DPS WP in a Warband setting

[yoluigi]

The worst thing i hate on this server is the 1.5 gcd that was the worst move it's still till this day very clunky when they made the game (mythic) it was balance around 1.15 for a reason. Feels alot better.

[SilentSnorlax]

Soulfire needs a rework. That's definitely a needed change. Without making it into a new ability, the simple solution would be to do the following.
-Change cast time from 1 minute to Instant cast.
-Add a 10 second cooldown.
-The DoT needs to be increased by at least double, if not triple.

This would allow us to add Soulfire into our actual rotation and have it actually contribute to our overall damage.

The change Halcite and I recommend is as follows:
-Remove the tactic Endless Guilt
-Remove/Rename the tactic Empowered Smite into the following
Sigmar's Wrath. Removes the cooldown of Smite. Smite no longer gives Righteous Fury per hit, instead it builds 30 Righteous Fury if it hits any target. Action point cost of Smite reduced by 10. Range of Smite reduced by 10ft. The snare from Weight of Guilt will now slow down enemies by 30%, and will affect all enemies within 20ft of your target. All targets affected by Weight of Guilt also receive 1 stack of Guilty Soul.

Now let me explain the idea behind this.
First- The whole idea behind WP was to mostly be a ST class focusing people with Hammer of Sigmar. Hammer of Sigmar is all about your Guilty Soul stacks now.
Second- The WP has no way to close the gaps with your targets. With the current amount of CC by time you recover, your current engagement has likely already come to an end. Adding the AoE snare to the smite tactic would do the following:
A- allow us to a better opportunity to keep up with our targets and use Hammer of Sigmar (Hopefully with full Guilty Soul stacks)
B- Warrior Priest would finally have a snare somewhat comparable with DoK Covenant of Celerity. This is LONG overdue.
C- The change to Soulfire and the curse it applies combining it with the new Sigmars Wrath tactic would perfectly play into our toolkit.
D- Choosing to run the Smite warband build you have ZERO room for any flexibility regarding tactics. You are sacrificing way to much damage or crit to try and run Endless Guilt or any other tactic. Other classes can bring those things and more.
E- There is no reason to have a Swordmaster for Whipsering Winds for Warrior Priest anymore. This change, combined with a Sword Master with Whispering Winds would drop our cooldowns on Soulfire and Weight of Guilt to 5 seconds. Allowing the Warrior Priest to fully utilize our tool kit and provide some decent crowd control, stack our Guilty Soul DoT and encourage the Warrior Priest to focus more on Hammer of Sigmar rather than the 1 button Smite build that it has become.
I believe these changes would allow the Warrior Priest to utilize our tool kit to its fullest potential. Soulfire would become a staple ability in your rotation, providing the curse to increase the snare from Weight of Guilt. Using Weight of Guilt to snare your target and those within 20 ft while building your Guilty Soul stacks. Then you would go into your Smite spam while making sure you keep your snare up, something the DoK and its ENTIRE group does PASSIVELY. And then using Hammer of Sigmar to focus down targets.
These changes would prevent another AoE ability from being added, adds some decent utility to any warband they join and just overall reinforces what the Warrior Priest was meant to do. HAMMER OF SIGMAR.

Silentsnorlax Warrior Priest RR 92

[ivarrwolfsong]

Soulfire needs a rework. That's definitely a needed change. Without making it into a new ability, the simple solution would be to do the following.
-Change cast time from 1 minute to Instant cast.
-Add a 10 second cooldown.
-The DoT needs to be increased by at least double, if not triple.

This would allow us to add Soulfire into our actual rotation and have it actually contribute to our overall damage.

The change Halcite and I recommend is as follows:
-Remove the tactic Endless Guilt
-Remove/Rename the tactic Empowered Smite into the following
Sigmar's Wrath. Removes the cooldown of Smite. Smite no longer gives Righteous Fury per hit, instead it builds 30 Righteous Fury if it hits any target. Action point cost of Smite reduced by 10. Range of Smite reduced by 10ft. The snare from Weight of Guilt will now slow down enemies by 30%, and will affect all enemies within 20ft of your target. All targets affected by Weight of Guilt also receive 1 stack of Guilty Soul.

