Priest

Priests are a stalwart and a mandatory component in any fully fledged party composition. Whether it is to kill monsters or PvP, a group relies entirely on a priest's heals and other various buffs (and debuffs) to properly clear most of the game content.

Role
If there is one class in Knight Online that you could consider a core part of any group composition, that would be the Priest class.

The priest class role is to keep their party alive through the use of heals and buff, while weakening their enemies with multiple debuffs that affect their combat performance. Some other classes, like Warriors, rely solely on the Priest's support to contribute in a meaningful way in any game mode.

A priest can assume a more offense related role with the right configuration, but outside PvE, it's mostly seen as a gimmick.

Attributes
A priest heals, buffs, debuffs. But you can only specialize in two of the three.

The heal skill tree is a must have. With it, you can heal your entire party to full with a single press of a button, while also providing solid restoratives abilities. They can also create healing potions by interacting with an NPC in their main towns respectively.

The buff (Aura) skill tree has its main purpose in increasing your party members base stats, such as their health, defense and resistances. However, its most defining ability is Bless of God. A party-wide debuff removal skill with no cooldown that is invaluable in PvP, and possibly one of the strongest abilities in the game.

Lastly, the debuff (Spirit) skill tree, provides a vast repertoire of curses and debuffs, in single target and aoe formats, that are mostly used in PvP to vastly increase your team's killing potential. From defense reduction to severe HP pool limiters, a debuffer is a key component in high level PvP, where debuffs are a necessity in order to land kills at all. Additionally, debuffers are also capable of reviving allies and recovering EXP lost on death.

Priest's main attributes are Intelligence and Strength (required to wear equipment) while Health is for much needed survivability.

Priests will gain attack power from either Intelligence or Strength, depending on what kind of weapon they equip (INT for 1h, STR for 2h).

Strategy
In PvE, a priest has to keep buffs up every 10 minutes and prevent teammates from dying to the AI.

In PvP, a priest has to similarly keep their teammates alive, all while keeping himself alive. This can be tough to do, as multiple enemies can negate your casts for heals or debuffs. Because of this, it is in your party members best interest to protect you back in turn.

Knowing how to properly distribute time between debuffs, curing ailments and healing teammates will be what separates a good priest from a mediocre one. Healing takes priority, as debuffed enemies won't be killed if your attackers are dead.

Measuring cooldowns, anticipating enemy incoming debuffs and damage spikes and properly positioning oneself is what will separate a great priest from a good one. Bear in mind that heal casts sit at around 2.5~ seconds for them to go off.

Skills
See a full list of Priest skills here.

Master Quest
When level 60 is available, a Priest can aspire to become either a Paladin (El Morad) or a Shadow Knight (Karus), gaining access to their most important and defining abilities at level 70.

See a full list of requirements for a priest master quest here.

Equipment
Priests are unique in what they can equip. While the most common setup involves a priest mace and a shield, priests also get the option to wield single handed swords, dual wield, or to carry a two handed club or sword.

That's not to say they can't wear spears or axes if they have the stats for it, however there's a massive attack power penalty attached to these two, whether it is in their single or two handed variations.

Their armor has the 2nd highest amount of defense just below warrior.

Priest items are around everywhere, and their price isn't too bad in general.

Leveling
Support priests can't level up by themselves as they have possess very limited offensive capabilities. They rely on a party to inflict damage.

There is a variation, however, aptly named Battle Priest (BP for short). Their damage is lower than a warrior, but they're far more versatile, allowing them to solo a lot of content quite effectively in a profitable manner as well (saving money for potions while not requiring an attack power bonus). As previously stated, this variation does not work in PvP, where a warrior is desired in its place under any circumstance.

Come end game leveling, their role remains intact. Heal, buff and debuff, this time on Genie mode.

Gallery
TBA

Trivia

 * Priests used to gain attack power solely from Strength. This was changed around 2012 or so, so that 1H weapons gained attributes from Intelligence instead. This change however, was poorly planned as many of the priest skills and items still grant Strength, a stat that now is completely wasted on 1H weapon wielders.
 * The priest item available in sundries at level 45 is called Prayer of God's Power. A buff that adds a whooping 50% bonus attack power to a priest for almost free.
 * In older versions, the Priest class was the easiest one to acquire master quests components for. That was turned on its head for the current version of this game, where Priest, holding the most amount of level 70 and up abilities, now requires the most amount of master quest components by a long shot.
 * Dual Wielding weapons does not grant additional attack power. Only the stats on the off-hand weapon will be reflected in your character stats.
 * Mages and priests are the only classes where intelligence stat points give additional mana points and 10 of each elemental resistance for 20 character stat points of intelligence.
 * The cursed Krowaz shield called Gab's (in either its Adamant or Blessing version) has a unique interaction with priests in which in exchange for the immunity effect provided by the shield, they cannot use single target abilities or items (like potions), however, they can continue using party-wide heals or AoE effects. It is not known if this is intended or an oversight by the developers.
 * The heal skill tree, while mandatory, it's also the least used when it comes to their highest leveled abilities! It peaks at level 60 with the party-wide 10K heal, severely dropping thereafter mostly because of their extremely subpar level 70 and 80 abilities, that simply cannot compete with the Aura and Spirit alternatives.