Priests are one of the most popular Maplestory 2 Class because Priests can do damage, provide their allies with a variety of buffs and the most important part, heal them! Priests are much needed in end game content therefore if you want to be able to find groups easily just play a Priest. This Maplestory 2 Priest Build Guide will teach you all about Priest Skills, Builds, Gearing, Attribute Points and some Priest Tips and Tricks to wrap it up. Big thanks to "Maygi" for providing such useful Priest info!
Check the video below for a brief intro into the Priest character.

Table of contents

1. Gear
2. Attribute Points
3. Macros
4. Skills
5. Builds
6. Tips and Tricks

Other Useful GMS2 Guides

Clicking on a link will open it in a new tab.
Class Tier List
Item Locations Guide
Ultimate Trophy Guide
In Depth Gear Guide
Leveling Guide
Runeblade Build Guide
Knight Build Guide
Wizard Build Guide
Assassin Build Guide
Berserker Build Guide
Heavy Gunner Build Guide
Archer Build Guide
Thief Build Guide
Best PvP Classes Guide
Soul Binder Build Guide

Priest Gear

Gearing your Priest in MS2 is one of the most important processes. Seeing how items always roll random attribute modifiers you'll want to focus on a set of few which work best with a Priest. If you want to heal more, get %Magic Attack and also don't forget to get a couple points of Accuracy if you're missing hits (missing greatly decreases your overall DPS).

Order of Stat importance on Priest gear

Scepter/Codex: Piercing > Holy Damage > Magic Attack > Total Damage > Magic Piercing.
Headgear/Suit/Top/Bottom: Boss Damage > Magic Attack.
Gloves: Boss Damage > Magic Piercing.
Shoes: Boss Damage > Movement Speed.
Cape: Piercing > Holy Damage > Boss Damage > Movement Speed > Critical Damage/Critical Rate.
Belt: Piercing > Boss Damage > Holy Damage > Critical Damage/Critical Rate.
Earring/Amulet: Piercing > Boss Damage > Holy Damage > Critical Damage/Critical Rate.

Stat Weights

To help you determine which secondaries stats to run, here’s a list of stat weight estimations. Note that these values may not be 100% accurate, and may vary for different bosses (e.g. Piercing tests were done on a dummy - bosses may have more or less defense).
How good is Piercing?
I did some controlled DPS tests against a dummy, autoattacking with proc-less gear sets and without the 4% Piercing buff from the Scion of Light. The numbers I got were as follows:
6.6% piercing: 338000 damage
10.6% piercing: 368000 damage (+8.9%)
As such, you can generally assume 1% piercing = 2% damage, ASSUMING that bosses and dummies have the same defense. Raids might have more… in which case, piercing would be even better.
Why is Magic Piercing so low priority?
Piercing affects defense as a whole. Magic piercing affects only magic resistance, which affects damage independently from damage. And no, this isn’t the same case as magic damage vs total damage where a small change in magic damage still equates to an equal % gain in overall output. Magic Piercing is still OK, but it’s by no means a priority.
tl;dr: Monsters don’t have much magic resistance, while they do have a lot of defense.
Attack Speed?
In theory, attacking faster means more damage, right? Well, to put things simply, most of the time, you won’t have the spirit to accommodate a higher attack speed in situations where you have great uptime! However, that doesn’t make it a bad stat - it’s useful, but shouldn’t be prioritized by any means.
Skill Recovery Bonus?
This stat increases the effectiveness of your heals. I don’t think you really need it, though...

Priest Attribute Points

Priests build full Intelligence in Attribute Points because Intelligence affects Magic Attack, therefore increasing your overall damage output. Every 2 points of Intelligence will give your little Priest 1 Magic Attack. Alternatively (and not recommended), you can put your Attribute Points into health to increase your survivability but it is really not necessary since deaths in Maplestory 2 are not permanent.

Priest Macros

There really are not any good Priest macros due to the nature of the Class. Priests are not AFK heal aura bots, rather, Priests must take every situation in consideration and plan their moves accordingly. A lot of Priest spells are situational and macroing them would just not be optimal! You can macro them but you'll be a lot less useful to your team...
What you can do though (and this works with all Classes) is Macro a single skill-- Healing Prayer for example, by doing this you will be able to move in between casts and you will also cast it at a higher rate than you would by just using the standard 1 spell 1 hotkey way.

