Cleric race

[Ando]

You forgot the most important part of being a Dwarf.

[Bindolaf]

Oh man!

Alcohol Tolerance... check!!

[Charlo]

I've really been wanting to start a cleric on blue. I have read through all these priest forums, and this has been a fantastic thread as far as helping decide on race for my new cleric (likely halfling btw). However, I just don't see much information on starting point allocation and ideally where to put them. Does it matter? I'm not necessarily trying to min/max... but I want to get the best value for their placement with an eye toward end game raid content.

[Mentathiel]

Wisdom is what you want for mana and tradeskills, the stat most people agree that a cleric needs. Put every point you can into this...

Strength is useful for two reasons; it affects how hard you hit and how much you can carry. Before long, you will hopefully be in a group and doing more healing than melee, but you will find yourself in melee at first, so hitting a little harder is not a bad thing. Carrying capacity is the main reason for strength, because clerics wear plate and plate is very heavy. Go over your carrying capacity (which is very easy if you have heavy armour on) and you will not be able to move as fast, you will get hit more often and for more damage. High strength means wearing better armour and carrying more loot back to the vendors (important because plate is also expensive) at the end of a trip.

Stamina gives you a few more hit-points, but lots of mana means better AC (avoid losing hp) and healing and damaging spells which make fights shorter. If you are losing hit-points, something went wrong...

Agility is (probably) a useless stat unless it drops below 75 (not an issue for halflings) because under 75 apparently hurts your AC. Dexterity makes weapons proc a little more, but by the time you have weapons that proc and a high enough dex to make a difference, you should not be in melee at all. Intelligence is for robed casters and bards, not you. Charisma makes NPCs (i.e. vendors) like you a tiny bit more, but high wisdom and lots of mana makes players like you a lot more.

[Danth]

Charisma affects the critical resist rate on the lull spell line. While not generally an issue, some individual Cleric players may elect to build a charisma set for special use. It is not a stat to put points in at creation. As a rule, you won't go wrong by maxing wisdom then allocating the 5 left over points into either Strength or Stamina.

Danth

[Mentathiel]

You make a good point; Halfling charisma is lower even than dark elves...

Usually, you want 25 points (everything you can add) into Wisdom no matter your race, then the rest in strength or stamina, but a halfling might consider putting that last 5 into charisma for lulling. I wouldn't personally, but it's up to you...

[Charlo]

Originally Posted by Mentathiel [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Usually, you want 25 points (everything you can add) into Wisdom no matter your race, then the rest in strength or stamina, but a halfling might consider putting that last 5 into charisma for lulling. I wouldn't personally, but it's up to you...

This makes sense, but some clerics I've spoken with have told me that with gear they are easily over the soft/hard caps for WIS with gear after allocating all those points to wisdom during creation. I'm not sure what the actual soft/hard caps are. So is there a certain point where your wasting points with WIS when it can be used for str/sta/agi/cha?

Thank you for these responses... trying to get as much feedback as possible to make an informed decision.

[kaev]

Originally Posted by Charlo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This makes sense, but some clerics I've spoken with have told me that with gear they are easily over the soft/hard caps for WIS with gear after allocating all those points to wisdom during creation. I'm not sure what the actual soft/hard caps are. So is there a certain point where your wasting points with WIS when it can be used for str/sta/agi/cha?

Thank you for these responses... trying to get as much feedback as possible to make an informed decision.

200 is the "soft cap" for wis. From 201 to 255 you get ~ 1/2 (iirc) the mana increase you get up to 200. 255 is the highest possible value (hard cap) for all attributes.

Deep mana pool is worthwhile on cleric at all levels because shit happens. Unless you're heavily twinked and/or PL'd to L50+ you'll get plenty of value while you level out of those 25 into wis. Once you're getting the good gear you can go for +mana items again (just like under L20) to get the best mana pool available to you. If you raid in velious your mana pool depth will be one of the factors determining how long you can keep going in the CH chain on those long fights.

[Mentathiel]

Wisdom is king for a cleric; even if you hit the soft cap early, that just means that you can buy interesting items rather than more wisdom gear. If you can hit 255 with buffs and jewelry, you can then look at charisma gear (very cheap compared to other stats, but often made for enchanters more than clerics) or stamina (more hit-points) or even clicky items with interesting effects such as roots and stuns (having a cleric spell on a clicky frees up another spell slot) or just higher AC. It also frees you up to take resist gear, which protects you from annoying effects like getting rooted when you are trying to flee for the zone line...

However you look at it, 25 points of wisdom is useful. Even if you want to get another stat up, you'll want wisdom and a secondary stat. A high starting wisdom means that you have lots of mana late in the game and can have specific gear to handle specific needs.

[Charlo]

Thanks for the replies... it makes perfect sense to me now.