Table of contents

Introduction

This guide is intended to be a general overview of Harmonic Saint’s gear progression. Comments and questions can be sent to sakanagi on discord. Hyperlinks will generally send to mabibase’s auction house search for price checking. If no result shows, that means there’s none on auction. Refer to mabi wiki or just basic mabibase search if you want item info instead. Click on Table of Contents on the left for easier navigation. Last updated: 1/6/2026

Harmonic Saint Pros:

• Required for endgame content (Bri-Lech).
• Easy to learn (tanky, self heals, self shielding, can be useful by being heal bot).
• Low investment floor (cheap initial gearing to be “useful”).
• Highest damage contribution to the party (Bard buff + Pall debuff).
• Cheaper than DPS arcanas to min-max.
• Strong arcana for carrying struggle parties so they can braindead dps.

• Also allows for comfier clears for strong parties. Can compensate for lazier gameplay by DPSes.

• High skill expression/APM potential

• Reaction time to healing/buffing party members in realtime combat, balanced with personal DPSing, and maintaining debuffs/buffs.

Harmonic Saint Cons:

• Cost of gearing reliant on gacha

• More details in the next section.

• Initial cost of bard gear is expensive to early-mid endgamers.

• This is offset by the fact that once you finish Bard gear, any extra gear is not really needed/usually cheaper. In contrast, DPS Arcana gearing gets more and more expensive at late-endgame.

• Low personal DPS

• Soloing content is dependent on non-arcana talent gear which can be expensive.

• Usually only 1 saint needed per party
• The better the party is, the less need for Saint.

• This is especially apparent when content gets powercrept (Techs, Croms, and recently Glenn all became much easier to where more DPS can be comfier than bringing Saints).

• Gearing options for healing are limited (no celtic/revenant/perseus tier heal gear).
• Semi-Racist arcana

• Human - best for general sainting (permanent DK trans for tanking/higher stats)
• Elf - best for endgame sainting with min-max bow gear (high move speed, ladeca)
• Giant - worst saint (no support shot)

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Gearing priority order:

1. Heal gear (cheap options) / Debuff gear / Gear for gear score (content entry barrier)
2. Bard gear (to 60-70% bfo/viv/march song)
3. Astrology cards (~level 20+)
4. Heal gear (expensive options)
5. Bard gear (higher than 70% buff, expensive min-maxing)
6. Astrology cards (~level 28+)
7. Personal DPS gear (only if you stay in saint for all content)
8. Comfy/extra gear (ie. chainblade erg 50S for more anchor rushes)

Note:

More than DPS arcanas, Saint gear is heavily reliant on gacha items. So, it is recommended to prioritize things in current gacha rotation or that recently came out in gacha because this is when prices are cheapest. For bard, the best-in-slot (BIS) enchants, pets, and gear are gacha. For healing, BIS 2nd title and enchant also are gacha. For example, Cucullati enchant was an ok (still kinda scam) purchase when it dropped (~350-400m), but as the prices steadily climbed to 1 bil, it is clearly not worth the investment.

In the endgame, a good baseline would be to have 1, 2, and 3 completed or nearly completed. If you are running as a secondary saint with a primary saint that has big bard buffs, you can get away with not having bard gear and that drastically reduces the amount of gearing you need.

With New Rise, content now has gear score entry limits. You can bypass these restrictions by borrowing tradeable gear from friends, but the best item to work towards to allow entry to endgame content is the Nightbringer Savior. If you have a DPS set that allows you to enter endgame content without the Nightbringer Savior, I would just use a tikka healing wand until your bard gear is decent.

Heal gear  - Listed in order of priority

Prioritize cheaper upgrades first and only make more expensive upgrades after completing cheap-intermediate bard gear unless you desperately need the Nightbringer Savior (NB heal wand) to enable passing gear score restrictions. Healing gear is cheap to obtain and is the reason why Saint is a “cheap” arcana. You really only need a good heal wand to start being useful to the party. Unlike other talents, healing is not very enchant-reliant (extremely low scaling with magic attack), so it is recommended to just use cheap enchants that give +Max MP or +Max HP such as “Magical” or “Supernatural”. A more comprehensive list can be found on the wiki for prefixes and suffixes.

Also, since healing gear doesn’t require good enchants, it’s usually better to keep your heal set non-personalized so you can trade it around to friends or sell it easier. Besides the heal reforges on Body/Accessory and the cast speed reforge on wand, you don’t need any other reforges. Nice to have reforges include party healing, MP or HP, awakening of light cd, wings of eclipse cd, protection, and auto defense.

1. Tikka Wood Healing Wand (cheap)

1. Casting speed reforge is extremely important. It makes a big difference in how fast you heal. At 20/20, it gives 60% faster casting. 15/20 reforges can be good enough, do not overpay (more than 50-60m) for a heal wand.
2. Party healing reforge is nice to have, but not necessary. Can be on Echostone if you do not need a music-related echostone.
3. For enchants on wand and all armor, prioritize +MP / +HP enchants.

