Shattered Kingdoms

Ok.. so I've had a few encounters with my deep-elf.... her background story is strong, and even though she is from another *world* hopefully I wont get too much flack for her *Matronly* attitude but if I do.. woohoo... ICA=ICC

But.. my questions lie within....

She is a heavy armor priestess... where should I be dumping stats? As I do eventually want to get into PK when I've fleshed her out more...brave I know...

Str? Some into con to at least healthy? I know to max out wis and int.. and her cha is pretty good (from what I can tell)

I'd max int, wis, con. Personally I think dumping mana is the best way to go, but that's open for debate. I'd max charisma if you plan on being in a tribunal. Either don't train art or put 3 in it. Dex is more important than str. You won't be hitting things in pk, but you will be avoiding dirt kicks.

I'm going to tell you now so that you aren't disappointed later: You can't be a front-row priest, and you can't do decent melee damage in PvP as a priest. Don't build your character for it, you'll just be disappointed: When it comes to PvP, the only damage you need to be doing is via spells, scrolls, and healing your allies, not melee hits.

If you want to be survivable, then max your CON and HP trains, and as Baldric said, don't train your charisma unless you plan on joining a tribunal. Training mana is also a good idea, because it increases your pool as well as your mana regen: It's much more fruitful to train mana, and then try to find some wisdom mods, than to train wisdom and then suffer later from bad mana regen.

I'd follow most of what Baldric said, however. Put your DEX high, not strength, because that will help with dirt kick which makes priests quite useless when it lands.

I'm pretty sure I know who this character is, and as the player of Kirken, I can tell you that the concept of battlepriest is pretty much relegated to what Edoras says. Lack of any defensive skills besides shield block combined with the fact that bash completely disables a caster means, like any other priest, that taking direct physical damage means you're in big trouble.

In fact, playing a heavy armor priest is just about the worst of all worlds, because a) good heavy armor is harder to find, b) you can't wear "too heavy" armor for spell mastering, and c) it nerfs your ability to use a crossbow (thus crippling what little physical effectivenes you'll be able to bring to the table when you're in your natural third rank position). Oh, and heavy armor religion spells are weak sauce.


Having said all of that, don't be terribly disillusioned: playing a heavy armor priest is a lot of fun if built correctly. I personally maximized both mana and hp, and haven't regretted that move at all (the greatly increased mana regen in combination with a very high hp pool is a big bonus). It will, however, make you more dependent on good jewlery mods in the long run, but your ability to enchant your own gear helps mitigate that. No more than three art, because that's all staves leverage, and while scrolls are important, your other stats will be hurting if you add any more points there.

Beyond that, you'll want to bring most of your stats to a few points below their maximum, with a priority on INT (being able to hold sanctuary + other buffs on your tank / yourself and still heal is crucial), CON (survivability when hit by group affects), then try to bring WIS to 4-6 off of maximum (WIS mods are terribly easy to find), DEX to 4 off of maximum (same as WIS), and STR enough to wield your reaching weapon of choice. CHA is completely unnecessary: while it's nice to level more quickly (and leveling a priest can be painfully slow), it's completely irrelevant unless you are in a said tribunal, and even then charisma mods are achievable when absolutely necessary.

Well I'm not talking HUGE pk but I would like to be considered when people enter battle as a reasonable healer. Plus the religion aspect, and killing those within might be needed *cough cough* and well.. being deep-elf I'm sure battles with the white aura will come along as well....

I will be pursuing a trib/cabal I think, just for the further opportunity to learn about PK and other RP and where things are - usually a boon when you are in a group of some sort.

Thank you all for your input, and I'll be careful to track my stat development and keep your hints in mind. THankyou!

Matron

There's some good advice in this thread so far. INT/WIS/CON should be maxed, and not with mods. If you have points left over after this, hp/mana/art are all equally valuable. Anecdotal evidence suggests that art raises your success rate with gate and holy word. Personally, I go with art, as I never found mana to be seriously lacking and failing a gate is pretty catastrophic. After that, DEX > STR > CHA. Max DEX with mods, keep enough STR mods so that your carried weight is below 1/2 of max carryable. If possible, also wear +6 INT in mods; a GM swashbuckler taunt reduces your int by about this much. Once you're done leveling, don't bother much with weapons. Even with haste, giant strength, and a +6/+6 yoyo my melee damage as a half-elf (let alone what you'd get as a deep-elf) was pretty laughable. Find a good shield and just wear that at all times. Get at least a handful of enchantments on all your good pieces of armor. Don't bother enchanting stuff that isn't adamantite or of equivalent AC.

Keep a pet in front of you at all times. Keep protection and armor up at all times, alongside sanctuary and bless whenever possible. Brew vials of word of recall and make an alias to pull them out of your container and quaff them in one command. Keep vials of detect hidden and detect invis on you at all times, and quaff them when combat is imminent. Same thing for staves of flight. Other buffs that are very nice to have: haste (extra saves for reflex, more shield blocking), shield (magical protection), lighten load (if you're weighed down by all that heavy armor - giant strength is not as valuable due to fatigue), about half of the religion spells, prayer, chant.

In battle, harm is most important. Harm cannot be saved against and the damage is only mitigated with magical protection. Spear of faith is very good for leveling but does pitiful late-game damage and is easily resisted. Flamestrike is decent against groups at range, but should not be used when your target is in the same room. Holy word whenever you're facing 3 or more targets of opposite aura, but only once; you're casting primarily for the dispel, not for the damage. Master all your spells so they won't fail in combat.

Do all of this, and you might be dangerous! Don't think about engaging someone in front-row combat if you aren't prepared. While a barbarian or mercenary can pretty much floor someone at any moment they choose, you will do nothing but bend over and take it prison-style if you jump the gun on a battle with someone who is within 10 levels of you.

Man, I don't even know why I write this stuff.

Some good points in Salandarin’s post but there are a few things I’ll add to or differ in. If you decide to go trib, I’d say CHA>DEX>STR. Also, the int drop from taunt depends on the charisma of the swashie. A human taunt seems to drop int by about seven. A Halfling will get you for a whopping ten.

Harm is very important in pk, like Sal said, but I will emphasize that priests are a support class when it comes to pk, and in most group pk, your primary function will be healing.


I will also say that I would recommend taking Salandarin’s advice about maxing your int, wisdom, and con naturally. I don’t think it’s a good idea to rely too heavily on mods if you are not especially familiar with the game. As I said before, though, I think mana or hp is more valuable than art for a priest. I wouldn’t do more than three art.

The absolute best advice I can give the aspiring grouping priest is to write yourself up something to make the info command more useful and, if you want to go that far, to spam it easily.

What do I mean by useful? Something like this.

How you does that, grep!?

Triggers with #GAG commands and semi-complicated regex.

Given that this particular priest's home town has a jewelry store that sells +2 stat mod jewelry, and I've already purchased some of them for this character, I still think my original stat distribution stands. That's twelve points of easily obtainable stats, and a determined player can enchant those (got five additional last night on two out of four -- results not typical).

Failing a gate is not catastrophic if you max mana. The only reason you'll faill it is that the target is unavailable, which additional art is not going to help. Given that the four most important spells in a priest's repertoire (harm, heal, sanctuary, faerie fire) don't have saves, those extra 6 points spent in art (to take advantage of the scroll cap) would be far better off placed elsewhere.