is often underutilised. The damage from this isn’t all too amazing when spread out among all the mobs either. - Fanatic Illusion is your main damaging skill in Zealot. Yet another straightforward skill. Use it and walk around.
- Fanacticism is amazing in lower stages, since it lets you blast pass the weaker mobs easily. However, it is exceptionally dangerous at higher stages as you’ll be unable to heal. Personally have issues starting from stage 4.
- Invulnerable is very weak, can consider putting 1 point into it and timing it for bosses’ knockdown, but otherwise it has no value in soloing CM.
Why Zealot:
Pick zealot if you are looking for a very strong secondary damage source, and are able to survive without heals for 15 seconds straight. As the primary damage source, it has too long of a downtime to be worth it imo. I would avoid picking this for CM5+ though, it is simply too dangerous.
Kabbalist
Thoughts on Kabbalist:
- Ein Sof is surprisingly strong, but mostly due to its double healing attribute “Stacked Healing”. This ensures that you can stay alive rather easily.
- Tree of Sephiroth is a strange spell in CM. It is A LOT of healing, but at the same time it has very low uptime. This means that you’re often overhealed while it’s active, and then rapidly worn down while it’s down, leaving you wishing you had a heal with shorter cooldown. Overall great healing, but suffers from an even worse over-healing issue than priest’s mass heal.
- Merkabah, Nachash, Gevura, and the number calculating skills are all underwhelming damage/damage amplifiers. Feel free to use them as fillers, but they will be worse than PD’s damaging skills or oracle’s damage boost 100% of the time. Always use the “Reduced Movement Speed” attribute for Merkabah in CM.
- Clone and Revenged Sevenfold has no, and almost no value respectively in soloing CM.
Why Kabbalist:
Pick Kabbalist if you are looking for a very strong healer. It does however, lack much damage or damage amplifying abilities, making it almost always worse than having Priest. As the sole healer in a build, it is also outclassed by Priest, as ToS has a worse over-healing issue, making you spend quite some time on using Heal, lowering your overall damage uptime. I’d avoid this class for now, except for in a Priest/Kabbalist/X build, but this healing core lacks a lot of damage.
Krivis
Skill breakdown:
- Aukuras is a pretty strong spell if built around with many multihit moves.
- Zalciai is actually decent in soloing CMs due to the stationary nature of the content, as with most magic circle skills. Nothing too amazing though.
- Melstis is underwhelming because of its long cooldown. Great effect though, especially if paired with low uptime buffs from e.g. Zealot, but the long cooldown makes this skill almost pointless.
- Divine Stigma is an amazing damage amplifier, it’s just really overshadowed by oracle’s Death Sentence while soloing CMs, as oracle’s can be reset constantly. A good bonus, but don’t choose krivis because of this.
- Zaibas is a straightforward damaging spell. Works amazingly if you have classes that can abuse the multiple hits it provides. By itself though, it is good but nothing groundbreaking.
- Daino is pointless in CMs. Even if you are somehow missing a lot, it has ridiculously poor uptime.
Why Krivis:
Pick krivis if you are planning to make use of zaibas’ high hit count. Alternatively, if you are seeking a jack-of-all trades class to gel your final build together. However, it is often overshadowed by other classes in specific roles (e.g. oracle as a damage amplifier, any dedicated dps class for dps).
Exorcist
Skill breakdown:
- Rubric is pretty much the only reason you would pick exorcist, but boy is this spell strong. It is definitely one of the best dps skills out there, but the high down time really holds it back. The low target count also hurts this skill if you plan on going to CM5+. Knockbacks are also an issue, especially at maps such as baryn87 or baltinel memorial.
- Gregorate and Aqua Benedicta are ok-ish damaging spells. Nothing amazing though.
- Katadizako is underwhelming for its channel time… If you pair chaplain with Exorcist, it is often overshadowed by your boosted auto attacks. If you can hit 10-15 targets with this skill though, it might still be worth using it, but overall underwhelming.
