Being a healing Cleric in Rift: Planes of Telara is a selfless job. In Warfronts, you’re blamed for not being able to keep every single person alive when you’re the only healer; when a group wipes because the DPS pulled three extra groups with a bad alt tab, that’s also clearly you’re fault…right? Well, with this guide I’m here to help you be a little better at your job and to do as much as you can to prevent wipes and deaths from ever happening.

This guide will focus on three different specs, one for Experts, one for Raiding, and one for Warfronts, since I believe that each situation is best suited with a different spec.

Gear: Your priority should be: Spell Power -> Spell Crit -> Wisdom -> Endurance -> Intellect

Planar Focuses: (Not counting epic drops, because this isn’t a gear guide, but simply a guide) One greater should be the Faesource that has a chance on spell cast to heal over x seconds, and your second greater should be chance on cast to add x spell power, for lessers follow the gear priority list.

Expert Healing Spec: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00jGe.x0Ezbstco.xxkEMxdoz

This is, in my opinion, the best spec you can use in an expert for both t1 and t2. This spec gives you a large amount of cool downs for those Oh #*#$ moments, decent aoe healing, and amazing tank heals. Make sure to cast surging flames on the tank and as long as they’re topped off (which is very easy with this spec) you can easily cast aoe heals for 1500+ for only 40 mana. You have Divine Call + Flash Over for an instant 1800+ AoE heal or Flash Over + Touch the Light + Healing Invocation for an instant 5k heal on your tank, Healer’s Covenant for massive burst damage or pulling multiple trash groups, Healer’s Haste + Serendipity for .5 second 2500+ (non crit) heals for just getting everyone up, and your healing breath can heal 3 targets at once. A silence for helping pull in caster mobs during trash pulls and an in combat res (abet on a 10 minute cooldown) round out this spec’s complete domination of experts.

Rotation: Ward of the Ancestors before pull (and as soon as it’s off cooldown – I fully understand it doesn’t scale with spell power yet, but trust me it is beyond worth the GCD to cast), Healing Invocation, Healing Spray, 2x Restorative Flames, repeat from top. The reason for this is that by stacking your two big healing spells you have a nice HoT from Healing Invocation and Healing Spray then you get the bonus shield from Restorative Flames and it just works out very nice.

Raid Healing Spec:  http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00eja.EEdtqtRqz.x0Vx

This is a heavy AoE healing spec but still able to keep over 1000 HPS in HoTs active on 2 tanks or 700+ HPS on 3 tanks. With a multitude of AoE healing spells available to you, you will easily be topping parsing meters and keeping the raid alive almost by yourself. Don’t summon your pet during trash, summon on the countdown your tank gives before pulling a boss, since it’s only level 27 it can draw aggro and start an encounter early, however, the extra raid healing it throws out is a very nice set it and forget it 0 point ability.

Rotation: Ripple, Healing Stream x3, Healing Spray, Healing Stream (cast this on as many people as you want to maintain a 4 stack, as long as you cast it once before the stacks fall it will stay at 4 stacks forever), Healing Flood and Healing Cataract depending on how much AoE damage is being thrown out, if more than 3 people are below 50% cast your 2 minute cooldown Healing Showers followed by rest of your AoE healing spells, if more than 5 people are below 60% HP then cast downpour to heal everyone up to full very quickly.

Warfront Healing Spec: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00Gxj.EgkEItdqz.EV

This spec is for lower ranks, if there is a demand I’ll post my rank 6 spec, but at the moment I’d like to keep it a semi secret, they don’t call me The Legendary <Secret Name> for nothing. This spec is the best I’ve found to keep up a single target under incredibly heavy burst. It does lack any true AoE healing, but with a multitude of shields, instant cast healing spells, and cooldowns, you can solo heal Black Garden with rather good success.

Rotation: Since it’s PvP there is no set rotation, however, there are some little tips and tricks. Always cast your two shields when the 5 second countdown starts so that the cool down will be just about up by the time you engage the enemy. If an ally is being focused by several enemies at once cast Spiritual Conflagration to top them off very quickly, if they’re still under focus use Searing Transfusion and Rite of The Ancestors then a blessing or two if necessary, it’s very, VERY hard for enemies to kill someone if you’re willing to spend a lot of cool downs to keep them alive. If you see a saboteur stacking charges on someone you can either single target dispel or Sterilize to severely minimize the damage they can do.

That’s all for my basic guide to being the ultimate healing Cleric for Rift, if you have any specific questions feel free to comment and I’ll answer asap. Good luck and keep pwning the newbs.