A DPS Soul as a healing Cleric? - Leveling

[justinram22]

Hello, I am very new to the game and am enjoying it a fair amount so far, going to wait until I do some raids before I make any final judgementa.

I'm leveling pretty much solo and want to be a healer at 50 (lvl 17 at the moment), so I did the auto-assign soul thing and it gave me 3 healing souls (I'm pretty sure they are all healing based). Although I can kill stuff, I almost feel as if it takes too long.

Is there a DPS/Healer hybrid (preferably ranged) that I can check out? I didn't want to go completely DPS as then I felt I would have no idea on what to do healing wise once I hit 50, but might consider it if it really makes leveling much faster.

Also is questing the fastest way to level? PVP seemed great from 10-15, but the exp has seemed to die down quiet a bit. I still haven't tried a dungeon so I'm not sure how much EXP that bring in.

Thanks guys!!

[Archimand]

you can buy dual spec for 30g then 3rd spec for 4p or so

you can dps stuff while soloing and learn to heal in dungeons

15-20 for basic dungeons as you get more tools
i advice for warden untill you higher level

[Kifimbo]

What type of healing are you looking to do?

If your looking for AoE healing, then Go -icar, It does good dmg, and great AoE healing. Its perfect for leveling.

If you are looking at tank healing, then sent or warden would be best i think.

[Acquiesce of Telara]

Justinram22,

Welcome aboard the Rift train. Next stop, sweetness.

Your post is actually a pretty involved set of questions that deserve some explanation alongside the answers, so here goes!

First off, healing builds (especially ones using all 3 healer trees) are crap for questing/leveling outside of dungeons or pvp. Dual/Tri/Quad/etc specs are cheap, so purchase additional spec slots as soon as possible. You'll want to level (when questing) with a good DPS spec at the early levels. A bit later on you can pick up some hybrid dps specs that have a decent amount of built-in healing (research shamicar, duracell for examples).

That brings me to healing types. Essentially there are 3 types of healers in the game:

1. MT/solo healer: The 'generic' healer who generally focuses on healing the tank. In dungeons you'll have what you need to help the group stay up, but your main focus is healing throughput to the tank.
2. Straight Group heals: Sole purpose is to maintain the group's health through spikey aoe damage.
3. Hybrid heals: Single or group. You spec into a DPS tree like Inquisitor, as well as Justicar for the best AoE heal spell in the game. You Dps for a bit, accruing "charges", and then expend those charges for AoE heals when the raid or party require them. Hybrid builds usually contain the suffix -icar, as they're reliant on the Justicar tree.

You could argue there's a 4th heal type, but that's mostly a mage thing (they do their healing through damage to mobs) and it's still primarily AoE heals.

There are variations on each and every heal, but that's the gist of the 3 types of heals. I bring these up because the majority of raiding healers will spend their time as hybrid healers. General composition is 1 MT healer, and 3-4 hybrid or AoE healers. Depending on the encounter, it may vary, when you might need 2 MT heals. It's important you learn to single target heal, but it's just as essential you familiarize yourself with hybrid healing.

I suggest you visit the Rift cleric guides forum for a wealth of information.

Trust Sokanon and Ahov when they post or create threads.

Additionally, the premiere cleric site is Dulfy's


Lastly, as far as leveling itself is concerned, I would quest in between dungeon queues, closing rifts as you find them and joining in on rift invasion events when they occur. You'll get the most bang for your buck and stay pretty damned busy along the way.

Best of luck! And don't hesitate to chime in if you need clarification on anything.

[justinram22]

Woah! Thank you all for the plethora of information!

I didn't realize that multi-specs are so easy to get, so I think I might just level for a bit in a DPS spec and see how it fits me...

I'm not sure what kind of healer I want to be at max level, I guess we will have to see. I've never actually raided with a healer in other games so I figured I'd try it out in Rift.

Thanks again guys, very helpful!

[Acquiesce of Telara]

You're not alone re: healing. I'd never healed a thing in my 6 years of playing WoW, but with Rift really provided me an alternate mindset. With 4 specs to use (before they added a 5th or 6th) it just seemed ridiculous NOT to make use of the versatility. Moreover, I figured it'd be near impossible to raid without being able to heal in at least one spec. It didn't take long before I became an MT healer for my raid guild. The specs are a real benefit to this game. I know main tanks with 4 different tank builds, each built to excel under different conditions.

My Cleric has 1 solo target DPS build, 1 AOE dps build, one farm build, two MT heal builds, and two different AoE hybrid heal builds (with different DPS potentials). In Rift it's not uncommon to maintain a 1 of 6 specs solely for a single boss fight, or a different healing build dependent on the experience/talent of a tank in a 5 man.

Factor in your other interests (PvP, rifts, etc) and you can implement a thousand variations on any one of the specs you usually run with.

Anyway, don't get discouraged by information overload. Happens to most everyone when they hit 50 and have to plan for their future