The purpose of this guide is to assist new players of Rift with making the decision as to what souls you should take in the first twenty levels and potentially beyond. Originally, in the first two Beta Events, you were only able to select from three of the eight souls initially. After you progressed through the newbie sequence you were able to select one out of the full eight, and then finally in the culmination of the first world zone, you picked your third soul. This is no longer the case according to Scott Hartsman.
Now we will have access to all the souls initially and more of them. Not only that we will have access to more soul points. Because of this, you will not see any point allocation advice in this guide as we do not know when and how many points we are getting. As many know, not all souls are created equal, and not all of them are balanced yet! So hopefully reading this guide will help players select which souls are the best for soloing content right from the onset so people will not become frustrated by picking unfriendly souls and forced to reroll.
Please remember that all the following information is based off of Beta 2 and may not be 100% accurate for Beta 3.
The Cleric Calling, as you can guess, is all about healing. What you don’t know is that it can be both melee and ranged dps and theoretically, it can tank. The Cleric’s eight souls consist of the Shaman and Druid for melee dps, Inquisitor and Cabalist for ranged dps and the Sentinal, Warden and Purifier for healing. The last soul is the Justicar that plays the role of a tank, though we wouldn’t recommend it in it’s current implementation. However when the Justicar is paired with another melee soul, it can provide some off healing which we’ll explain later. Each soul gets what we call “Zero Point Abilities” (0pt abilities). These abilities are given to the player just by equipping the soul and not putting any points into it. Since points are a premium early on, this is the building block of many builds. This guide will now break down the Cleric Calling into two categories for solo and group play.
There are two valid solo builds and what we mean by valid is that they are nearly identical for optimal leveling speeds. The first is a melee build that utilizes the Shaman and Druid souls. The second is a ranged dps build that uses the Inquisitor soul. Each build utilizes the Zero Point Ability of the Warden which is an instant cast HOT for healing.
The Melee Build, Warhammer Sold Separately: There are two ways to go about building this character but you eventually end up at the same point. This build utilizes the Shaman, Druid and Warden soul. It does not matter if you chose to go with the Shaman or Druid first, but the Warden soul should be always be second so you can utilize the 0pt Warden HOT called Healing Spray. We would recommend you chose the Druid first, Warden second then finally the Shaman.
Starting with the Druid you will have a Faerie pet. This pet will automatically cast a HOT on you when you take damage so it is becomes an additional source of survivability. Keep an eye out for her though as she is fragile and will die quickly if another mob targets her. The pet also has a ranged damage attack that is mostly useless and ends up mana starving herself by chain casting it. Disable this attack. The rest of the build is easy enough to follow. You want to put enough points into the tree to unlock Crag Hammer which is an one hour buff adds damage to each melee attack. You will want to make sure you also put points into the talent that reduces the cooldown of Eruption of Life. This ability does a small amount of damage but also triggers a significant amount of damage each time the mob is attacked up to 3 times. Also in the Druid tree you should take Balm of the Woods which is an instant cast heal on a cooldown.
When you eventually get the Shaman soul, it’s 0pt ability called Vengence of the Winter Storm which also adds damage to each attack. Once you get the Shaman Soul, use the Shaman’s base attack ability rather than the Druid’s. The Shaman tree allows you to buff your critical strike chance and damage.
Depending on how many points you will have at level 20, this build will allow you to keep yourself healed while dealing massive melee damage.
Make sure you are wielding a Two-Handed Weapon.
The Ranged Build, Nuke, Dot, Nuke.. YAWN: This build is very simple. You will be spending all your points in the Inquisitor Tree. The other two souls will be the Warden for the 0pt HOT and the Purifier for the 0pt self-only damage absorption shield. As an Inquisitor you will be casting Bolt of Judgement for the bulk of your damage along with Vex which is a instant cast DOT. Inside the Inquisitor Tree you will be speccing so your Bolt of Judgement has reduced casting time and your Vex heals you for a portion of it’s damage done. There is another spell in the Inquisitor handbook that is a big 3 second cast nuke called Bolt of Depravity which can be talented to do additional damage over time. There is also a talent that gives your Bolt of Judgement a percentage chance to proc a buff that makes Bolt of Depravity instant cast.
That’s essentially it. Spam Bolt of Judgement until you get a proc, cast Depravity and repeat. Vex is nice for additional damage and healing, but you can sometimes skip casting it altogether.
There are three roles of a cleric in a group and those are damage, healing and offhealing/dps. First, the damage buiild you were using for Solo Play works perfectly for dungeons as well so there is no need to change.
Healing, Don’t Worry About It: There are three healing souls: the Warden which is a HOT based healer, the Purifier is all about big heals, shields and reactive blessings and the Sentinal is based on group healing with some instant heals. They will all work just fine when healing your party in the first entry level dungeons and rifts. It will all depend on your taste. Theoretically the difference will become apparent later on in levels, but for the first 20 you can have the best of all worlds.
The 0pt ability for the Sentinel includes an instant cast heal, as you know the Warden includes a 0pt HOT so they are essential when creating a healing build. The Purifier has the least useful as it’s 0pt shield is self only. If you followed this guide for the Solo Builds you already have the tools to heal the dungeon with the Warden soul with the help of the Druid’s healing. Depending on how many souls you are able to get by level 20, picking up the Sentinel soul for the instant cast heal is probably your best bet.
Offhealing, Maybe: If you get a chance to pick up another soul after all your other builds are satisfied then pick up the Justicar. It can theoretically tank with their threat modifiers but it may not function perfectly at lower levels. Instead you can augment one of your dps builds, with a Shaman/Druid/Justicar. In the Justicar tree all you need to grab is the ability to heal others while you’re damaging. It’s in the first few tiers of the tree. It can theoretically work, but the healing output at level 20 might be too low to bother using.
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