Now let me explain the idea behind this.
First- The whole idea behind WP was to mostly be a ST class focusing people with Hammer of Sigmar. Hammer of Sigmar is all about your Guilty Soul stacks now.
Second- The WP has no way to close the gaps with your targets. With the current amount of CC by time you recover, your current engagement has likely already come to an end. Adding the AoE snare to the smite tactic would do the following:
A- allow us to a better opportunity to keep up with our targets and use Hammer of Sigmar (Hopefully with full Guilty Soul stacks)
B- Warrior Priest would finally have a snare somewhat comparable with DoK Covenant of Celerity. This is LONG overdue.
C- The change to Soulfire and the curse it applies combining it with the new Sigmars Wrath tactic would perfectly play into our toolkit.
D- Choosing to run the Smite warband build you have ZERO room for any flexibility regarding tactics. You are sacrificing way to much damage or crit to try and run Endless Guilt or any other tactic. Other classes can bring those things and more.
E- There is no reason to have a Swordmaster for Whipsering Winds for Warrior Priest anymore. This change, combined with a Sword Master with Whispering Winds would drop our cooldowns on Soulfire and Weight of Guilt to 5 seconds. Allowing the Warrior Priest to fully utilize our tool kit and provide some decent crowd control, stack our Guilty Soul DoT and encourage the Warrior Priest to focus more on Hammer of Sigmar rather than the 1 button Smite build that it has become.
I believe these changes would allow the Warrior Priest to utilize our tool kit to its fullest potential. Soulfire would become a staple ability in your rotation, providing the curse to increase the snare from Weight of Guilt. Using Weight of Guilt to snare your target and those within 20 ft while building your Guilty Soul stacks. Then you would go into your Smite spam while making sure you keep your snare up, something the DoK and its ENTIRE group does PASSIVELY. And then using Hammer of Sigmar to focus down targets.
These changes would prevent another AoE ability from being added, adds some decent utility to any warband they join and just overall reinforces what the Warrior Priest was meant to do. HAMMER OF SIGMAR.

Silentsnorlax Warrior Priest RR 92

This would be a very welcome change! Anything to spice up the current “plain gruel” nature of post-patch Wrath spec would be greatly appreciated. The recent changes took the class from focusing on windows of excitement (when to pop the dps buff, how to maximize that window, who to focus down to strike with Sigmars Hammer when their health reduction opened attacks with that ability,etc), to a sort of “unflavored ice cream” to borrow a term from comedian David Mitchell. Smite spam is always available, but it not as exciting or strong; Sigmar’s Hammer is always available, but doesn’t crit and is weakened. A change like Silentsnorlac suggests, would definitely add a bit of flair and excitement to what has become a very boring spec. And I very much agree, some parity on Covenant of Celerity is very much overdue.


Hafgrim Hasselhoff WP83

[live4treasure]

Soulfire needs a rework. That's definitely a needed change. Without making it into a new ability, the simple solution would be to do the following.
-Change cast time from 1 minute to Instant cast.
-Add a 10 second cooldown.
-The DoT needs to be increased by at least double, if not triple.

This would allow us to add Soulfire into our actual rotation and have it actually contribute to our overall damage.

The change Halcite and I recommend is as follows:
-Remove the tactic Endless Guilt
-Remove/Rename the tactic Empowered Smite into the following
Sigmar's Wrath. Removes the cooldown of Smite. Smite no longer gives Righteous Fury per hit, instead it builds 30 Righteous Fury if it hits any target. Action point cost of Smite reduced by 10. Range of Smite reduced by 10ft. The snare from Weight of Guilt will now slow down enemies by 30%, and will affect all enemies within 20ft of your target. All targets affected by Weight of Guilt also receive 1 stack of Guilty Soul.

