Why do people hate on melee DoK/WP so much? (opinions wanted)

[lolly]

Somewhat related...anyone here play on Dark Crag server, and if so remember the duo of IB and WP who went by the names Fourtonnes and Fivetonnes? (or maybe it was Five and Ten?) Both spot on masters of their class and I watched, and was the victim of them on several occasions, straight up wrecking groups of 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12. You'd see someone in region say "There's some random IB and WP running around" followed by "Oh s**t it's Four and Fivetonnes" then people began dying lol

[Mystry]

I feel compelled to point out that the reason you will never be healed/ressed by a DPS WP/DoK is because:

A. DPS gear means zero willpower, zero willpower means low heal numbers, to the point where one DoT will kill you anyway.
B. Tactics like Divine Fury are 100% necessary and they nerf your healing even more.
C. Many heals, and especially resurrections, have a cast timer, which is an incredibly stupid thing to do in the middle of a melee fight.
D. It wastes AP.

Besides Divine Assault and whatever the DoK equivalent is, there is no point to casting any sort of heal as WP.

As for the 'they only rolled DPS healer to heal themselves while fighting', that argument falls flat on its face when you realize that WP/DoK basically cannot heal themselves as DPS, because the numbers are so low that it can be outpaced with autoattacks alone.

[Daknallbomb]

I feel compelled to point out that the reason you will never be healed/ressed by a DPS WP/DoK is because:

A. DPS gear means zero willpower, zero willpower means low heal numbers, to the point where one DoT will kill you anyway.
B. Tactics like Divine Fury are 100% necessary and they nerf your healing even more.
C. Many heals, and especially resurrections, have a cast timer, which is an incredibly stupid thing to do in the middle of a melee fight.
D. It wastes AP.

Besides Divine Assault and whatever the DoK equivalent is, there is no point to casting any sort of heal as WP.

As for the 'they only rolled DPS healer to heal themselves while fighting', that argument falls flat on its face when you realize that WP/DoK basically cannot heal themselves as DPS, because the numbers are so low that it can be outpaced with autoattacks alone.

dont forget that good heal casts arent avaible and 0% crit heal. A dps heal char can Just trow out a S. O. S heal nothing Else

[Aurandilaz]

one interesting "solution" IMO would be to unify "crit rate", that is, you get crit, and the same crit rate can apply to melee crit, ranged crit and heal crit at the same time.
I think we had something like this on live; my DoK had healing Warpforged gear that would give a "crit chance increase" proc, which would apply to both heal crit and melee crit. So when I occasionally decided to try mdpsing on it, I would use heal Warpforged to get that crit, because I would get more melee crit from the heal gear (proc) than from just using melee Warpforged gear.
The division of crit types is one of the driving factors why hybrids fail to thrive on similar level as pure dps or pure healer; because you have to choose one othe crits that you spend your limited resources on.

Maybe with client control it would be possible to "unify outgoing critical bonuses" somehow

[Daknallbomb]

Hmm a dps shammy or dok that can trow out good healing is rly not what i Personal want

[Blasio]

I woould not be that discriminative. I do not hate melee DoKs. I hate all the unbaraki DoKs.

[freshour]

Welllllll there are a few very simple solutions to what everyone hates and as always some MASSIVELY large ones. I really don't want to turn this into a balance discussion but I've played just about as much melee WP/DoK as anyone aside from a few people who did it on live and here and haven't taken any breaks. I'm a little brain dead but I'll kinda try and explain my reasoning with giving as few possible suggestions as possible.

So... DoK > WP in melee with current gear. Lets just get that out of the way. When weapons creep a little higher and gear does to I think WP's will be able to finally reach a solid juicy crit nearing 2k for some very timely burst (pending guard and so forth). BUT I think backline WP's generally have a more comfortable tactic setup and can churn out better numbers on average with similar gear than DOK's. Now that that is out the way.

1. Melee healers if they go full Sac/Grace can AOE heal for close to 1k a swing. WP's having a two hander can reach that now I believe as my melee dok with full Sacrifice can touch the 800-900's almost no problem. Life taps to my knowledge aren't affected by heal debuffs. BUT - divine assault and the dok counterpart are. So if you hit a parry parry/block/bubble etc... you won't heal for anything. Parry'd on your main life tap = no heal at all. Which is part of the balance. But.. you get KD'd.. you die. Unless you get a detaunt off before and so on and so on usually you get pulled/punted, kd'd then ur dead.

