First of all, you have to decide:
Do I want to be a melee WP using strength-based melee healing abilities (mostly Sigmar's Radiance),
or do I want to use casted willpower-based heals and use melee abilities only to fill up my RF pool?
Now I could quote a lot of text from previous postings, but that'll end up in an unreadable wall of text.
I'll comment on skills/tactics/issues instead.
Okay, the result is still a wall of text, but you can read it part by part and hopefully gain some insight.
Exalted Defenses tactic:
If you try a strength-based melee spec and use Sigmar's Radiance as your main heal, this tactic is worthless, because it will only increase casted "heals" and has no effect on "lifetaps". Sigmar's Radiance is a lifetap, including the base heal value. For the same reason Sigmar's Radiance is unaffected by heal-debuffs and the KotBS heal-boosting aura.
Afaik the same can be said about healing crit. Things that increase or benefit from healing crits wont work with lifetap abilities.
casted willpower-heals in a strength-setup:
You'll have low willpower, probably have Divine Fury and Fanaticism tactics slotted (-40% heal), thus your willpower-based heals will do only tiny amounts of healing. You could skip those two tactics (and further gimp your damage output) and be able to cast some half-decent heals, but there is another major disadvantage nobody mentioned so far: You cannot cast group heal Touch of the Divine (our most important willpower heal) while moving. Being unable to move (along with being snared most of the time) makes you unable to follow your assist train.
Sure, you could skip on the group heal and only use the instant casts (HoT, group HoT, group absorb shield, and maybe even the group cleanse with tactic). But with so many points spent in the salvation tree, you can't get AoE detaunt from wrath tree.
melee heals in a willpower-setup:
Let's try the other way, using Sigmar's Radiance in a willpower-setup with low strength. This works fairly well, because of the base healing value of Sigmar's Radiance. You can even further improve this with Grace of Sigmar tactic. With tactic, you can expect about 400 heal on entire group per hit with Sigmar's Radiance. This is not bad, given that you don't have to invest in a stat (strength), only need one tactic slot, the skill has no cooldown, and you generate some RF from using it.
But again, you can't be part of your assist train, because you have to stop moving to cast your group heal. On the other hand, you could simply hit some squig pet, or even some tank who is harrassing you or other teammates in the backline.
With or without the Grace of Sigmar tactic, this is something I can recommend to every WP, no matter what build he uses.
willpower-setup with two-handed hammer:
No, please, no! Don't try it, it just plain sucks. Don't waste your scenario tokens on the willpower 2hand-hammer.
With a book in your offhand you can always switch to backline healing mode, depending on the situation. With 2h weapon you don't have this option, and even in frontline mode you'll waste more time generating RF using a 2h-weapon than with 1h + book.
strength-setup with 1h + book:
Might work. I enjoy using my 2hand hammer too much, but if I ever get bored with 2hand I'll try a melee build with 1h + book. Did some tests already. Your dps output is lower with 1hand, but the lifetap heals are almost the same thanks to the base healing value of Sigmar's Radiance. The biggest damage loss affects your autoattacks, so I wouldn't recommend Hastened Divinity tactic (50% AA speed) with 1hand weapon.
As worthless the willpower 2hand-hammer is, I think the melee-dps 1h-hammer and the book with str/meleecrit might be useful.
(back on live servers there even were some "bugged" books with hidden weapon-dps values
)
guard vs. detaunt:
It's true, those skills don't stack. But using both has some effect anyway. Detaunt is calculated first, every detaunted target will do 50% damage to you and zero damage to your tank. As soon detaunt ends, your tank gets damaged for 50% again (which he can parry or block ofc).
I sometimes use this to save my guard tank from melting. This only happens in pug scenarios, where I don't expect guard, thus run the aoe detaunt tactic. But there are some rare occasions, you might even call them miracles
, when a random tank throws guard on me and stays on my side. Too bad, those brave (or suicidal?) guys are often too squishy for that painful task
, but I can ease their burden by using my aoe detaunt.
Never use it if I have a dedicated guard tank. I don't slot the detaunt tactic then.
Leading the Prayer tactic:
As much I love the idea behind this tactic, and as often I tried to use it, I have ultimately given up on it.
The problem is simple:
The tactic will generate massive heals when you don't need them
(your team pushing forward, enemy team retreating).
The tactic will generate zero heals when you desperately need them
(your team retreating, enemy team pushing forward).
Sigmar's Shield:
This skill allows you to survive some of the "oh crap" moments on the frontline. It requires a lot of combat awareness, but used right it can be a life-saver.
Use it when you see the enemy melee train coming for you. If you manage to get Sigmar's Shield off before you get knocked down, it will continue to heal you during that knockdown.
Unfortunately, the "new" version of the skill (where RF is consumed per hit) usually drains much more RF than the "old" version (where RF is consumed per second). Because of this, the new version is only really useful for strength/melee-oriented WPs, no longer useful for willpower-oriented healer WPs. Why? The latter tend to have permanent shortage of RF, and Sigmar's Shield (the new version) only shines when your RF pool was full at the time of activation. To make it worse, even if your RF pool was full, you'll end up with an empty RF pool after using Sigmar's Shield. Having zero RF is a big, big problem for a willpower-oriented WP when under pressure.
Wounds buff from grace tree:
Very useful to increase your hitpoints, but don't rely too much on it, because it gets removed a lot. Mostly by Witch Elves.
Unfortunately the range of this group buff got gutted really bad, thus it's almost impossible to cast/recast the buff on your group once everyone is fighting/moving. Even at the starting location in scenarios, when waiting for the scenario to start, you have to cast it multiple times at multiple spots to get everyone in your group covered.
On the other hand, this buff can be used (abused?) as a healing spell, which costs no RF and is immune to heal debuffs.
I think this needs some tweaking/balancing, alongside with some set bonus on tank classes armor sets (same functionality, healing effect ignoring heal-debuffs). But please don't discuss it here, offer some suggestions and open a new thread for it.
