give me some advice

[Estie]

The "exciting" part when playing priests is in the midgame, when you feel great because all that utility kicks in but you detect only evil and never know if the Phoenix is heading for you right now or not.

If you want to take down the Tarrasque for whatever reason, use a launcher. Priests gets resist fire/cold as spell, so its very doable and slay animal ammo is plentiful.

[Sky]

you know, i *did * use resist fire&cold at least twice.

if i were to make one change to the priest, it would be to lower considerably the fail rate for annihilation - the mana cost is punishing already. just like MBan for mages, it gives you something to look forward to when you hit CL50.

[Estie]

you know, i *did * use resist fire&cold at least twice.

if i were to make one change to the priest, it would be to lower considerably the fail rate for annihilation - the mana cost is punishing already. just like MBan for mages, it gives you something to look forward to when you hit CL50.

Priest clairvoyance spell used to be the thing to look forward to - it worked like !enlightenment. Just like mages didnt have to carry banishment scrolls, so priests could do without those potions. Sadly, it got nerfed into fuzziness and priests never got anything back - "Healing is enough".

I dont think annihilation should become the best damage spell in the game - that privilege clearly belongs to the mage. In fact, I like the progression melee - orb - back to melee, the more phases a class gets during their journey the better.

You were a bit unlucky in your run to only get 300ish melee damage, even without extra attacks you can normally get to 400 vs evil with a decent weapon and more is entirely possible.

[Sky]

considering how much it costs, if you were to lower the cast fail rate to 10% (with CL50 and WIS ***) it would not really do much more damage than Orb. And annihilation only hits live targets.

It in no way compares to the mage. Mage has chaos strike (hurts everything), MM (hits *everything*, including death molds), acid bolt(huge damage for minimal mana), ice storm (stun), Rift (blinks enemies), a better banish, before we even go look at Mana Strike.

[Pete Mack]

@sky--
When you use +attacks weapons, you'll often want a damage ring to help up the melee. (Especially with standard artifacts where +attacks artifacts do significantly less damage per blow than the top melee artifacts) If you'd used one with your priest, you'd conservatively have been doing 440 dam/round. Consider carrying !Hero and !Berserk as well when you go up against the bosses. Priests have the same poor melee skills that Rangers get, and without the heavy spell support (though still not as bad as Mages.)