DPS Zealots and RPs suffer from the fact that their four most important abilities, that make DPS builds viable/desired, are high (9 or 11 points) in three separate mastery trees. These are the ST channel DPS ability, their AoE DPS ability, their heal debuff tactic, and their strikethrough tactic that also grants 50% damage as healing.
Explain why it's an issue
As a DPS RP/Zealot you currently have a couple of options - you can take the AoE DPS ability from the right tree and the heal debuff from the left tree - this gives you a decent role in WB-scale encounters, but unfortunately you then lack the strikethrough/lifetap tactic which means you see a lot of disrupts and offer very limited offhealing, and also lack the main ST DPS ability as both are in the middle tree. This means that you're pretty much useless in small scale encounters as offensively you have an AoE ability with a long(ish) CD, access to a ST lifetap ability with a 2 sec cast time (= dead in small scale) and some DoTs.
Altenatively you can take the AoE ability from the right tree and both the ST channel DPS ability and the strikethrough/lifetap ability from the middle tree. This makes you reasonably viable as a DPS, and means you can move around the lake without simply being free renown for anyone you come across, but you lack the healdebuff which is really the only reason to run a DPS RP/Zealot in WB scale activity.
It's pretty much the equivalent of putting the DoK's heal debuff tactic at 11 points in the Dark Rites tree, or the WP's heal debuff ability in the Salvation tree.
Propose a viable solution to the problem
I propose switching the heal debuff tactic in the left tree with the 25% chance to shield target on casting a heal tactic in the right tree for both classes.
Heal builds
This won't affect the standard healing builds, as the vast majority already put 13 points in the left tree to reach the stagger, and then at rr60 take the shield proc tactic that's currently in the right tree.
waronlinebuilder.org - Runepriest build
waronlinebuilder.org - Zealot build
With this change these current heal builds will still be available, (though available with no rr restriction) and will leave some points free to play with.
Zealots alternatively can currently go up the right tree to take WoI and the shield proc tactic, which leaves them the same number of points to play with:
waronlinebuilder.org - Zealot build
This build would still be available, but would require rr60 as do the stagger heal builds currently.
DPS builds
This change would be a massive quality of life boost for DPS RP/Zealots, as it would allow them to be viable/a credible option in both WB-scale and smaller scale action without having to constantly spend 5g+ to respec.
It would allow DPS RPs/Zealots to take the 4 abilities that really make them DPS at rr40:
They'd then have another 3 potential points to play with, so only at rr70 would they be able to also take Mirror of Madness/Winds of Insanity/Rune of Fate, and that would lock them out of any of the other useful tactics/auras in the middle/right tree.
All of the current DPS specs would also be available still.
They would not be able to reach the AP aura whatever their rr so it's not an 'all goodies in one build' proposal, more just giving a DPS spec access to the four abilities that make a DPS spec a DPS spec. It also doesn't affect the loose ST - DoT/HoT - AoE grouping of the trees, as both the heal debuff tactic and shield tactics are proc effects that can be triggered by both ST and AoE heals/attacks.