Magical / Wizard or Supernatural are what I recommend. Sandglass enchant is also nice on gloves.

2. Healing Enhancement Set Effect

1. This will significantly boost your [Healing] and [Hands of Restoration] skills, but not [Party Heal] nor [Echoes of Salvation]. Getting +10 of a set effect grants you the bonus.

1. Trinity Set/Refined Northern Lights (cheap) can be paired with +1 healing effect scrolls to get you the bonus. I highly recommend starting with this set for armor and upgrading to tankier armor only after bard upgrades. You can attain Refined Northern Lights from Alby Shineseeker. Try to get a set that has as high of heal bonus as possible (+5).
2. Royal Society Shoes (expensive) come with +10 Healing effect and increase zone of renewal size (see image below), but they are overrated since zone of renewal is such a slow heal and bosses are often mobile.

1. Note: If you use zone of renewal (ZoR), make sure you use technique swapping to cancel the long animation of zone of renewal. To do this, have two separate tech pages, one with Zone of Renewal and one without. As soon as you cast ZoR, swap to the tech page without ZoR and the animation will be canceled.
   

3. Heal titles / Enchant

Unlike the Heal enhancement set effect, heal titles and enchant will boost the effectiveness of party heal in addition to heal and all harmonic saint healing skills. As such, they will provide big upgrades to your saint capabilities. However, I do not think the 2nd title and enchant are worth the high cost outside of gacha rotation since using the master of party healing title should be enough for most use cases. If the 2nd title and enchant are in gacha rotation and at a price you can afford, then feel free to pick them up as they are decent upgrades.

2. Main title - Master of Party Healing (obtained for free)
3. 2nd title (Expensive) - List can be found here.

1. Blaanid can be obtained through Erinn Spirit, but this is very RNG heavy and you can spend upwards of 500m+ with bad luck. Special Cotton Candy is gacha and costs ~100-200m when on rotation.
2. With wisdom can be obtained easily by Dan 1 of all magic skills. I think this should boost Master of Party Healing effectiveness by 20% and is a free, albeit much weaker alternative to gacha title.

4. Cucullati Enchant

1. It is extremely expensive, even when it is in gacha rotation. I would prioritize this very low unless you are rich. Still, it does provide a good upgrade to your heals (at a high price).

4. Heal Reforges (cheap)

1. Level 1 Healing - HP Recovery reforge gives highest boost (25 points to heal). You can buy these for cheap (~2m) off auction house or spam free reforges to get it. They add a significant amount to your healing + hands of restoration. Additional levels only add 1 extra point, not necessary to go past level 1 for accessory or past level 15 for body.
   

5. Catsidhe pets (cheap-expensive / gacha)

1. Having a catsidhe + catsidhe (Friend Summon hotkeyed) will drop 20 paws that each heal 10% HP/MP your party can pick up. Mass spamming these pets to heal your party is very effective, especially in content where potion cooldown exists.
   

6. Shield / Armor (cheap, but prioritize bard gear before worrying about this)

1. Heal scales only 0.015 per MA and Party Heal scales only 0.02 per MA, so shield offhand is better than spellbook. Nightbringer Vanguard > Perseus Vigilant Shield > Holy Eagle Mask > Shield with auto defense chance > Any Shield.

1. Upgrade shields with melee auto-defense as this is the most common form of attack by enemies.
   

2. Tankiness allows you to make greedy plays, so tanky gear is generally better. For example, in Glenn VHM, being tanky allows you to spam party heal more, debuff, or channel Unified Might and tank lasers, boosting party dps by 15% the whole time.

1. Any Heavy Armor/Refined Northern Lights Set (cheap)

1. Saints usually stay in mana shield and overheal shield. Anything with chance of auto defense helps keep the shields healthy and will provide good survivability. Refined Northern Lights can be farmed from Alby shineseeker/events/dungeons and will help you get healing enhancement set effect, so it is a great cheap option.
   

2. Special Imperial Knight Royal Uniform (mid-cheap / gacha)

1. The Unshakeable Will effect is extremely potent in allowing you to tank and greed plays, especially because it stacks with overshield and mana shield damage reduction. It is not a popular piece, so often more affordable compared to other options.
   

3. Ceann Bliana Bulwark’s Armor (Best-in-slot / craftable / expensive)

1. Upgrade for melee autodefense.
2. “BIS” because it has a high chance of ping, lots of tanky stats, and can activate Pierce Resist set bonus as a 2 piece (extra tankiness in Glenn/Bri). Not really needed to be tanky, though and you can go with cheaper alternatives.
   

4. Special Seraphic Harmony (mid-cheap / gacha)

1. IMO, this armor is overrated. The prayer effect only regenerates a small amount of mana (3,100 MP over 30 secs) with a long cooldown (100 seconds). The saving grace is it is a one piece with absorption, which is nice, but in my opinion other options are superior.
2. For DPS hybrid saints that use astrology, this set can also be nice for the chance to give 100 MA that stays when you swap to Astro gear.

