State of current Grace

[Rathael87]

Is anyone getting it to work at least in scenarios?

I am quite low RR at the moment. Just got 39 so I am finally in full merc, in the very least... but I am finding that Grace is just all over the place after the rework.

Divine strike and Divine assault just do.. nothing. Unless I dump all my RP into strength, assault and strike cannot even out-heal a 2h tank's damage, let alone do any significant healing on someone under pressure.

Using RP on strength results in me having an enormous chance to be crit and basically no avoidances or extra wounds. I am made of paper and I have nothing in terms of healing to show for it. Before the rework, it felt like divine assault could really do some work in terms of healing, but I feel I have been forced to trade it for absolutely nothing in terms of survival.

Is anyone managing to get anything out of divine assault? If so, what sort of strength and crit should I be running to make it actually function?

[Rydiak]

I play Grace exclusively, and the only thing I think it needs in addition to its current state is a 15% lifetap healing buff. This is to offset the loss in lifetap healing that resulted from going from a 2hander to a 1hander. Everything else about the spec I feel is currently fine and functional. It has a defined role/function now, with defined strengths and weaknesses.

[adamthelc]

I think it's pretty close, could use some tweaks here and there. Personally I think it could use some pug help. Tactics or abilities that could help out without an optimal group, but wouldnt really add anything in a well formed group.

Something like a close combat tactic, maybe some kind of AP regen or something to help out when CCd. The latter would have to be done in a clever way to only make it beneficial when you dont have a guard or something.

All healers have more weaknesses when not in a premade, but grace feels it more keenly being on the front line. Like running out of AP. Not only is it hard to get a heal off, but you cant really keep up your defensive buffs. All healers have to manage their resources, but again it is worse on a melee healer.

Never really got much use out of DA. Sigmars shield was really the only self heal that could potentially save me if I ran into trouble. But the CD makes that only a temporary solution. Used to use SS on others, but stopped. It was really the only thing I felt I had to bail me out of a bad situation so I save it.

[peterthepan3]

I play Grace exclusively, and the only thing I think it needs in addition to its current state is a 15% lifetap healing buff. This is to offset the loss in lifetap healing that resulted from going from a 2hander to a 1hander. Everything else about the spec I feel is currently fine and functional. It has a defined role/function now, with defined strengths and weaknesses.

Pretty much incoming for next patch (Divine Assault love).

Grace is very good for SC/small-scale roaming 6-mans, in my experience.

[DirkDaring]

One of the issues with grace/wrath on live was getting strength, most ran 2 sets for the stat boost rather than 1 full set. on live it was a little easier due to that some of the RvR sets were damage sets , they changed them here to heal sets from RvR, and made all sc sets damage sets for healers , maybe try mixing sets , to free up some renown . good luck !

[Rathael87]

Pretty much incoming for next patch (Divine Assault love).

Grace is very good for SC/small-scale roaming 6-mans, in my experience.

Great to hear there is a little love coming to lifetap heals. I'm glad I wasn't the only one feeling that the loss of 2h really hurt.

I play Grace exclusively, and the only thing I think it needs in addition to its current state is a 15% lifetap healing buff. This is to offset the loss in lifetap healing that resulted from going from a 2hander to a 1hander. Everything else about the spec I feel is currently fine and functional. It has a defined role/function now, with defined strengths and weaknesses.

I feel like the weaknesses are a little too pronounced when you compare it to salvation, since salvation is able to heal and be useful at all times in any situation. Grace becomes flat-out useless in situations where you have no opportunity to melee (keep sieges, ranged fights and kiting back in oRvR, scenarios and oRvR where there is a lack of other melee to push in with you). Salvation never has a situation like this where it becomes dead-weight, and so I still cannot justify being Grace over Salvation in almost all situations. Salvation also still heals from any position at great range, allowing them to stand at a safe distance.

I'm not sure how it is at higher RR, but I'm not sure that Grace's strengths really offset the advantages of salvation. Grace is hardly more tanky in my experience. 10% block is not bad (the actual shield block stats offer basically nothing) but you don't get the tank gear to boost block chance like tanks do. Salvation has high willpower and so gets decently high disrupt anyway. Before the changes, I was able to comfortably compete with equally-geared salvation priests but now it feels like they just chalk up more scenario healing more easily (not that scenario healing is the most important measuring factor - but it's still something to measure).

The only thing I would want extra at this point is some way to be functional when unable to melee. I posted over in the suggestion forums that grace could get a sort of Hold the Line type ability that channels RF into a pulsing healing cone behind the WP, possibly with some moderate avoidance increase for the WP himself. Tanks get to contribute in situations where they cannot use melee actions by using HTL and guard. It would not have to be a large healing amount necessarily... just a moderate healing pulse to make ourselves useful in those situations. For balance's sake, the healing output would be less than what salvation can put out, meaning people can't just sit in the grace ''HTL'' and be immortal.

