Changelog 15/11/16

[Marsares]

In that instance, will things be revisited? I can already not justify my AM in a six-men and have stopped playing him (besides solo DPS roaming) and my fear is that with the WP/DOK changes other healers will even more struggle to get a look-in into competitive play.

Yes. We're not done with AM/Shaman yet, and lack of continued progress is mostly down to lack of power. While I dispute, of course, that AM and Shaman did not gain significantly in terms of healing from the .ex mode, especially when used correctly, I acknowledge that more can still be done.

The aim here is to make WP and DoK an example of how we mean to go on - a class with most if not all of its skills and trees "live" and viable.

Brilliant and - as always thank you. I appreciate the pressures you are under, the lack of resources and time on your side and the high ambitions that you have had set yourselves as a Dev team and you have my support.

Looking forward to additional AM/Shaman changes, in due course. I appreciate it's pushed down the priority list a bit and that WP/DOK are a showcase of what can be done. In reference to my comments on AM/Shaman healing, self-healing and mobility has improved dramatically and they can keep themselves much better alive whilst kiting vis-à-vis Live.

However, group-healing (read fragility and duration of casts) or utility has not improved markedly with recent changes, and that's what will help them force a spot into a meta group. With a DOK/WP you will have to interrupt/CC very specific abilities due to generally short cast times, with the AM/Shaman most used abilities (groupheal and big ST heal) have long cast times and thus interrupting is much much easier and leads to much more adverse effects due to significant setbacks.

At the same time, I accept that I have not given the class my fullest attention as I've been focussing on my SM, so may be missing some tricks of the trade. Anyways, going to log on and hopefully give the new WP a spin with some guildies whilst guarding them with my SM. Will report my thoughts once I've stopped theory-crafting and got enough experience in the real world.

[Tesq]

i will be costructive , make the covenant/prayer swap the first bar like stance beacuse try to swap from a back line to a melee with covenant is a suicide if you do not set up NB for actually replace heal skill with melee stuff/ other stuff

[peterthepan3]

Following up from Ade's comment, it's worth mentioning that there is a 30 second CD between Grace/Wrath prayers so you won't be doing much damage whilst in Grace prayer, for 30 seconds. Also such specs require very high levels of RR, and many classes become more potent, in terms of spec variety, at these levels of renown.

[Azarael]

i will be costructive , make the covenant/prayer swap the first bar like stance beacuse try to swap from a back line to a melee with covenant is a suicide if you do not set up NB for actually replace heal skill with melee stuff/ other stuff

As I replied elsewhere, it can't be done, and even if it could it would be pointless because you need all of the skills and not just a few now. It's more than possible to bind all of the keys:

Spoiler:

Also, bollocks to NB.

[Rebuke]

Agree with what Marsares said, however:

It is rather weird that ST and SR 100% neglect any defense checks. The counters Penril mentioned are few and with immunities there is little counter to a spammable ability. Also a tank "babysitting" a healer is somewhat of a weird example since that pretty much never happens and if it happens the mdok or mwp could also simply call our his party to assist him by requesting a punt from his tank. You also take away some of the skill of an already very simple to play class by not having the player prioritise targets somewhat.

I do like the overall direction of the classes, and it opens up different group setups which is something I myself find 10000x more important that these WP/DoK changes by themselves.

gg!

[CecilHarvey]

My kneejerk reaction to these changes was very similar. I thought DoK/WP as a healer was done for, but after testing this for a few weeks now I can comfortably say It’s thriving just fine. I play Cagnazzo on Destruction and Calcabrina on Order, so if you saw me in the past few weeks it was under Ab Ex.

I went into the testing with the mindset of “make backline healing great again” after a lot of gear changes and altered talismans it functions just as it did

I will breakdown what I learned from making backline healing work. First and foremost, pure of any play style be it backline or melee leaves you neglecting tools in your bag, so I don’t recommend it.

Gear: This is where the largest change happened. Previously I wore full Annihilator stacked to the gills with armor talis, now I wear three piece mercenary, ruin shoulders, crit heal influence helm, double SC healing swords,
Talismans: All talismans have changed from armor to strength. Yes, I backline heal in strength talismans.