5. Mix + match random gear (ie trinity or special imperial knight royal uniform) with absorption gear (ie Refined Royal Knight boots).

1. This is a cheap alternative and absorption gives you a chance to take 1 damage, so you can have some tankiness. Remember you need +10 of a set effect to activate the bonus. Saint heal armor can be low budget and still effective, so this is likely the best option for most saints.
   

7. Utility Shoes (expensive)

1. Elemental Harmony Shoes / Shadow Reaper Boots

1. If you have heal set bonus already and absorption, then movement speed set effect is nice to have but not necessary.

2. Seraphic Cantabile Boots/Troubadour’s Wig and Hat (F) or Wig and Chapeau (M)

1. These make fantastic chorus a stronger heal. They do not stack, but cantabile is the better of the two and will override if you have both equipped. Cantabile lets you heal +33 mp/hp/stam per second in green fantastic chorus circle while Troubadour’s lets you heal +22 mp/hp/stam.
   

8. Healing glyph / MP Wellspring glyph (cheap)

1. Level 10 lets you recover 100 HP/MP per second when standing in the zone. Can be paired with prot/mprot reduction glyphs for bossing.
   

9. Nightbringer Savior (expensive)

1. For reference, my tikka wood healing wand can provide 5.5-7.5k overshield with Hands of Restoration and 3.2-4.3k with Echoes of Salvation.
   
   The nightbringer savior upgrades the healing by a substantial amount (67-84% bonus healing + 5% from upgrade path). With it, my Hands of Restoration heals 7.5k-11k overshield and 3.8-5.2k with Echoes of Salvation. And these values could all go up with more heal bonus gear.
   
   That being said, the tikka wood healing wand is good enough for 100% of all content in the game, so I would prioritize this the same as other “expensive” healing gear, only after you finish a decent bard set. It does help with gear score entry requirements, if you’re struggling with that though. I would say the NB healing wand has higher value than the nightbringer vanguard shield as well.

3 different Zone of renewal size comparison / + Commander’s Emblem (+2.5m) / + Royal Society Shoes (+2m).

Debuff gear

 Prioritize what you can afford, but in the endgame you want most if not all of the important debuff gear pieces. Make sure you check the dropped gear you get from dungeons for potential valuable debuff reforges.

See debuff guide for detailed information on the importance of debuffs. The more debuff gear you have, the better you can fill debuffs for the party. Because harmonic saint does the least damage of any arcana, the role of debuffing is often delegated to saints, but keep in mind your party should also be debuffing too so it is not necessary to have all debuff gear when starting out. Coordinate with your party if possible. Keep an eye out for important reforges from your dungeons like Alby Shineseeker.

As a Harmonic Saint, useful debuffs to prioritize to help your party are Support Shot, Starlight Veil, Hanged Man, Rage Impact, Phantasmal Sight, and Cwn/Lil Jack. These debuffs are either clunky for other arcanas to use fully (glyph or set effect limitations), short duration, or just neglected. If your party is not debuffing properly though, the priority changes so knowing all important debuffs is important for every Mabinogi player, including saints.

This is not an exhaustive list of all the upgrades you can give to your debuff gear. For example, the Lugner title adds a few seconds to Hydra Transmutation, but I omitted it due to the high cost and low value.

1. Pets (high priority)

1. Mir/Ceraunus (same debuff)
2. Siamese/Tabby Purrling (is better than and does not stack with Bone dragon debuff)
3. Whale/Foxyquinn (same debuff)
4. Bunbuns (overrides whale/fox)

1. Note: Need 3+ bunbuns for stacking debuff to be better than whale/foxy. Also, having whale/foxy is still good even if you have bunbuns for G3 bri

5. Cwn (divine link partner) ~ lower prio than other debuff pets

1. Needs cumulative level 10,000 for the max damage bonus debuff aura.

6. Lil Jack (divine link partner) ~ lower prio than other debuff pets

1. Use continuous attack pet ai that spams auto attack to refresh the debuff on bosses (also make sure your jack is level 200 so its debuff is long enough duration to stack. Can google it or dm me on discord for the AI.

2. Fragarach (high priority)

1. Do your gen or skip it with the item. Really useful and important.
2. Can also make an attack speed set with attack delay for using shock + brionac (not necessary, just nice to have).
   

3. Reforges (high priority)

1. Death mark amplification (gloves)
2. Combo: Spinning Uppercut Protection Reduction (gloves)
3. Combo: Spinning Uppercut Defense/Protection Reduction Success Rate (body)
4. Death mark duration (not high priority, can use 2/3 accessories)
5. Wind blast radius (shoes) While not a debuff, this is an extremely important reforge for utility.
   