Now let me explain the idea behind this.
First- The whole idea behind WP was to mostly be a ST class focusing people with Hammer of Sigmar. Hammer of Sigmar is all about your Guilty Soul stacks now.
Second- The WP has no way to close the gaps with your targets. With the current amount of CC by time you recover, your current engagement has likely already come to an end. Adding the AoE snare to the smite tactic would do the following:
A- allow us to a better opportunity to keep up with our targets and use Hammer of Sigmar (Hopefully with full Guilty Soul stacks)
B- Warrior Priest would finally have a snare somewhat comparable with DoK Covenant of Celerity. This is LONG overdue.
C- The change to Soulfire and the curse it applies combining it with the new Sigmars Wrath tactic would perfectly play into our toolkit.
D- Choosing to run the Smite warband build you have ZERO room for any flexibility regarding tactics. You are sacrificing way to much damage or crit to try and run Endless Guilt or any other tactic. Other classes can bring those things and more.
E- There is no reason to have a Swordmaster for Whipsering Winds for Warrior Priest anymore. This change, combined with a Sword Master with Whispering Winds would drop our cooldowns on Soulfire and Weight of Guilt to 5 seconds. Allowing the Warrior Priest to fully utilize our tool kit and provide some decent crowd control, stack our Guilty Soul DoT and encourage the Warrior Priest to focus more on Hammer of Sigmar rather than the 1 button Smite build that it has become.
I believe these changes would allow the Warrior Priest to utilize our tool kit to its fullest potential. Soulfire would become a staple ability in your rotation, providing the curse to increase the snare from Weight of Guilt. Using Weight of Guilt to snare your target and those within 20 ft while building your Guilty Soul stacks. Then you would go into your Smite spam while making sure you keep your snare up, something the DoK and its ENTIRE group does PASSIVELY. And then using Hammer of Sigmar to focus down targets.
These changes would prevent another AoE ability from being added, adds some decent utility to any warband they join and just overall reinforces what the Warrior Priest was meant to do. HAMMER OF SIGMAR.

Silentsnorlax Warrior Priest RR 92

This is also a very functional way to go about adressing the issue outlined in the OP. I worry only that application of Guilty Soul from Weight of Guilt would be unlikely to happen, because it's an effect within a base tactic that depends on the effect of another tactic. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to never happen.

A simpler alternative in this variant of changes would be to add a direct damage component to Soulfire that could itself crit and apply Guilty Soul, while still an instant cast and a cooldown, 10 s or 5s or whatever the devs might choose for it.

Or, have Guilty Soul itself state that Soulfire automatically applies a stack of Guilty Soul to its targets, and in this case it'd be just fine as you suggested, with the 10s cooldown quite warranted too.

[Brut]

Thanks for bringing this topic back to the OP suggestions of the viability for DPS WP. Though it must be said that most of the other posts that are relatable to this topic were constructive, but deviated from the OP’s intended objective.

On Silent and Live4 (and most other DPS WP players) last posts, we seem to all agree that Soulfire is for use of a better term - misfiring.

The recent Soufire cast time change from 2s to 1s did nothing for its ability to cast in WB play, the setback is literally instantaneous and constant, trying to persist through the cast until it lands loses us way to much over other abilities to even have it available on our ability bar. I have it in a random spot (currently not in any rotation) hoping to use it when the opposition WB has turned and run, but even then des are all long gone as we plod our way around the battle field.

From the few on topic responses I do read some very interesting utility recommendations, I’m certainly not opposed to any of these anti/counter suggestions proposed, particularly the interrupt suggestion switch from WL. I’m still very much in favor of instant cast (no setback) / set cooldown with a bump in DOT spirit damage with an additional utility effect as suggested by others that allows the WP to time the use of this currently impractical ability.

In short and a quick fix, the removal of cast time will be well received and bring what is meant to be a core WP ability, back to all DPS WP ability bars.

[Tiji]

No, no more AoE. Why are you people and the devs so obsessed with ruining this game by dumbing it down even further? I want more active gameplay not just pressing 1 button. This game has been made the worst thing a piece of entertainment can be... BORING.

You don't want another class to have more AoE to bring it in line with the other DPS classes, but all the other classes with their multitudes of AoE is just fine? Seems like you just don't want your class brought down to the level of having 1 AoE ability.

[gersy]

it's an ST focused mastery tree by design, it's not really meant to be played in aoe except maybe for expressly fun purposes in casual content. it's fairly clearly written all over the design of it. not sure why you want to make something different out of what is explicitly there. why try to turn an apple in to an orange? accept that it is an apple or go find some oranges.

[Stimpz]

it's an ST focused mastery tree by design, it's not really meant to be played in aoe except maybe for expressly fun purposes in casual content. it's fairly clearly written all over the design of it. not sure why you want to make something different out of what is explicitly there. why try to turn an apple in to an orange? accept that it is an apple or go find some oranges.