2. If they go full Sac/Grace - they don't get their big fatty finishers. WP's hits quite a bit harder but that is part of their nature. DoK's get more procs and AA's, WP's get bigger single hits/life taps - at the end of the SC it looks like doks destroy them dps wise.. but in reality, a full SAC WP can heal the house down if guarded and detaunting properly. Another advantage of WP is they have less AOE. Before you burn me alive, unless you devour essence then aoe detaunt on a dok, you will void your detaunt if you do it first. WP's don't have a lot of AOE so they can at the end of day get more life taps off given the exact same situation. So while it seems like a disadvantage.. My WP has kept full melee trains going, when my DOK tagged someone with a devour essence and my detaunt missed and it ended up being just enough to kill me. BUT - going more damage spec'd makes both classes close the gap on mdps, but current tactics/gear don't really allow the str + ws combo to be high enough to make you excel really well at either damage or healing enough. But you're a hybrid so you have to accept that or it'd be broken like a rdps... which I hate.


3. This one has always urked me a bit, but life taps are not considered "direct heals". For instance dok's have a move that if you crit you're 20% more receptive to direct heals. Also they and WP have a buble that can proc on direct heal crits which makes heal specs super tanky in certain situations. If life taps were considered direct heals, direct heal tactics as well as bubble/crit tactics would add a considerably more amount of tankiness to get off more heals, while also lowering the burst output but if not done correctly could create two monsters that no one would like. But it would make them stay up longer, and keep those steady heals going and allow the burst healers to focus more on doing that and makes for some mean combos in groups. If crit was shared across the board, technically both classes could spec into the bubble and throw an aoe heal to take advantage of it but in reality if it worked for the melee aspect I think people would find their melee healers staying up long enough to make a pretty big difference/make them super viable (not saying they aren't now).

4. But what everyone needs to realize. Most people play this class because they like it. Melee WP's know they will never have the total damage of a DoK. Current gear makes dual weilding and aa #'s alone surpass any two handed damage a WP can do. WP need to also realize they can heal much more than a DOK on avg, minus a DOK using M1 and devour essence at the same time to throw some silly heal numbers every minute or so of intense combat. But WP can also stay up mroe because they don't have to spec aoe detaunt, and as long as they aren't spamming their one aoe getting rid of that detaunt, it should be up lets say 75% of the time unless the other team is very mobile and switching up targets super well. So there is a give and take.

So to summarize. I think some very small tweaks which aren't possible currently such as making life taps direct heals to use other healing tactics with them such as bubble or % healing increases would be a very small change, if possible - to add a ton of viability to both. You won't automatically nuke people but you'll be much harder to take down. WP need their heal debuff on a 5 second CD at least... DoK's have to slot a tactic slot, but WP's need a bone in that department as well. Or it should stack with other heal debuffs to make it a very deadly situational move. Once gear is extended a few more tiers the healing output will increase significantly as well as the longevity of both of them so it sucks but we'll have to wait and see. Healing 75% of the damage your life tap does theoretically is a lot if you are hitting hard. Really it is that simple. You can't look into their weakness vs range because they should be weak to that. Any changes there would be super challenging to not only come up with but implement. Those few tactic changes and maybe even the heal debuff change for WP would make both of them way more viable. Gear alone will help them tremendously as they've always been fairly stat starved in needing to have so many stats at a certain baseline to really function at all.

I hope that if anyone read all of this they realize that a lot goes into playing these classes well. Sure a lot of people play them improperly but they are just having fun guys. Until client control/Az getting back on board, we have to just find ways to make it work which I think there are quite a few but it isn't very easy which in turn adds frustration. For me, it was going destruction because destro has more melee trains and my dok just dies less with more available guards. I run with a mara a lot so I don't have to always have my heal debuff spec'd and I can focus either more heals, or more survivability or more damage depending on my party. WP's can do the same minus the heal debuff part but SW's are a dime a dozen and they have one of the best HD's in the game without question.

Okay my rant is over, I had some free time and wanted to say a few things but again, thanks everyone for all the opinions so far. I think this has been a really good discussion as a whole.

[Foltestik]

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sorry noone will read this

[dansari]

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sorry noone will read this

I did and I thought it was very informative. Don't let the man get you down freshour!

[freshour]

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sorry noone will read this

I did and I thought it was very informative. Don't let the man get you down freshour!

Why thank you . Over 22 years of school has finally paid off!