4. Death mark (high priority)

1. Special Eiren Chain Slasher Outfit or Hyperion Eclipse Selenian Diadema (+3% to death mark amplification)
2. Death mark duration accessory reforges (not necessary, can be nice to have)

5. Support shot (high priority)

1. Bohemian set effect (support shot enhancement +1 scrolls can be used to complete the set) (cheap)
2. Support shot glyph. (cheap)

6. Rage Impact (low-mid priority depending on party composition)

1. Rage impact glyph (cheap)
2. Imperial Knight gloves (gacha)
3. 2h sword ego and rage impact cooldown reduction echostone
4. Generally, EKs/SGs are expected to rage impact, but you could be playing with people that need you to rage impact for them. Personally, I don’t rage impact.
   

7. Phantasmal sight (low-mid priority)

1. Commander’s emblem (+2% to sight) (free, or from tech duinn shop)

1. Note: the best commander’s emblem has fateweaver + phantasmal sight.

2. Special Royal Society outfit decreases cooldown by 1 minute (gacha / expensive, not necessary).

1. Note: if you coordinate with someone else in party (usually SG) that has this outfit too, you can actually maintain permanent uptime of phantasmal sight.
   
   

8. Hydra (low-mid priority depending on if magic users are in party)

1. Hydra transmutation echostone (expensive / not necessarily needed)
2. Master of hydra title + the one with a hunch (free).

1. Note: Often, DDs/FAs will have hydra echostones for themselves, so you can prioritize this lower.
   

9. Scythe (low-mid priority)

1. Level up your astrology cards (high priority). Hanged Man and The Moon are two supportive cards to focus on (more info in Astrology section). The Hierophant can also be good if you are good at juggling astrology + heals.
2. Card Draw Enhancement effect from Perseus/Nightbringer + Orb is useful for cycling cards faster. Not necessary, but a decent upgrade.
3. Erg on scythe can increase debuff duration. Scythe skills can also heal more and do more damage with erg too, so if you are going to spec into Astrology then you maybe want this anyways. Overall, not necessary but a good upgrade.

Bard gear - Overview

Battlefield overture (BFO) and vivace (viv) are the strongest damage amplifying buffs in the game (increase your party’s DPS by over double). March song is also extremely potent for making content easier (~70-80% movement speed for the party at cap). A Harmonic Saint should spend the bulk of their budget improving their buffing capabilities.

The current meta revolves around haunting (AKA Inspiring) performance, as they provide the largest value buff. There are five general categories for improving your music.

General Bard Gearing Tips

A good benchmark for endgame bards is 60-70% BFO/Viv and 50-70% march song. Further improvements past this get significantly more costly with diminishing returns (for example, several billions of gold to push from 70% BFO to 78% BFO as opposed to around 1-2 bil to get to 70% BFO from 0 gear). This section will focus on the high value, starting point for saints. You won’t reach the 60-70% benchmark without decent gold investment, but this section teaches you how to approach building Bard. Subsequent sections introduce upgrades you can make.

Refer to the BIS guide and music buff calculator to plan out your build. Also, note the various consumables and extra sources of MBE in the overview section. Reforges for buff duration are not necessary, but nice to have.

Gloomy Tips

Your Demonic Gloomy Sunday is the cornerstone of your build and will determine your other gear pieces. Because the meta is centered around inspiring performance, you need at least a dual roll reforged gloomy to have an effective build. The absolute BIS is inspiring effect on gloomy, and then rate/playing instrument effect are secondary reforges. The reason for this is so that you can use inspiring effect accessories to stack with your instrument’s inspiring effect reforge. Echostone would then fulfill the third missing slot, either playing instrument effect or inspiring rate (unless you have a triple roll gloomy).

Example good (cheap) build:

Gloomy - 10/10 Inspiring Effect + 17/20 Playing Instrument Effect
Echostone - 3 or higher inspiring rate

Remember that echostones do not stack with reforges. The three reforges you need to focus on are playing instrument effect (PE), inspiring effect, and inspiring rate. You need to balance these reforges on your gloomy/accessories and echostone. Get as high of inspiring effect and PE as possible and at least level 3 inspiring rate.

Tips for finding a good/cheap build:

• Playing Instrument Effect (PE) echostones are extremely expensive. If you find a gloomy with this reforge, it will save you from buying this expensive echo, but note that it must have either inspiring rate or inspiring effect reforge as well.
  
  
  
  
• Due to how the rate formulas work, having Excellent Rate reforge will DECREASE your Inspiring Rate, so dual roll Inspiring/Excellent Rate gloomies are not favorable (see table below for rates).
  
• Inspiring Effect reforge is more valuable than PE. You want as high as possible of both, but if you had to choose which one to have higher on a dual roll gloomy, choose the higher Inspiring Effect.

• You can go for inspiring effect echostone for an extremely budget build, but do note that this means you cannot use inspiring effect accessories/gloomy, so your inspiring effect is capped at level 10 instead of 10+6 (instrument + accessories x2).
  

• It is still perfectly fine to use 2/3 inspiring effect accessories and for march song reforges (accessories/shoes) as budget build. Due to how strong inspiring effect reforge is, however, make sure you upgrade ASAP to 3/3 inspiring effect. March song 2/3 is good enough and can be upgraded later.
  
