DPS WP in a Warband setting

[live4treasure]

Greetings. I've been playing a DPS Warrior Priest in an organized warband setting for the past few months, having gotten my character to RR 73. A few comments have come to mind regarding the current warrior priest implementation in this setting on multiple levels. First of all, before proceeding any further, I'd like to establish a few things regarding credentials on this topic. I readily admit there are far more experienced and veteran players of this class archetype than myself on the server, however before posting this I've made sure to first talk to them and find some common ground on the topics I'll be bringing up in this post. I've received the signatures of the following DPS WP players, lending their credibility to the suggestion:

Halcite
Yoluigi
Silentsnorlax
Tiji
Brutehammer
and multiple non-veterans!

None of the signatures here are below RR 80, and the highest is a DPS WP one-trick player with a whopping RR 93 and perhaps a decade of experience with the class. Our hope is that this makes for sufficient credentials to have the suggestion taken seriously.

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There's been plenty of math thrown around in the past few days, that show that DPS WP (and DoK for that matter) lack a significant amount of aoe burst potential compared to most other dps classes. There's numerous arguments that I'm sure will be and have been made, regarding the aoe scale of Smite and so on, but I think it's extremely important to note that the current meta is leaning towards high burst and lower TTK. This is in part because destro classes have significantly better morale pumps and more accessible morale drain effects, which in an open RVR chaotic scenario means that warbands rightfully focus the classes that can achieve the most amount of pressure in the tightest window of time, allowing them to make use of opportunities for offensive plays and force their opponent on the defensive as efficiently as possible.

Within this sort of meta, a class that relies primarily on a very wide aoe that stacks a fairly damaging, but slow to come online, DoT in the form of Guilty Soul seems a little out of place. There've been many veterans that have been getting good results on warrior priests in warbands, but the reality is that due to the lower pressure of smite, it seems to only achieve results when hitting lower geared players (aka pugs), making it a good pug farming tool, and then as soon as you would enter a more difficult fight with more geared and skilled opponents, you will immediately start feeling the limitations of the WP. What are these limitations?

Things working against the WP:

1) Low inherent weapon skill ensures that the AoE warrior priest becomes progressively more ineffective against better geared players, to a larger degree than any other dps class. You might argue that there is a weapon skill tactic available and a separate armor penetration proc tactic, but unfortunately these don't come into play because:

2) Your tactics as a DPS WP are LOCKED IN. You have absolutely no space for deviating from the following formula: Divine Fury, Fanaticism, Empowered Smite, Guilty Soul. And one might argue that with the help of Whispering Winds, you would be able to remove empowered smite, for armor penetration tactics, however-

3) Even if you get over the problem of having low armor penetration (which the game does not make easy for you even with the relevant tactics), smite's relatively low intensity pressure output still makes it insufficient. Perhaps at this point one might make an argument for soulfire, however; Soulfire's damage is fairly negligible, its made inconvenient via the cast time that makes it interruptible and gives it a setback effect and it doesn't stack guilty soul, so in most cases using it in an aoe situation is in fact a DPS loss versus using another smite.

4) Add to this that WP's gearing options are torn between having credible defensive stats to survive and trying to fix the low armor penetration option, and bloodlord 6p, becomes your constant and most efficient companion until you can save up for a 10k victorious ring that will finally give you something that looks like a proper upgrade and it feels like WP is a class that has multiple, multiple things working against it when it comes to aoe damage warband play.

The conclusion is that this is a class that has slow, consistent and mediocre aoe pressure that is unusually highly variable based on the amount of armor/gear the target has, with some abilities effectively having an anti-synergy with the rest of its kit. Math has shown that WP deals up to 50% less pressure than pure DPS classes depending on the target, and it seems to be a rather extreme "tax" for being a hybrid class.

The Solution

The aim is to increase the output of the class at least slightly, with the purpose of ensuring it contributes more to an organized warband setting and operates a little closer to the potential of some of the more favored DPS classes. Bridge the 50% gap at least a little.

I would single out Soulfire as the problem here. DPS and Shield WP are both identified by having Righteous Fury builders and more powerful abilities in the form of Righteous Fury spenders. In this case, the aoe DPS WP does not seem to have a credible aoe damage spender, given Soulfire's ineffectiveness, and while I would say there's multiple gaps that feel like problems with the playstyle; there is a sense that there are so many of them that you couldn't possibly hope to address it all in a comprehensive manner and not end up creating more of them due to oversights.