It's because of this line that the devs wrote in the Wild Hunt patch notes from 19/03/25.

"The new Wrath Warrior Priest actively uses their Righteous Fury to deal heavy blows with abilities such as Hammer of Sigmar or Divine Impact. Righteous Fury management will become much more important than ever before. The Warrior Priest also gains access to Empowered Smite, giving them a spammable AoE attack for Warband style of play."

[live4treasure]

it's an ST focused mastery tree by design, it's not really meant to be played in aoe except maybe for expressly fun purposes in casual content. it's fairly clearly written all over the design of it. not sure why you want to make something different out of what is explicitly there. why try to turn an apple in to an orange? accept that it is an apple or go find some oranges.

1) Because Soulfire is so ineffective as an ability, that using it results in a DPS loss versus just using another smite. It will remain ineffective even if you make it instant cast, in fact, because a single stack of guilty soul does equal or more damage compared to Soulfire, and Soulfire is incapable of applying guilty soul. Regardless of what your personal subjective beliefs are about whether only White Lions get to be viable in warbands, or if other classes are allowed to even remotely approach their level of output, if there's an ability that is so wildly ineffective as to be detrimental when used, it should be fixed. Moreover, Soulfire is the only AoE damage Righteous Fury spender of the class, and the design is stated such that it should have RF spenders.

2) Because it's not up to you to decide what is an apple and what is an orange in ROR. That is the dev's prerogative. It's also not up to you to gatekeep which classes get to play in warbands and which do not. And it's also not up to you to tell which classes other people should play. Taking all these three facts into account, this is a completely valid thread, especially because the patch notes also stated that the intent was to make WP (and other hybrids for that matter) playable in warbands.

3) The thread is in fact not calling to make something different compared to what is already there. It is calling to make what is already there make mechanical sense and be effective, because any ability designed for a class to use is intended to be effective for the purpose of that ability. We realized that the abilities that are already there are ineffective through hours and hours of practical testing in RVR, and are proposing solutions to make them effective.

Sitting in an armchair and speaking about apples and oranges is fine, but the reason I have gone through the trouble to assemble signatures of well known veterans of the DPS WP archetype is precisely because they are qualified to speak about it.

[Uchoo]

I have no qualm with DPS WP functioning as an AoE DPS; I think that any build rework should cover as many bases as possible.

Pure DPS classes can have an "AoE tree" and a "ST tree" but I don't think that really works for DPS healers as they have trees devoted to other things like healing.

That said, I disagree with most of what is said in this thread lol. First of all, there are some very, very good DPS Warrior Priests, none of which are on your list; you just have the loud minority listed. I have never struggled against DPS WP in 10 years until this weekend, a premade with 2 of them, piloted by Frozenover.

Now that the ego part is over, let's talk about the flaws of the DPS Warrior Priest. Soulfire DOES NOT need a rework and it certainly does not need buffs! My Bloodlord Warrior Priest with 160 damage bonus crits 500 on Soulfire and Guilty Soul ticks for about 800. You are creating over 1k avg aoe dot tick / 3 seconds. Soulfire is one of the best dots in the game, and it's AoE. People who are saying it needs to be TRIPLED are.. interesting. The problem with AoE DPS Warrior Priest is 3 major things:
A. It's stupidly reliant on crit. Crit = Guilty Soul = Damage.
B. Hammer of Sigmar and Divine Impact can't be converted to AoE via tactic. The rework for ST made sense but it somehow didn't translate in any way to AoE. LOL? Just another undercooked rework.
C. You're comparing it to White Lion, one of the most broken iterations of an aoe class since pre-1.2 on live. It's an Abomination and needs to be tuned down. This isn't even including some major bugs affecting damage reduction right now, which drastically change how the game is played.

Outside of that, it's just minor, silly things that were completely overlooked in the rework, even though they were mentioned by the feedback team such as: The Bludgeon ArP tactic. You would LOVE to use this for AoE but it requires you to waste GCDs on a Single Target skill to maintain a buff

Solution: Just make the Smite tactic also make Hammer aoe and do like..35% less damage or something. ezfix.