[Skullcatrons]

Welcome to the Priest problem thread, the 73th time.
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PREFACE
Let it be known that this is simply raving of a madman, who have better understanding of his own class' capability than other classes, could describe. Do bear in mind that this is just raving of madman, and nothing more. A man who wishes for a better day, and probably is wasting his time on making a thread for a class that's probably going to get reworked anyway.

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So what is wrong with Priests?
It's not because they don't have bad spells, or their passive sucks.
I mean, they do have bad spells, and passives. But they're best examined, and understood.
The problem with priests is simple objective fact;
It's a very good sub-class pick.
Too good even.

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GOOD STUFF

STAFF MASTERY
The passive that does not even require a Main-class. For every stave equipped, you get a +1 increase to WILL, and FAITH. With the talents, you can have up to whopping five staves. Meaning you get +5 to WILL and FAITH! Insanely strong!

PIETY
Coupled with this passive, you can get another +6 FAI. Meaning that you can have +11 FAITH all together from just passives, and staves. That's big jump in Faith number.

DETAILED CARE
Detailed Care are in a sense, very good passive to take up when you need to heal a friend. With a 50% boost to healing, as long as they're within a tile of you. You can heal them for well over 300 heals if you're standing right next to them. It's generally hard to get party-member to cooperate to get healed, but it's very strong healing if you can reach them regardless.

MALMELO

Malmelo is very, very good. With high enough faith, you can heal all your party-members regardless of distance 30% of their health. Making it very strong heal that applies to whole party. While it have good uses, it have cooldown of seven turns. Don't expect to use this much.

DIVINE SHOWER
   I'm not gonna talk about how great this spell is, after the evasion rework and how it finally can hit anyone without much trouble.
Honestly, it's great that this ability no longer sucks.
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MEH STUFF

Mercalan Mist 
On paper, the idea of it sound good. In reality, it's pretty much meaningless. It's decent spell for when you want to grant a basically +25 evade to whole party, some health regen, and lightning resist of 15% reduction to your enemies but realistically; Well you wouldn't waste your time casting it unless you're planning on running idol for that sweet sweet 35% lightning resist reduction

Sanctuary
In lot of way, sanctuary do provides quite a lot of benefit. But the problem with Sanctuary is that you have to stay within it, and while you can enlargen the sanctuary to cover almost most of the map. It become pointless when someone kicks you out of it, or swap position with you to remove the effect immediately in a round.

Strong Legs
Strong Legs is actually decent treatment skill for counterplay in PVP. If your party-member get feared, hesitated, or knock-downed. You can use Strong legs to get them up fast into action without suffering a 3M cost if they hadn't gone yet.

Shine Rays/Needles/Holy Shock
Nothing wrong with them. They're pretty much better DPs alternative for Holy Arrows, that's for sure.

Gentle Torrent
This'll never really see a formal use, but it does fulfill it's very niche condition. Which was basically a line-AOE. Issue it requires you to line up with an enemy, and allies who may, or may not be suffering a status debuff. Which is not always a case. It only reduces debuff by 1 rounds, and have Water Damage scaling of 128%, which doesn't see much uses in combat.
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BAD STUFF
(HONESTLY THE WORSE)

 Purify Poison/Cool Burns
Legit just use Stave of Antidote, and Stave of Cooling. They have scaling, and can cure way higher level debuffs than these. Also waste of skill points.

Longterm Cure
Looks good on paper. In reality. It requires a literal Treatment skill to be used, which is waste of skillpoints on it's own. Maybe good for Strong Legs, but honestly why?

Mercalan Tenants
I don't care if goddess holds me at gunpoint. I'm never taking this.

[i]Divine Judgement
[/i]Okay so here's a thing. It's technically not a bad invocation. The issue is, the invocation is just single-target version of Mercalan Mists, but it only: 1. Negates the Light resistance entirety, and 2. Converts the RES/DEF into a single stat; Faith. Theoretically, this spell should be good. But really why would you?


Shine Knight
Okay. Here's the thing. The reason why this spell sucks, is because of two things; One. They take a whooping 15 monument. Meaning you have to spend two rounds, and a half just to summon two level-60 Shine Knights that while their benefits once summoned are great, you can be interrupted. Believe me when I say this; but because it takes two rounds. A player can knockdown you continually to prevent you from casting Shine Knight in first place. So it's kind of lame, and intensely situational outside of party-fights.

God Rod
Only needed for Priest Monk staff, otherwise you can use the gem staves instead.

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THE CURE.

The class honestly is garbage if you plans on mono-classing it, or primary-classing it. In fairness, you pretty much don't need to main-class Priest at all. There is no incentive, no encouragement. This is similar issue with Lantern Bearers, but unlike Priests, Lantern bearers provide players choices that can benefit the builds in varieties of way. Priests, on other hand, have mandatory spells, optional spells, and completely ignorable because it's too niche.

How can the class be solved? Obviously, it lacks lot of incentive to be main-classed. It have no encouragement to the players to bother main-classing. It also lacks very much practically anything of essence. It only have cleanses utilities, some defensive utilities, but offers no real mobility of it's own or unique gameplays.

Seriously. People just take this class sub-class because sweet, sweet +11 FAI and +5 WIL.
Big boost, baby.