Specs: For DoK: http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=dok ... 6:;0:0:0:0:
WP: http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=wp; ... 4:;0:0:0:0:

In both specs the TE/SR tactic is pretty key in allowing you to put out sufficient healing on any target, be it on an armor debuffed Witch hunter/Elf or an armor stacked Iron Breaker.

I know it looks pretty strange, but let me explain why all the changes.

Strength now converts 1 for 1 into willpower when you’re in Tenacity or Absolutions. The real benefit comes from how strength interacts with Devotion/Vitality it becomes 1 to 1.5 so 10 strength is 15 willpower with 3 stacks build up.
Armor stacking is no longer as appealing with the changes. First, Your armor is cut in half while Tenacity/Absolution is up, this includes the buff itself. Second, your strength suffers when those melee heals are most needed, under pressure.
None of this works without an altered mindset of how the class now functions. The class feels much more like a Zealot or Rune Priest than the previous priest class. The direction I took DoK/WP is very different from what I saw other testers do, I was about 80% backline healing and 20% melee healing, others being the opposite.

How does this all work together? The backline healing remains the same, but you need to remember you can’t tank a melee train nearly as well anymore. When any melee attempts to put pressure on you immediately switch to vitality and detaunt if necessary and switch to healing through Transfer Essence or Sigmar’s Radiance (which is why I use the TE/SR tactic) You can’t stay static in one style. If you get punted switch to Tenacity/Absolution in air and heal from that, if they pressure you switch to Vitality/Devotion gain a free AoE detaunt and heal from melee. Pets and low armor targets are your bread and butter, you will gain the most healing from them, even a tank harassing the backlines is a viable target to leech heal from and build stacks to make your cast heals stronger.

I have played this in OrvR, SCs, 6v6 and small skirmish RvR groups, these changes give DoK/WP far more options to work with than they previously had

[sotora]

Great Post Ade. Thank you.

Other thing though that is connected to today's changes and also to recent changes and most likely upcoming changes (as per relevant topics about proposed changes).

What struck me this morning with changes though is what current, recent and most likely upcoming changes will do to faction balance. Currently gear available for players makes HP pools small compared to what they were at late official servers time. That means burst dps is super important.

With today's changes and most likely upcoming Slayer Giant Tree update order will have huge melle burst dps on their hands due to great number of 2 hander dps / dps-like classes that are/most likely will be viable. WL, WP DPS, most likely soon to be updated and made viable 2 hander Slayer and best dps tank 2 hander SM.

Does that affect balance, does it matter? I do not know, but it's something that popped into my mind lately. Just an observation.

[peterthepan3]

Huge melee burst doesn't always cut it, though, as sustained damage is often more desirable in a group setting to maintain pressure. A white lion is the king of burst DPS, but can have that neutered by killing his pet; a DPS WP has bigger burst/crits than a DPS DOK, but the DOK is still more deadly due to Devour Essence and procs/Sacrifice covenant dealing damage (more sustained).

Pretty sure the Choppa's 2h burst is greater than the Slayer's, too, and a 2H DPS BO does more burst than a 2H SM against squishy targets (but noone will go 2h BO in a competitive fight, so I do see where you're coming from my kolega )

[sotora]

Yes you're right , but this holds water only/mainly in isolated 6v6 situation in Caledor Woods, tournament, etc there islated equal groups fight can succesfully (or not) counter burst.

In other group vs group enviroment like 12v12, 18vs18 scenarios, small scale, RVR, etc burst is clearly the king.

[Arena]

You as always forgot about one thing: you love warhammer, and we love it too. Not much of a new players actually play as much as old veterans. I think we all have something that we love, some aspect of a game that makes us want to play it. Bear in mind - as less those aspects will left in a game, the more people will leave this project, not because they hate you or something, but because things that they love is become something else, and there is nothing left for them to stay.
Don't tell me your regular "we don't care" stuff, you perfectly understand what i want to say. If there wasn't something you love in this game - you wouldn't put so much effort to build it from scratch. And now you make old players go away one by one just because you want to make the game better for yourself. I can understand it - you make it so you do it like you want. But there are people who have same feelings as you do, but don't have coding skills, that not make them worser. Please have more respect to old players and stop kill what they love, even if your changes is for the greater good. Remember - it is old Warhammer Online AoR put us all together, try while making all your changes not change it up the point, when there will be nothing left from it, nothing left for us.