I'm still a little unsure about shielding grace. Obviously this is similar to what I was suggesting (and was in fact the inspiration for the suggestion). Removing CC from yourself is obviously extremely effective and useful, but I feel I would much rather be able to provide some healing for my party than using my RF to increase avoidances. If it were my own choice, I would change shielding grace to pulse heal behind instead of increase party avoidance.

The cooldown of shielding grace also feels quite punishing at 1 minute. When you compare it to the raw healing power of sacrifice (which packs only a 30s cooldown) it seems little lacklustre to me. The sacrifice heal is incredibly powerful, whereas the avoidance increase seems quite minor for it's long cooldown. If shielding grace were to become a pulsing heal, I would see the cooldown removed (again with the pulsing heal being not too powerful). That would give grace something to do all the time while unable to melee (shielding grace heal), and have an oh-**** button for when the damage really comes in hard.

[Wosh]

Spoiler:

Could have written 10 pages, you should do this and try to avoid that. But evidence is very strong that "HE" doesn't give a flying "circus" anyways, it truly is like talking to god. No replies unless you are such a fanboi that you can imagine his presence!

I have given up all hope for a proper class balance, I begged thru /tells forum messages etc. and I warned about the end station of this de route and was assured: "NO NO NOT HAPPENING". well, guess what, we have arrived now at the end station of hybrids as skills get locked behind weapons and where the **** are the synergies at I ask!

Got banned for a week last time I asked for the roadmap to this idea, so I guess I should avoid asking for any clues on where we are going. Either this roadmap does not exist and everything is done on someone's wishbone or maybe it does exist but it's such a secret plan that nobody knows of it and thus can't show it.

I will say this tho, next time someone complains in a scenario about not getting healed you can turn your attention to the creator. Because as of now my WP is nothing but a pure DPS, and of course we don't heal and raise people from the dead as DPS. You can get one of the other "hybrids" to do so!

Yea yea I know what your thinking, what makes me such an expert on the WP class, well unlike most of you I have only this toon so there is an investment of more than 1500 hours behind my words. How many do you have?

WATCH OUT AN EGO GOT BRUISED AND BAN HAMMER IS INC!

You dont get to attack staff because you want to stamp your feet because everything isnt exactly what you want, you have racked up enough warning that you reached the end of your time here. Goodbye.

[Wosh]

Is anyone getting it to work at least in scenarios?

I am quite low RR at the moment. Just got 39 so I am finally in full merc, in the very least... but I am finding that Grace is just all over the place after the rework.

Divine strike and Divine assault just do.. nothing. Unless I dump all my RP into strength, assault and strike cannot even out-heal a 2h tank's damage, let alone do any significant healing on someone under pressure.

Using RP on strength results in me having an enormous chance to be crit and basically no avoidances or extra wounds. I am made of paper and I have nothing in terms of healing to show for it. Before the rework, it felt like divine assault could really do some work in terms of healing, but I feel I have been forced to trade it for absolutely nothing in terms of survival.

Is anyone managing to get anything out of divine assault? If so, what sort of strength and crit should I be running to make it actually function?

Get imperator armor parts (head and shoulders) it lowers your DA down to 6 sec. cooldown. What this means, in reality, is you will do 3 abilities then back into DA again for 3 seconds of the channel then another 3 GCD while doing other swings and back into DA again. Now stick with str. do not follow idiots who talk about weapon skill, cause this does **** jack **** for the DA ability and for any other WP skills that does spirit damage. Like judgment, smite, soulfire etc.

If they just changed Divine strike to do spirit damage then we could have a potential heal here... but someone dropped the ball completely when taking away sigmars radiance and giving us divine strike as a substitute.

However your renown rank will become a problem for a long time - when I go full str. builds (i change a lot) il do 1 box in parry, 3 in dodge / disrupt and 3 in anti-crit. this is for a 75 rank build.

Anyways good luck and don't worry about dying a million times it's in the DNA of a WP, don't believe me then turn on sacrifice, supplication, the new anti-root skill, supplication then sacrifice again and you should be dead just keep the skills running their full-timers.

BTW you will notice that due to the channel abilities blocking regain of AP you will end up with zero health, zero ap and zero RF. Who needs destro anymore!

[anarchypark]

you're saying salvation can heal without problem.
there is the answer for weakness of grace.
mix them.
when you go hybrid grace/salv, str is not main stat.
you need hybrid stat. somewhere balanced between str/will/wound, even tough and init.

also you have 'Sacrifice' which is exactly what you asking.
with some cost/drawback.

dead healers can't heal. survivability is critical for melee healer.
block is helping it a lot.

i'm squeezing every possible way to be tanky.
survive at melee line and salv healing with constant RF generation,
draw attention to me and kite away to open opportunity for others.
basically playing like tank with healing.
you don't have to heal others much when enemies are busy hitting me

i'm testing hardy concession + leading the prayer atm.

[anarchypark]

Yea yea I know what your thinking, what makes me such an expert on the WP class, well unlike most of you I have only this toon so there is an investment of more than 1500 hours behind my words. How many do you have?

i think that's the source of problem.
you don't see other aspect of the game, too narrow experience.
trying other classes will wide your exp and help to see big picture.