Lineage II/Shillien Elder

Shillien Elders (SE) are generally seen as healers and are considered the best wizard buffers. They can use robes and light armor and any weapon. They have Dyrad Root, Recharge and Greater Group Heal as well as all standard buffs and two exclusive (and very good) buffs.

The first one is Vampiric Rage which gives the player healing from the melee damage they deal; this spell is of course especially interesting for classes which deal a lot of melee damage, but have not many hitpoints and relatively bad defense (for example, Tyrant or Treasure Hunter). In any case, this buff saves mana otherwise needed for healing and makes up for the lack of the Greater Battle Heal of the Bishop.

A likewise effect to Vampiric Rage is available for level 74 Bladedancer and level 44 Warcryer; still the SE gets this buff much ealier (level 30) and masters it first (level 72) (Warcryer maxes at 74).

The second buff is Empower. This spell causes nukers (Sorcerer, Spellsinger, Spellhowler) to make more damage in their offensive spells. It can be combined with the prophets Berserk and Acumen as well as the corresponding Bladedancers dances to max the damage of nuker spells. I have no idea if the corresponding Warcryer buff stacks or replaces.

Key Skills
Format: Spell Name (Max Skilllevel) - Description (Level of Update+Number of Updates [; Namechange of skill on higher levels])

Buffs

 * Concentration (6) – Decreases chance that the magic will be canceled due to damage. (20/30/44/52/60/68; 3+: Greater Concentration)
 * Death Whisper (3) – Increases damage on critical hit (40/48/56)
 * Empower (3) - Increases m.atk. (25/44/52)
 * Focus (3) – Increases critical rates (25/44/52)
 * Greater Concentration: See Concentration
 * Guidance (3) – Increases accuracy (40/48/56)
 * Kiss of Eva (2) - Increases lungs capacity (20/52)
 * Mental Shield (4) - Increases defense against mental attack such as dryad root (25/40/48/56; 3+: Mental Aegis)
 * Mental Aegis: See Mental Shield
 * Might (3) – Increases P. atk. (7/20/40)
 * Resist Wind (2) – Resistance to wind attacks (35/40)
 * Shield (3) – Increases P. def. (7/25/44)
 * Vampiric Rage (4) - Converts part of the damage dealt into healing for the character (30/44/58/72)
 * Wild Magic (2) - Increases chance for critical magic, very useless buff (62/70)
 * Wind Walk (2) - Increases moving speed (20/30)

Other Spells

 * Battle Heal (15) - Fast healing on target (14+3/20+3/25+3/30+3/35+3)
 * Cure Poison (3) - Remove poison effect (7/35/58)
 * Dryad Root (33) - Disable movement of target (25+3/30+3/35+3/40+3/44+3/48+3/52+3/56+2/58/60/62/64/66/68/70/72/74)
 * Greater Group Heal (29) - Improved version of Group Heal (48+3/52+3/56+3/58+3/60+3/62+2/64+2/66+2/68+2/70+2/72+2/74+2)
 * Greater Heal (29) - Improved version of Heal (48+3/52+3/56+3/58+3/60+3/62+2/64+2/66+2/68+2/70+2/72+2/74+2)
 * Purify (3) - Removes bleed and poison (44/52/62)
 * Recharge (32) - Give mp to target (30+2/35+2/40+2/44+2/48+2/52+2/56+2/58+2/60+2/62+2/64+2/66+2/68+2/70+2/72+2/74+2)
 * Resurrection (2) - Raise target from the dead (20/30)
 * Wind Shackle (19) - Lower atk.speed of target (14/20/25/30/35/40/44/48/52/56/58/60/62/64/66/68/70/72/74)

Lowlevel/Replaced Spells

 * Disrupt Undead (8) - Attack on undead (20+2/25+2/30+2/35+2)
 * Group Heal (15) - Healing the whole party (14+3/20+3/25+3/30+3/35+3)
 * Heal (18) - Healing on target (7+3/14+3/20+3/25+3/30+3/35+3)
 * Sleep (9) - Sleep target (25+3/30+3/35+3)

Equipment
Healers can basically run around in underwear, they don't really need good armor and weapons, a no-grade devotion set would already be very good. But one might not always get a group in which one can act as pure healer and buffer, and of course people want to equip their characters optimally.

Being a darkelf, a SE needs spellcasting speed more than anything else. Second to that, he wants as much max mp as he can get, third to that, as much mp regen as he can get. Getting good pdef wouldn't hurt either, while patk and matk loose more and more their importance with higher levels.

On d-grade, there isn't really anything better than the no-grade devotion set, especially not for slowcasting darkelf mystics. On c-grade, the Karmian Robe Set can be recommented for its better pdef and more max mp. On b-grade the light Blue Wolf armor is a good choice, as is the Avadon robe. On a-grade, Tallum Robe is maybe best, with Dark Crystal at least very close second for its practial properties and Majestic thanks to its high mana and its mana regeneration not bad at all either.