• Pieces that are not maxed out are significantly cheaper, despite still being good. For example, a PE 20 echostone can sell for over 1 bil price, but a PE 16-17 echo may be sold for 200 mil or less at a minor cost to your buff.
  
• 10/10 inspiring effect on gloomy is BIS, but also can get expensive. If not possible, aim for 7 or 8 out of 10, but try your best to find deals that have a 10/10 inspiring effect.
  
• The consumables feel kind of bad to use because they are consumed, but they are quite cost efficient for PE efficiency at endgame. For example, a Maestro ES gives +2 MBE at roughly 400m cost. Music buff potions also give +2 MBE, but can go as low as 50k gold on AH and are free if you have VIP on Tuesdays. That is 8,000 music buff pots to equate to one Maestro ES = 4,000 hours of playtime (or 166 24 hour days of continuous potting).
  
• Before the changes making magic attack (MA) scale with vivace, vivace - magic casting speed reforge took priority for mages. However, now it is better to prioritize inspiring effect and build vivace exactly like how you would build BFO to maximize MA gains. So, vivace magic casting speed reforge is much less valuable on an accessory than inspiring effect and you only want to go for it if it’s a dual roll insp. effect/viv cast speed accessory. Even then, the increase in cast speed is generally not that big of an upgrade so it’s not something endgame bards usually bother with.

Inspiring Rate Builds (Without HS Link 10 Boost)

Inspiring Rate Builds (With HS Link 10 Boost)

There is a calculator here to calculate rates, especially useful for dual roll gloomies (excellent/inspiring). Note that special ethereal chiffon wings +2 rate does not get boosted by HS link (bug has been fixed 10/25).

Homestead Props

Note: Within each type (figure/pet house/sequel figure), only the highest value applies. To stack buff effects, they have to be different types. Best in slot items are bolded and larger font size.

 Cheap Bard Gear

(sub 65% buffs)

Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, these are the best value budget items for improving your music. Prioritize these items first, then gradually make upgrades (see next section).

Gear recommendations for cheap bard:

*Note: Andante is an enchant that cannot be put on accessories normally, but certain gacha have andante accessories and they are often sold semi-cheap. Only 1 MBE, but a lot cheaper than Allegro accessories.

Intermediate Bard Gear

(60%-70% BFO/Viv)
After you have your base set, start swapping out pieces to prepare for min-maxing bard gear. This section primarily comprises intermediate-cost upgrades to bard. Overall cost is about 500mil-1bil gold. With everything on this list, you should achieve 60-70% BFO/Viv/March Song or close (with consumables).

Recommendations for upgrades highlighted in red:

Expensive (BIS) Bard Gear
(Higher than 70% BFO/Viv and March)

Welcome to min-max hell. This section goes over the near BIS items (excluding Bri drops) and provides tips for achieving the best bard set. At this point, the bard set is worth over 1bil gold. Each legendary item is also worth 1-2b+, and rerolling bard enchants will likely cost around 2b+ additional gold depending on luck and whether gacha is in rotation.

 Tips for min-maxing:

• Usually, you can get pre-made/pre-enchanted gear for cheaper than it costs to make it yourself. However, if you buy pre-enchanted gear make sure that the enchant with the widest roll range (eg. Pure, not whisperer on body) is MAX. Otherwise, you will want to burn it later and risk losing the enchant just to reroll it.
  
• For body, enchant onto Alchemist Suit in Training as it is usable by all races and unisex. It is also cheap and can be burned without needing burn extraction potion (which is needed to reroll cantabile set pieces).
  
• Always enchant with the widest roll range first (Pure for body, Technical for gloves/boots). This allows you to burn to reroll easily. Then, slap on the other enchant with the more narrow roll range. The second enchant has a higher chance of max-rolling because of the more narrow range, but if it fails to max roll you will need to purchase a new enchant and reroll (no burning because you might lose both enchants in the process).
  
• Enchant stat +1 scrolls are particularly useful for improving MBE rolls on enchants. So, if you are not a huge risk-taker on your expensive bard enchants, make sure you run Alby Shineseeker for these. People also sell services to use their scrolls for you, but only do this with people you can trust since it requires trading over your item as the scrolls themselves are untradeable.
  
• Buy gacha enchants/items when their gacha is in rotation (can be up to 2+ years) for cheapest prices. It is ok to stick at ~70% for a while, you will save billions of gold.
  
• Prioritize items with higher value of PE:gold ratio first. For example, Special Ethereal Chiffon Wings look nice but at 1bil for +1 MBE, that is very low priority! Remember that the rate from these wings is not that useful to HS (bugged currently).
  
• Please remember that there are diminishing returns with upgrades. Do not FOMO over a few % higher BFO if the cost is absurd. A 60% BFO/Viv is enough to do all of endgame, so make upgrades when the prices are right.

Best in slot bard gear
(extremely rare/legendary items highlighted red):

*Note: Allegro cannot normally be enchanted on accessories, but gacha has released accessories with Allegro on them.