- Engkrateia is a good buff with too short an up time to be used in CM. One-time nukes aren’t prevalent in CMs, even at the bosses, so it’s pretty useless here.
- The other spells have no value in this setting.
Why Exorcist:
Pick Exorcist if you want to use rubric. Honestly, that’s the only reason. It is decent as the primary dps source, and almost amazing as a secondary damage source. Don’t ever use Exorcist as your ONLY damage source though.
Monk
Skill breakdown:
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Iron Skin is a very poor buff. It has a good effect, but far too low a number for it to actually be useful. If you have points to spare, feel free to dump it here though, but it won’t make a difference in most of your CM buffs.
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Energy Blast is a good damaging spell with annoying knock back, which often slows down runs The channeling time is also not very worth it, and it lengthens your rotation. I wouldn’t use this skill unless Monk was my primary dps, which raises some questions.
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Palm Strike and Hand Knife are your best Monk skills in soloing CMs. However, they still pale in comparison with the dps skills from other classes. With effectively a combined 8 overheats and a 20s cooldown, you spend a lot of time using it too. Which would be good if it you wouldn’t rather be using skills form your other classes…
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Golden Bell Shield is a good spell in a vacuum, but once again, you’d rather be using skills from other classes so resetting monk skills are counter-productive.
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Double Punch is actually a pretty good buff, but using monk over chaplain for AA is undesirable as you lose out on the extra lines. Using chaplain-monk would be alright, but AA is pretty weak in cleric right now, so combining 2 classes for AA is often a waste of slots. Attack speed also has diminishing returns, so using Binatio and Double Punch together will often be worse than expected.
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God Finger flick and One inch punch are weak in CMs, God Finger Flick has a nice debuff for bossing though.
Why Monk:
Pick monk if you are planning to commit fully to AA with a monk-chaplain build. Skill-casting monks would be good as a primary/solo damage option, as it has very low downtime, but its numbers are far too low atm for this to be viable imo. As a secondary damage option, chaplain is better for AA, while skill-casting monks spend too much time using their skills to complement most dps classes. Overall, a weak in soloing CMs.
Pardoner
Skill breakdown:
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Indulgentia is honestly a good healing spell, but with a disappointing uptime. Think of it as a weaker druid Chrotasmata while soloing CMs. Overall a great spell, but using this as your only heal would likely be insufficient.
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Increase Magic Defense is an amazing buff, especially in places with a high magic mob density. Nothing else to say here.
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Dekatos is a meh dps spell, use it mostly as filler.
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Discerning evil is rather pointless if you’re soloing CMs, as with most single target spells. The nail in the coffin is that it’s not even too useful on bosses since rebuild made them much easier.
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The other spells have no value while soloing CMs.
Why Pardoner:
Pick pardoner if you’re looking for a secondary healer, and/or need some magic def due to your chosen map. Other than this, a pardoner doesn’t fill many other roles tbh.
Miko
Skill breakdown:
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Gohei and Hamaya are pretty poor dps spells in CM, try not to build around them.
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Omikuji actually has some decent buffs in there, but it has low up time and is random, thus making it a pretty poor class.
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Kagura is interesting if combined with magic DoTs, such as from PD. However, a 50% boost is far too low to make it worth it. It also has a deceptively high uptime too, as you will almost never channel the full 30s when solo, since no DoT spells last that long, and even if they did, you wouldn’t be taking 30s to kill 1 set of mobs. Overall, underwhelming.
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Clap and Sweeping are almost exclusively used to boost Dievdirby’s owls alive. However, you’d find that owls are hard to keep alive for the full duration at CM5+, thus making clap rather useless there. The power boost is also only slightly stronger than oracle’s death sentence at best, making this an unclear niche.
Why Miko:
Pick miko only to go with dievdirbys, otherwise it is horribly outclassed by most other classes. Even then, the miko-dievdirbys combo is rather weak due to owl statues being weak, but that isn’t really due to any fault in miko’s skillset.
