Tera Priest (Impressions)

I decided to try the Priest as my main in Tera. This is not my normal choice—as this blog suggests, I prefer mage/wizards (the Sorcerer seems to be the Tera equivalent for the play style). I chose priest mostly because as a Priest I’d have an easier time getting into instances and seeing other content, which is especially important if I’m doing this just by myself. And I’ve gotten used to healing from my time in The Old Republic, so why not give it a shot?

At first you don’t really get a good feeling for the mechanics at first. This is very true of most MMOs, but it is especially true of a game like Tera which relies on skill chaining ability sets to distinguish the classes from one another. I didn’t really start getting a ‘feel’ for the class until around level 16 or so, and I suspect that this is true for all classes in Tera (and why the prologue provided starts at 20).

As a solo class, Priest is slow and steady with no downtime but taking some time to kill stuff. They are adequate solo, and effective but I’m sure other classes are better (or at least faster).

(And you’ll have to forgive me in advance. This is an impression post, and I do not remember the names of the abilities I’m describing here).

Priests have two main ranged nukes—a low-damage bolt with no cool down; and a higher damage bolt that you can fire in groups of 3 before hitting short  cool down. Both of these bolts chain into other abilities. Some of these are auto created for you, while others you get to set up and customize. This is one of the reasons why Tera’s combat is so interesting, and figuring out how to do this takes some real time and experimentation. 

For example, my main low-damage nuke chains into a short range cone-based AOE (useful for close mobs), which in turns chains into a staff-strike which does considerable damage to any enemy directly in front. The triple-strike bolt also chains directly into staff strike, so if you time it right you can hit them with that, and then immediately fire off a hit with the staff for high damage. Priests also get a short range ball of lightning that does considerable damage—and chains directly into the staff strike. That last example is a particularly heavy hitting damage, even though it’s short range.

As for moving and positioning the Priest has two key abilities:  a jump back, and a jump back-with-fire which does the same thing, but also does a little damage to everything close by. But you often have to do a lot of running, and these abilities are more useful for getting out of the way instead of kiting. This may change at higher levels, but I doubt it. Priests, from what I’ve read, are one of the least mobile classes in the game.

Priests have two abilities that give them a considerable amount of sustainability. They have a short-cast self-heal that heals for a considerable amount of damage (about 25% of the character’s health at this level), and a channeled mana regen that can be used in combat, and while moving, which can restore up to 800 mana in one channel. Both of these abilities mean that Priests can heal themselves, and keep doing so for an effectively indefinite amount of time. If a priest or someone in the group falls, it is normally due to the priest either being out of position, or simply overwhelmed by the amount of damage being thrown around.

As for healing the experience is a bit different than in other MMOs. Since you don’t really target people, healing is most definitely NOT whack-a-mole. Instead Priests heal primarily through lock-on abilities (which have to be targeted), and AOE abilities which affect an area of the ground (and this changes based on the ability in question).

Lock on heals are interesting in that when you use them you target them. You hit the ability, then have to lock on to them by aiming at them, and then you trigger the ability again to cast it. Priests have a lock-on heal that affects 2 targets (and up to 3 with a glyph). It’s a cool mechanic, actually, and it’s affected by line-of-sight which is frustrating, but again speaks to the fact that positioning is critical.

AOE heals vary a bit more (and I’ve not seen all of them by any means). Priests get a potent HOT with a relatively short targeting circle; and a much smaller HOT with a much larger radius. They also have a cleansing AOE, which cleanses friendlies within the range of the circle. This creates a different healing play style, since healing involves using the right heals, and then targeting them in the right location. It’s even more important since some of these abilities have fixed ranges/areas, so targeting them involves moving into the right position to cast.  

Other heals show up later, including a group shield and various hot-like effects. But the basics seem very straight forward, and they do a good job of showing just how Tera plays different than most MMOs. And while the classes damage options are relatively limited, they are effective enough and the class doesn’t lag far behind when it comes to soloing performance—if it lags at all. At this point, I’m not sure that it does.

At this point I’ve only scratched the surface of the class, and of Tera itself. Priest is fun with a variety of options on how to play. Its only downside is its lack of options when it comes to DPS—the abilities it has are fine, it just doesn’t have a LOT of them (at least through level 20 or so). If anything, I’ve heard people say that leveling Priest is easy-mode, which may or may not be true.

Either way I’m going to stick with the class until at least 30 before moving on to try some other things for a bit. As I go I may continue to post my impressions of the whole thing and if I do I’ll continue to post them here.  I’m definitely wanting to spend more time with Sorcerer, and Lancer, both of them look like fun, useful classes that will be worth checking out.