Astrology (Support)

Astrology is a base talent, but tied to Harmonic Saint Arcana because of its unique supportive capabilities. Most notably, [Hands of Destiny] and [Celestial Conjugation] allow for short duration debuffs and buffs that Saints are expected to maintain in party play. The customizability of astrology allows for personalized builds, but these are just my recommendations.

Also, note that a hybrid DPS/saint playstyle is possible (see video), but this section will focus primarily on supportive build.

Hands of Destiny

Level these cards to level 20 by crafting/purchasing Wands Card, Pentacles Card, and Cups Card for The Hanged Man, The Wheel of Fortune, and The Moon respectively. After finishing bard gear, you can work towards level 28+ cards (high cost, gambling) by crafting Rare Wands Card, Rare Pentacles Card, and Rare Cups Card. Wheel of Fortune is optional, but nice to have.

The Hanged Man

Increases party damage by 5% (level 30). Incredibly powerful, should be the saint's role to maintain this on bosses at all times.

The Wheel of Fortune

Gives 18% (level 30) chance for doubling the duration of the next card drawn. It’s a good card to add to your deck because it lets you draw the next card immediately, so it won’t extend your rotation too much.

The Moon

Gives +30 max/magic attack (level 30) to the party. This usually translates to ~1.5-2% damage boost for the party. A good card to have because more damage is more damage (think of it like adding 1% more to your BFO/Viv). If there are several saints in the party, you can coordinate who runs the moon and who runs the hanged man.

Hands of Destiny Recommended Decks
Note: Prioritize Hanged Man, only slot in more cards depending on your comfort maintaining 100% uptime on hanged man. Wheel of Fortune is optional, but nice to have. The Hierophant is an option for dual saint comps too.

Celestial Conjugation - Build and Tips

Builds may vary, but usually control aspect is the best for support builds because it allows you to decrease enemy prot/mprot by 6 with starlight veil. You can see my build here. For Bri Leith specifically, I have a separate build here. Roa also has a guide on his youtube channel.

[Astral Reave] is the main skill used to cycle through cards. It is control aspect to enable activating The Hanged Man. Note that if your [Hands of Destiny] only has The Moon, then you should swap [Astral Reave] to support aspect instead.

I like to have The Wheel of Fortune as part of my deck. [Meridian Sweep] and [Gravity Well] are great mobility skills that I make fortune aspect to enable double usage of the skill. [Orbital Pulse] is a nearly instant cast skill that also heals with my build. It is also fortune aspect so that I can cycle my Wheel of Fortune card without needing to use [Meridian Sweep] or [Gravity Well], which both have longer animations. It is also nice to use for healing sometimes, so the fortune aspect allows for double usage of skill for quick healing.

Erg is not necessary to have, but a nice upgrade since it will increase your celestial conjugation’s shared aspect bonuses by 50%. These are the three middle sockets in the build, so it will improve your healing capability with astrology skills as well as the debuffs from Celestial Conjugation (hands of destiny debuff is not extended).

The [Card Draw Boost] effect from Perseus/nightbringer scythe and orb are nice for reducing the number of skills you need to cast before you can draw the next card by 1. Not necessary, but it is nice to have.

Saint DPS Considerations

If you decide to stay saint for general content, you may want to invest in DPS gear. Saint DPS is also useful for very late endgame players for shortmanning content (Theta, Techs, Crom, Glenn).

For personal DPS, my personal recommendations are Astrology, Puppetry, or Archery. Alchemy/Gunner are OK options, though I have less experience with them.

Astrology - Pros

• Works well with vivace, which Saints prefer using for faster heals.
• Good damage, good utility (debuffs, buffs, heals, dodging, damage).
• Saints should rotate hands of destiny for the hanged man, so DPSing with astro will allow you to rotate these cards while doing some damage too.
• Relatively cheap (erg 50S nice to have but not needed).
• Highest bossing burst dps (time shift + pall + burst).
• Great off-hand weapon because it has dodge and utility. Off-hand scythe with main hand healing wand makes for effective swapping between the two without equipment swap lag.

Astrology - Cons

• Bugs can make it annoying to use (displacement).
• The more supportive your build, the less DPS astro can bring.

 Puppetry - Pros

• Best AoE dps for mobbing (Act 7).
• More expensive than Astro, but less than Archery. Revenant > Perseus > Nightbringer not much difference, can just choose the cheapest option and still get similar results.

Puppetry - Cons

• Requires Erg50S + Revenant/Pers/NB + Pierrot Marionette before being useful.
• Act 7 combo card is very strong for DPSing, but can only be made through swiping cash shop or black combo card events.
• Terrible for bossing.
• Reliant on BFO, not vivace.
  

Archery - Pros

• Highest single target sustain DPS (useful for bossing).
• Extremely reliable damage (magnum shot doesn’t require aiming and is minimally affected by displacement of mobs).
• Insanely useful/fast for dungeon clearing (RAHM farming/Sidhe farming).
• Can flex swap to Alchemic Sharpshooter arcana for running content

Archery - Cons

• Race/ping dependent (elf the best).
• Most expensive option (Bow+Arrow of ruination + erg50S (more needed for human)).
• Worst in AoE situation.
• Reliant on BFO, not vivace.