Priest Skills

Celestial Guardian	Summons a flying pig that increases your magic attack by a lot. Costs 45 spirit.
Celestial Blessings	You can use this skill to heal your allies and boost their defense and attack in a radius around your flying pig (Celestial Guardian). Costs 45 spirit.
Holy Symbol	Creates an area on the floor which grants a buff that increases physical and magic damage, attack speed, and accuracy by a large amount (~20%). Additionally, allies standing on top of the symbol will restore SP every second. A player can only receive this effect once every 3 minutes though, so use it carefully.
Disciple	Increases the duration of Celestial Guardian, Celestial Blessings, and Holy Symbol buffs. This is a really helpful passive, as Celestial Guardian/Celestial Blessings are really expensive buffs to cast, and having them last longer means you have more SP to spend on more useful spells.
Scepter Mastery	Increases your weapon damage.
Healing Mastery	Increases healing from all sources.
Angelic Ray	Deals a large amount of holy damage in a line that also heals allies it hits. Costs 30 spirit.
Smiting Aura	A channeled skill that can be held down forever. It deals some damage and applies a debuff every half a second to up to 3 enemies in front of you. This debuff increases all the damage taken by the enemy, making it a great skill for Raids and World Bosses.
Sanctuary	Creates a cross that heals allies and damages enemies. This is your highest damage skill and helps keep you and your party healthy!
Scourging Wave	This skill does high damage in a cone in front of you. A good substitute for Holy Blast if you are fighting from range.
Healing Prayer	Heals you and your nearby allies. Costs 15 Spirit.
Holy Relic	Drops a relic in front of you that pulses every second, dealing damage and knocking back enemies. This is a great DPS skill.
Shield of the Archon	This is an instant-cast skill (that can be used during other skills) that increases your defense and deals damage to enemies.
Holy Blast	This is your highest DPS skill, and it’s amazing for AoE clear speed as well. Holy Blast is a must in every DPS Priest build. To do maximum damage with Holy Blast the enemy needs to be affected by Celestial Light.
Celestial Light	A basic attack with decent range that applies a damage-over-time effect. Regardless of which build you run, you should always have this debuff active for the extra SP regeneration from your Steadfast Faith passive!
Heavenly Wings	This is your movement skill. It makes you fly forward, healing yourself and your allies while increasing your movement skill. Do note that it takes good strategy when using Heavenly Wings, as it prefers to fly you towards allies.
Steadfast Faith	This is the main Priest passive, it gives you 50% increased SP regeneration if an enemy is debuffed by Celestial Light (doesn't stack).

Priest Builds

Please note that there are many variances of MS2 Priest Builds out there and these are just a few. You can always use the ideas of these Priest Builds and incorporate them into your own.

Support Priest Build

The Support Priest Build focuses on support skills, we are therefore dropping DPS skills in favor to heal/buff ones so we can be more useful to our allies.

Support Priest Skill Priorities

Holy Blast>Sanctuary>Disciple>Scepter Mastery>Angelic Ray.

Playstyle Tips

• Summon your Celestial Guardian whenever the buff wears out.
• Heal with Celestial Blessings instead of Healing Prayer whenever you can because it also gives a damage and resistance buff.
• Sanctuary gives you a nice healing boost.
• If everyone is full health you can use Angelic Ray to do some Dps, or heal from range.
• Celestial Light debuff on bosses is awesome, make sure it's always active.

Build Variations

You can change Holy Blast for max level Scourging Wave if you need to DPS from range, switch a point from Sanctuary/Holy Symbol to max out Disciple or drop Holy Blast to put more points in Angelic Ray or Healing Mastery but beware, you lose a majority of your DPS by doing this.

Leveling (solo) DPS Priest Build

The Leveling Priest Build focuses on getting as much damage as possible (especially for solo leveling) because you can't exactly kill enemies by healing them...

Skill Priorities

Holy Blast>Holy Relic>Sanctuary>Angelic Ray>Celestial Guardian.

Playstyle Tips

• Use Shield of the Archon off cooldown when you're in melee range of your enemies.
• Angelic Ray in between Celestial Light/Holy Blast rotations is awesome because it allows you to recover SP while refreshing Celestial Light.
• As soon as you see monsters or a Boss hit them with Celestial Light for a nice DoT start before you smash them with Holy Blast.

Build Variations

- You can change Holy Blast to level 1 and max out Scourging Wave if you are in need of long-range DPS and that's about it.

AFK Smiting Aura Priest Build

This build is best used for World Boss hunts where a lot of people fight a Boss at the same time. Therefore boosting a majority of them will see a huge increase in overall damage done to the Boss, making it melt faster. Since the playstyle is so simple, this build is great if you wanna watch Netflix and play the game at the same time, be it to level up from 50 to 60 or farm Mesos on World Bosses!

Skill Priorities

Smiting Aura>Holy Symbol>Sanctuary>Disciple>Celestial Blessings>Celestial Guardian.

Playstyle Tips

• Spam Sanctuary whenever you need healing, otherwise continue holding down the Smiting Aura button forever.
• Maintain the Celestial Blessings buff on your party to increase their overall damage and defense.
• Use Holy Symbol whenever you your allies will start to deal the most damage.

There are none, the build is already as much braindead as it can be!

Priest Tips and Tricks

• Jump-cast your skills so you lose no up-time while you're running around the map to heal your screaming allies.
• Healing Prayer won't heal your allies if you jump cast it, Celestial Blessings will work.
• Always have your allies buffed and healed up if you're playing the heal/buff Priest Build, I can't stress this enough. I've often ran dungeons and we had a Priest but he did absolutely nothing! Priests are a support based Class so play them like one!
• Play in parties because you'll have a much easier time and It's quite fun when you can support your team and watch the enemies melt.