| Name | Cleric Build Guide |
| Category | Class |
Hi everyone! I have some tips to share about making the strongest cleric possible at level 10. A good cleric is what makes a lot of groups work. If you have a great one you can expect a lot of group invites wherever you go.
To be a great cleric you need to play to your strengths. The reason you're so sought after is because you're so good at healing and buffing. You can do other things as well but those are all secondary.
The first choice you need to make is your race. The concensus is that human is the best race for a cleric. None of the racial abilities are that good and the extra feat always helps. You can make a cleric of other races and do fine though.
Your most important statistic is wisdom. It is tempting to start with less than 18 wisdom because you don't get a ton of benefits from it like other classes do from their main attribute. But at higher levels you'll notice that your other attributes don't do much, while you can't have too much wisdom. Charisma is also an important stat. It governs how often you can use your turn undead ability, which becomes awesome with divine vitality. Some dexterity is nice. 12 dexterity gives you +1 AC which matches up perfectly with the full plate mail that you'll be wearing. You might get your hands on mithril plate mail eventually, which allows a +3 dex bonus to AC, but you'll also probably have some stat buffs by then as well.
Constitution is not that important. New characters have a feat that gives them 20 extra hit points. You also get maximum hit points at every level compared to the pen and paper version. That makes you a lot tougher. At level 10 you'll have 100 base hit points. But you're also a healer so you really have 100 hit points, plus how many you can heal. 10 more base hit points doesn't help much. Intelligence is a dump stat. The only skill that's really valuable to you is concentration.
A lot of people like strength. It makes you more effective at swinging your mace at things. But in any hard fight those points in strength are useless. Against tough mobs you're going to be casting heals and messes nonstop to try and survive. Strength is only good against easy enemies where you don't have to cast. The best clerics shine against the hardest monsters, and 8 strength is exactly the same as 18 there.
There aren't a lot of feats that benefit clerics. Extend spell is very good at low levels. It will be the difference between your buffs lasting their full duration between rest shrines and them expiring early. At higher levels it is less neccessary as your buffs last longer. It is still useful for shorter combat effects, like prayer. Most clerics will want extend spell but it isn't neccessary. Empower healing spell is awesome on the other hand. Even without an action point boost it makes you a better healer. You can keep it on all the time and not suffer any decrease in healing efficiency. In fact you become more efficient because you can use your cheap heals much more often. Extra turning is an amazing feat with divine vitality.
Mental toughness and improved mental toughness get good by level 10. 50 spell points from a feat isn't ever bad. Don't take it early over something important though.
There are six enhancements that you should consider for your cleric: Cleric's Wisdom III, Divine Vitality IV, Energy of the Zealot X, Extra Turning III, Greater Devotion III, and Improved Empower Healing III. Of those the two best are divine vitality and greater devotion. Greater devotion makes all of your heals more efficient at no cost and is required for any serious healer. Divine vitality is class defining though. It is simply the strongest enhancement available to any character in the game. With it, all of your uses of turn undead can be used instead to return spell points to an ally. Even without speccing for it too much you can return over 300 spell points to any ally. That's another half of a caster of your choice that you can add to your team. Some clerics bristle at being treated like spell point and hit point dispensers. But you need it if you're playing your character to the max.
The other four enhancements are up to you. Of them cleric's wisdom is the weakest. Extra wisdom never hurts, but it doesn't give even half the spell points of energy of the zealot. Improved empower healing is must have if you use empower healing. It makes all of your heals 25% more efficient. That gives you more effective spell points to heal with, and it gets even better with another divine vitality cleric.
Energy of the zealot and extra turning is a hard choice to make. With energy of the zealot you will heal better yourself. However with extra turning you get more energy for your team from divine vitality. Which one you take depends on your playstyle. If you're always working with another cleric, take extra turning and use it on the other cleric. Otherwise take energy of the zealot. It isn't as much energy, but it's going to the person that can use it best - you.
That should be everything you need to know to make a great cleric in DDO!
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