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The Priest is the healing class in Runes of Magic. Almost every Priest will find themselves in a primary healing role and quite often as a support healer as well.  While you cannot fill both roles at the same time very rarely will you be asked to do anything but heal. Even after level 10 when you pick up your dual class specialization your primary job seems to be heal, heal, and then heal some more and oh yeah… bring your friends back to life when they cannot seem to stay alive.

Crunching the Numbers

All Priests start out with the same set up stat wise.  As with all classes in Runes of Magic when you gain levels your base stats grow at the same rate as every other Priest out there.  The only way to truly dive into your character and make her your own is through the use of gear, weapons, runes and the boost you will get from your secondary class after level 10. The beginning stats and equipment skills for a Priest are:

Starting Attributes

• Strength: 7
• Dexterity: 10
• Constitution: 10
• Intelligence: 13
• Wisdom: 14

Starting Equipment Skills

• Wand
• Mace
• 2H Staff
• Robes
• Cloth
• Shield

Venturing Out Into the Unknown

Runes of Magic does a solid job of introducing you into the land of Taborea without just assuming you know what you are doing.  They set you up first with a very quick and easy to follow Tutorial that introduces you to the basics of movement and fighting in game.  So even if this is your first MMO game ever or your 100^th toon you have created over countless games the tutorial is worth doing for two reasons.  One, It is amazingly quick.  You get dropped in a little starter area that you have to run to some flags, introduce yourself to an NPC (non playable character) and kill a “boss” all of which can be done in max time of about 5 minutes and leads you to reason two to do the tutorial.  You get yourself a little bag of goodies for your troubles that help a bit, a mount that lasts one day and a +20% to all attributes which will help you get to level 10 in about 4-5 hours of solid game play. 

Once the tutorial is completed you are back at the very same place you loaded into the game at.  As is typical of most MMO’s of this generation you are set out on a quest chain that kind of gives you the lay of the land and as an added bonus in Runes of Magic if this is your very first MMO the introductory quest line has little tips that explain everything out even further than the normal go here and do this description of the quest at hand. 

Working through a quest chain to learn the ropes is not a new concept but the flow in Runes of Magic is good and you are opened up to more options in quick fashion. For the Priest being a primarily healing class I would recommend more travel than with another class to make sure the enemies you are going up against are not more than one level above you to avoid unnecessary deaths.  Unless of course you like a challenge.

Start saying your prayers… 

The Priest being basically the best healing class in game two things will become apparent very quickly.  One, you can’t do much damage.  In fact up through level 10 you have three damage dealing spells and one spell that helps keep you safe.   Everything else in your arsenal is designed to heal and resurrect your fellow players and of course yourself.  Two, even if you pick a damage dealing class, example would be a mage, as your secondary class after level 10 you will still more than likely be called on to heal in almost every single scenario.  

Priests commune with Narfas, the god of spring water, to cast their healing spells. Also Priests have a quirk in that they can only cast water based damage spells.  Up through level 10 this is a non issue however I could see how this could cause issues as you progress through to end game and some mobs are assigned the water element and thus making them immune to your spells.  Up through level 10 there didn’t seem to be any mobs that couldn’t be taken for the quests at hand.

As you can see the central and really the only theme you will see following a Priest around is heals.  There is at this time not a lot much more for this class to do. So by choosing the Priest know you will not be doing much other than healing but also know that you will rarely be alone in your adventures for even at a low level the requests were coming in to heal on a consistent basis.