Weapons depend of course very much upon personal preferences. On lower levels, matk still matters, as it allows leveling with Disrupt Undead. On higher levels, SEs often still use wizard weapons, but for their SAs (Mana Up, UpDown, Acumen) and not for their matk. Alternatively, one can use some other weapon (dual swords are popular) and join the fight.

The optimal dyes for a SE are very obvious. A SE will want to sacrifice Men for Wis to speed up the very slow spellcasting. It doesnt help if you can heal much if the person in question is already dead. Also, lowering the Strength by 8 to increase both Dex and Con by 4 will help a lot with more hitpoints, faster running, better evasion etc. This is well worth the lesser damage the SE is dealing.

SEs need the following spellbooks: Level 40: Death Whisper, Guidance; Level 44: Purify; Level 48: Greater Group Heal, Greater Heal; Level 62: Wild Magic.

Playstyle
SEs are harder to solo as Prophets, as they can't buff themselves as well, and harder to solo as Bishops, as those at least get an ambundance of good spells against undead, and are still worse than Elven Elders, who also get at least a specialized damage spell against undead that is still getting updated. Therefore SEs are even more dependend upon getting a party as the other clerical classes. Up to about level 55, they might however still manage to kill undead with their Disrupt Undead spell, but its not exactly a fast or efficient way to level.

The best party for a SE is a combo with Prophet and a Bladedancer and a couple of melee high damage dealers and/or nukers. Together with the Prophet, a SE can buff such a party faster (if the prophet has the knowledge which spells the SE already has, which many don't have) and to the maximum possible effectivity level (except for the buffs Agility and Resist Shock, which are exclusive to Elven Elders).

On higher levels, the SE becomes the dreampartner of nukers, because the high level spells are very mana expensive and the SE can give them lots of Mana; for one point spend by the Shillien the nuker gets four points back into his mana pool, if the nuker has the skill for it.

For raids, SEs are not as good as a Bishops, as they can't heal as fast as the later, while raid bosses usually deal huge amounts of damage that can't be healed up just with Vampiric Rage. But in dungeons, SEs shine, especially if the warriors of the group use polearm weapons. With the Vampiric Rage, such a warrior can fight a large group of opponents at the same time with the pole, and still need no (or much less) healing.

Buffing
It is obvious that the SE cannot buff a warrior to a degree that could be in any way compared to a Prophet. For that he lacks at very least Haste, if not also Berserk. The Vampiric Rage works nicely, but it works far better if the warrior can also get Haste from a Prophet and best if a Bladedancer also adds his Fury Dance. While nukers have far less reason to complain, they will still miss Acumen and the additional Boost from Berserk that a Prophet can add to the SEs Empower.

The same situation appears with a Warcryer, who is again a specialized (and good) buffer class. Maybe its even worse, because Warcryer get ALL the buffs a SE gets except the really not that important Resist Wind and Wild Magic, and also gets Agility and Haste (in short, the Warcryer gets all good buffs in the game except the Prophets Berserk).

Compared to the Elven Elder the SE looks however in the advantage, because he has the better exclusive buffs. Tanks might disagree with that point of view, because they can't deal that much damage and Agility might be much more preferable to them, plus protection from stun attacks of course always nice to have, too. Wizards however will prefer a SE over an Elven Elder any day, because the SE can give them not only Mana (just like the Elven Elder), but also they can make their spells stronger with Empower.

As the high value of the SE depends so much on a strong but single buff, the Bladedancer actually makes them quite uninteresting for many very highlevel parties. The Bladedancer Dance of Vampire doesn't stack with the SE's Vampiric Rage and is in any case good enough, if not as good as the SEs buff, and the Bladedancer can in any case add much more to the offensive fighting power of the group than the SE, plus people want to have a Bladedancer in their groups anyway. Thus, the SE has become completely superflous for these constellations and can be replaced by a Bishop.

Healing
The high Int value of darkelven mystics is an advantage for their wizards, but a problem for the SE. Clerics are forbidden to change their Int with Dyes, thus the SE has always somewhat worse values than the Bishop (3 points difference) and much worse as the Elven Elder (7 points difference).

The advantage of the SE compared to the Elven Elder is that he has Greater Group Heal. In situations where everybody is attacked, the SE is therefore the much better choice.

The advantage of SE compared to both other healers is his special buff Vampiric Rage. If the party consists mostly of tanks, they will prefer the Bishop any day as healer, but damage dealers will want to get the SE.

In situations which require a lot of healing, the SE will have trouble to keep up with the other healers, as the Elven Elder can heal somewhat faster and the Bishop can heal many times faster, and both have initially more Men than the SE, so they have more MP and more MP regeneration, too.

Classchange Quest
(to be added)

Bugs
The "Greater Heal" spellbook description states that only Shillien Elders get this spell. This is wrong, Bishops and Elven Elders get that spell as well.

If you are creating a macro which should include the Mental Shield spell, and you have stage 3 or above (then called Mental Aegis) and simply drop the icon into the desired command line of the macro, the program insers "/useskill Mental Aegis". You have to change it to "/useskill Mental Shield" to make it work.