Alchemy - Pros

• Uses Vivace
• Extremely reliable damage (water cannon/heat buster for single/aoe).
• Can flex swap to Forbidden Alchemist arcana for running content

Alchemy - Cons

• Needs erg 50 cylinders
• Heat Buster combo card hard to attain outside of black combo card events
• If you off-hand cylinder, then you cannot off-hand scythe for faster dodging/utility

Saint DPS Tips

Remember that your DPS’s damage is infinitely more important than your personal damage. If anyone in your party is not shielded, do not DPS. If there are any debuffs missing on the boss, do not DPS. If there is an intensive mechanic upcoming, do not DPS. Your primary role is support.  

Due to equipment swap cd/lag, I recommend consolidating your healing set with DPS set. This means you put either your heal wand + shield on off-hand, or your DPS weapon on off-hand so you can swap between healing and DPS much smoother.

This also means you will need to make some sacrifices to balance healing and damage. Personally, I believe that master of party healing title + a healing secondary title + crafted nightbringer savior is enough healing. All other gear can be focused on BIS gear for your respective DPS class (see Cryozen’s BIS guide).

Unless your DPS set is astro (which has plenty mobility/utility), note that having offhand dps weapon or offhand heal wand will make you much more immobile (equip swap delay when switching to refresh scythe debuffs or to dodge with iframe skills).

Do not expect to do DPS arcana levels of damage. 5-10% of team DPS (or even less) at endgame is the ballpark of your contribution. Treat your personal DPS like an additional debuff (extra damage) that you only do if your team is safe and has overshield.

When choosing which talent to use as your DPS talent, consider the possibility of flexing two arcanas. For example, having a strong bow set will mean you can do both harmonic saint and alchemic sharpshooter arcanas depending on what your party needs more.

Comfy/Extra Gear

Extra gear that is nice to have, but not necessarily a priority. This is not a comprehensive or ordered list and each person has their individual playstyle, which will change what you want to grab. In gearing priority, I noted that 1, 2, and 3 are the most important. After that, feel free to gear in a non-linear way and opportunistically to optimize your fun. Refer to Cryozen’s best in slot guide for more details. Be sure to double check you have gear from the DEBUFF GEAR section as well.

• Spirit Weapons

• Level 63+ knuckles (faster uppercut) + Uppercut reforges on gloves/body
• Level 63+ guns (no reload)
• Level 63+ cylinders (faster wind blast) + Wind blast radius reforge shoes

• Twilight Fairy Set

• Significantly boosts astrology. All pieces are important for a hybrid DPS build with astrology. The hat is nice even if you do not do hybrid build since it can regen a lot of mana even if you do not hit a target (meridian sweep counts as 3 hits and can regen multiple times in one skill usage).
  

• Erg 50S gear

• Any secondary DPS gear
• Chainblade erg provides more dorcha. Great for anchor rush spamming.
• Scythe for more debuff time/heals
  

• Ninja Reforges

• Shadow cloak duration for hiding and movement speed
• Explosive Kunai tag count reforge for easy fragarach debuffing
  

• Chainblade reforges

• Anchor rush distance (boots)
• Death mark duration (accessories)
  
  

• Demo/Ruin staff

• Strong stick for meteor nukes.
  

• Catering Effect Duration Echostone
  
• Attack speed set (Attack Speed enhancement and Attack Delay Reduction)

• Useful to put on brionac/guns/chain equipment swap sets. Refer to Cryozen’s guide for more information.
• Can also include fallen fairy pet and alto pet summoning for this or bunbun’s active skill.
  

• Demigod enhancement

• Nuadha Robe +10 demigod enhancement is nice to have for the movement speed and ability to debuff with brionac, but not necessary. To get one, use demigod enhancement scrolls +1 on a Nuadha robe. Or, you can have a separate equip swap where you will use demigod and swap out (the longer duration still stays even when you swap out).
• Uaithne and Goblet of Truth relics improve demigod uptime.
• Awakening of Light cooldown reforge on hat/Echostone and wings of eclipse cooldown reforge on hat/Echostone are both good utility.

• Wings of eclipse is useful for bypassing certain mechanics and/or tanking powerful hits in endgame.
  

• Special Royal Society Laboratory Outfit decreases [Phantasmal Sight] cooldown by 1 minute. This debuff is particularly useful because it is often neglected by parties. 3-5% additional damage is very strong.
  
• At least 4 whale pets to maintain purifying wave buff for constant mana + health regeneration.
  
• Glyphs

• HP recovery glyph
• MP recovery glyph
• Magic prot reduction glyph
• Physical prot reduction glyph
• Support shot enhancement glyph
• Rage impact enhancement glyph

• Commander’s Emblem

• Because you don’t need the extra damage from Alban Knight Totem, you can run commander’s emblem with fateweaver duration and phantasmal sight damage on it. Being able to have longer fateweaver on boss is also useful for min-maxing the debuff’s effectiveness (because fateweaver snapshots current prot/def values). It’s also nice because HS’s can help with fateweaving their DPSes so that DPSes don’t have to drop their DPS uptime.