My suggestions for reworking Soulfire:

1) Make it instead into an effect that radiates direct spirit damage every 1, 2 or 3 seconds in a 25 foot radius, spending some amount of righteous fury over that time and giving the Warrior Priest (and DoK, perhaps) a meagre 10-20% speed boost during it (or a 10-20% aoe slow effect, if speed enhancing abilities are anathema). This ensures that it helps in stacking up Guilty Soul, it naturally plays together with Smite, rather than against it and it gives a form of mobility to a class that sorely lacks it, as well the mobility being weaker than equivalent options of pure MDPS, satisfying the "hybrid tax" that seems to be the design philosophy at play. Or;

2) Make an AoE version of Hammer of Sigmar, concentrated on, say, a 25 foot cone, or something smaller or just equivalent to what other melee dps tend to have for their channels or big damage moves and have the damage of this ability be increased by Guilty Soul. This can be done either by replacing Soulfire for a new ability, or baking it into Empowered Smite as a direct change to Hammer of Sigmar with a damage penalty to the ability in exchange for making it AoE, and in this option you may choose to remove Soulfire or keep it, and trust me when I say it will make no difference. Preferably, an ability such as this should either be spirit damage or have innate armor pen in the ability for the reasons explained above.

Thank you for staying with me so far. I hope the suggestions will be taken into consideration in the coming balance patches.

[vanbuinen77]

Not gonna happen.

[Endari]

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.

[Lucino]

Hear hear.

I totally agree with this motion.

- Shearn, dps wp rr86

[Tupan]

Yeah, no more AOE, remove the dok snare aura that gives an extra passive ability for all members of her/his group. then we can start complain about aoe.

[Nauht]

Why not ask that the aoe be 360 too while you're at it.

[SilentSnorlax]

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.

The Wrath Warrior Priest had more active game play BEFORE the update. Smite spam was basically our channel that we held for pushes and to combine with the channels of other classes. This patch made the Warrior Priest a 1 button spam class. The empowered smite build leaves almost no room for any creativity. You can cast Soulfire right before you engage but the range is so short, you'll be lucky if you even hit anything. If you cast it in melee, on average you are set back long enough that you could've used smite anywhere from 2-3 times. 1 stack of guilty soul does just about as much damage as soulfire. Right now, in a warband setting, there is almost no point in ever casting soulfire. It's a straight dps loss versus hitting smite. Having the reduced cool down on Unstoppable Wrath has been helpful, but the Warrior Priest still has no real way to re-engage after root/snares/knockback/knockdown. By the time you get back into combat the fight is usually over. We use our RF to Hammer of Sigmar basically whatever is the closest target. Soulfire is already an AOE ability. It just needs reworked to actually be viable in a wrath build. It requires a two handed weapon so its only available to wrath and right now, its basically useless. Changing it doesn't add more AoE to the game. Its already here.

[Brut]

I’m fortunate to have BiS WL / SL / BW / WH and DPS WP toons on Order that I rotate through to enjoy the damage dealers game. DPS WP was my original toon and with the recent changes made I’ve been enjoying adapting to the updates.

I agree that Soulfire is the one ability sitting on the cusp of making the Wrath WP a more viable WB option. Tweaking it will by no means make it top DPS but could bring some utility and a slight bump in AOE DPS needed to allow options to WB leads to split the WL/BW meta on Order.

This is not asking for another AOE ability, Soulfire is already AOE and limited to two handers only, it just needs a tweak to allow it to be used in WB play to round off the recent changes to complete the Wrath WP. So close…

[Hazmy]

I fully agree with this post and most of its points.

If anything the Healer patch stated that the goal of the changes was to encourage Righteous Fury management for all Warrior Priest specializations.

This is roughly achieved for all of them, except for Warband Spec Warrior Priest where your RF Spender Soulfire is practically useless in the majority of optimized cases.

I would take a second look at Soulfire or create a completely new and different spender for Warband spec.

[leftayparxoun]

On the topic of spenders, from my previous analysis for dw DOK as an AOE dps for warbands it turns out that their optimal strategy to maximize their damage would be to ignore crit and focus on maximizing WS and STR.

Effectively this means that even for dwDOK which has a career resource spender in the form of Drowning in Blood, it is actually optimal to ignore it (you can still use it, but the STR/WS build has 4% crit total so you will not be critting most opponents anyway).

If the AOE dots (Soulfire/Fell Sacrifice) are to be reworked or if new abilities are to be added, providing both classes with a proper resource spender would make total sense for 2hWP, but only practical sense for dwDOK. The majority of people looking to play dwDOK for wbs would immediately assume that the crit route is the way to go, making a 2nd career resource spender less synergistic there:
Drowning in Blood already drains your resource very fast if you want perma uptime on it (13s to drain full resource bar, 13,5s to rebuild it to full while spamming Essence Lash). Adding a second spender into the mix would result to even poorer uptime for DiB for crit builds.

There is also the issue of balancing the ST dps aspect of those classes. Whatever is added should ideally not further buff up the ST performance of ST builds.

Whatever the solution is, it would probably have to take all the above into consideration. To me it seems like it cannot be something mirrored.