Bri Leith Update

With the addition of the Bri Leith raid to the game, there are new gear goals for endgamers. Due to the content being new, prices are extremely volatile and largely unknown (or extremely expensive). There is no priority order set until prices stabilize and more is known about supply/demand. In general though, bard gear > healing gear.

Also, note that Murias Relics are locked forever once equipped. Similar to Holy Water of Murias, don’t purchase these with the expectation of selling later.

Pre-Bri, with no limit breaks and no Fleur’s Tiara and everything else maxed + consumables + doll bag, your haunting BFO should be 78.07% (see top image below).

Post-Bri, you can get an additional 20 MBE (7 from holy water, 9 from Lyre, 4 from new enchants). With all these, your haunting BFO can be 83.32%. Note: The SL Lyre has a 7% bonus effect to your buff after New Rise, so multiply the buff by 1.07 to get ~roughly 89% BFO max with no limit breaks/tiara.

Pre-Bri, “maxed” out bard. Note, I put 2 effect under the tiara to account for doll bag +1 and Chiffon wings.

Post-Bri, “maxed” out bard (+Lyre/Bri enchants, +Murias Waters added to PE reforge section)

Bri Leith Additional Gearing Notes

Bri Leith is the new endgame, so there are additional considerations for harmonic saints aiming to gear for this difficult content. This section covers some notes about how gearing priorities slightly change for running Bri.

Twilight Fairy Wig has a higher utility value in Bri.

• There is a lot more face tanking (especially in gate 2) in Bri. Also, Saints have the option of spamming Astral Reave/Scythe skills a lot more in between heals (make sure scythe is your offhand to prevent equip swap cooldown lag). This wig will help keep your mana healthier when facetanking, though not necessary.
  

Phantasmal Sight Totem + Special Royal Society Laboratory outfit is more viable.

• Bri fights are long enough for you to get in multiple uses of phantasmal sight. In gate 3, solo saints may have a harder time being in melee range though.
  

The Hierophant Astrology card is more viable.

• Use this card only if you have two saints in the party. One saint can have hanged man + hierophant, while the other can have the moon + hierophant. Alternatively, one saint can be the main healer with hanged man + moon and the other saint can have full hierophant cards.
• This card reduces the cooldown of all party member’s skills by up to 1 second when you draw it. It provides a significant damage boost (higher than The Moon) to your party, but not viable with single saint comps. In testing, two saints can bring down [Pall of Ruination’s] cooldown by 25% in ideal scenarios (realistic maybe 15-20% cooldown reduction) with hierophant.
  
  
  
  

Healing second title + Cucullati enchants are more useful.

• While not necessary, boosting the amount your [Echoes of Salvation] can overshield has a bigger impact in Bri than in any other content. Especially for gate 2, a stronger overshield can be the difference to saving your party from wipe. You could play better and not need the extra heal gear, but from playing on two saint accounts (one with the heal gear and one without), the difference in healing is noticeable in Bri for sure.
  

Multiple Purrling + Mir/Ceraunus + Foxyquinn pets is more beneficial.

• In Gate 3 specifically, having multiple debuff pets is important because the random AoE will kill off pets at crucial moments when you need to debuff (during halos and venn diagram mechanics). Because saints are capable of fast reviving pets, they have an easier time managing pet debuffs (summon to debuff, leave pet out to die, then res and desummon it).
  

Seraphic cantabile boots are still useful for heals.

• Since fights are so long and the sacred guardian can keep the boss relatively immobile, the sustained healing from the green fantastic chorus circle is useful.
  

Two saint comps are good.

• The secondary saint will reduce the heal burden on the primary saint and be a backup in emergencies if one saint is downed or crystallized (gate 2). Double pulse, double pall, double blessings of protection are all useful especially in no voice call, less coordinated parties. Also, two saint comps enable running different astrology cards and buffs (hierophant + supportive celestial conjugation instead of debuff build). So, if you want to do Bri but you don’t have much funding, get some cheap heal and debuff gear and you can run as a secondary saint without buff gear.
  

Unified Might is very powerful for burst windows.

• Especially for gate 3, which has the heaviest DPS checks. Make sure you craft/buy phantasmal amalgams so you can use this technique if your party has lower DPS and needs it. Note: After new rise, unified might is not as used in Bri.

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Useful Resources

• Dalet blog / Dalet youtube
• Roalena youtube
• Cryozen’s best in slot guide
• Cryozen’s pet compendium
• Bas School youtube
• Sakanagi youtube

Credits:

1. Title page art @gae_apricot
2. Zone of Renewal size comparisons by Roa/Ben/Ripper
3. Big, big thanks to Nydri/Melinda help with some writing and editing as well as inserting hyperlinks
4. @LT_Exxa Comfy and extra gear art commission
5. Pillow for gear pricing help