Soo finally after some days of trying and thinking
Sorry for the long post, just read the topic you are interested in;-)
I think the three possible playstyles :
Backline Healer
Melee/Cast Healer (with being able to tend more to one or the other)
Damage (with possibility to heal burst,after all it's not a pure DD)
is the way to go.
Backline Healer
As I experience ex modus and like I understood devs, this modus is intended to only be a possibility for main "melee" healers to not be completly useless in zergfights;-). I don't think that this should be done, easily, because it is a possibility to play the char. The idea behind the changes are at all not to decrease the number of possible grp setups but to increase them.
Oldschool heal WP/DoK was too stong, i absolutly agree with that. While being able to heal a lot it was massive like a tank, healing even better when hittet, without really needing support from his grp.
All the other pros are in my experience from 6vs6 / scenarios compareable to pros of the other healers.
By removing half of his armor, which especially effects these (all) who used (only) armor talis, and removing perma ae detaunt you started the evolution to a real backline healer. To degrade that modus to a makeshift for melee healers in zerg would reduce the possibilities in gameplay and setups. So I think the backline modus should be reworked a bit to be a competitive (not op or mandatory) modus to play.
Which breaks it at the moment is that everything is designed to stay in the middle of the fight, not in the backline. A quick testsolution would be :
- increase soul/ fury reg a bit (10-12 need to be tested)
- add another ap heal (divine aid & restore essence perhaps)
- ae heal khaines refreshment/martyrs blessing around def target instead of around yourself
- perhaps add ae detaunt with longer cooldown, like every healer has (switching on vitality/devotion first is one global cooldown more and combined with a lockout)
This would only be kind of a work around. Finally I think they should have their own mannerism also in this form. Thougt about sth like having grp& ae heal abilities with action points and only "average" amount, and using soul essence/fury for really good single target burst heals like mend/invigoration and a short each sec ticking hot with high amount. Or adding sth else to offer more possibilites for playstyle and grps.
Melee/Cast Healer Vitality
I tested it a lot now with two different tactic setups and playstyles in random grp and premade
Tactics Setups
1.) more casts (
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=dok ... 6:;0:0:0:0: )
Used tactics willpower, potent convenants, empowered transfer and transfered focus
2.) lifedrain (same skills or change to (
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=dok ... 6:;0:0:0:0: )
using all damage tactics.
Playstyles
a.)Staying a bit behind our front , hitting tanks or anything who came to our camp
b.)Was sticking up to other meele dds hitting their targets mostly in their backline
Results:
- As long as you don't care about second grp, just using 2.) with nearly only transfer essence has the best output, even when you nearly only hit tanks/heavy armor targets -> would recommend to reintroduce base ammount (higher than befor ~ 500 perhaps) and additional % off the dmg to have only
average heal on heavy targets but really nice heal on weak targets not nice all the time.
- 1.) is a lot of fun to play, some hectic but also really healing up the second grp is a new aera to melee heal
-> would only recommend to put transfered focus to a 20% outgoing healbuff for yourself(or exalted defenses but no need to mirror everything), to make that playstyle more competitive for the additional klicking & switching
- when falling back in b.) especially with 1.) the 12 seconds on the buff are a bit too short sometimes -> would recommend 15s .
- timer on detaunt is ok, -> but would finally prefer a 50% dmg debuff instead of ae detaunt(devour essence / either the meeles or the ranger).
- b.) should be your job when possible, even when your damage is weak it is in this case not wasted. Perhaps damage of non healing abilities should/could be increased to dunno 75% to make it more interesting to look for the main target when incoming damage is not too high, to switch back on healing when needed. But perhaps that would be too much again. Also base amount instead of mitigation ignore would make it more interesting to assist on a potentially debuffed target instead of just hitting anyhting.
- Devour essence has to be either opted from the 50% dmg or increased to 100% heal. It is/was the ideal ability to use when approaching a fight to heal up the target until you get to melee range. Amount now is useless especially taking into account that it costs 125 soul essence.
- I'm not really sure if I would recommend your plan to introduce consume essence again. On the one hand i played with it on live and switched def targets to heal the different "areas" of the field(transfer essence was too bad in that time to use it at all), but it would also allow you to heal your add grp without anything else to target. Guess that would be another point to easily only target yourself instead of 1.) and still performing ok ---transfer essence allready has a relativly high ap need don't think it would be usefull to increase that, better reduce healing amount on heavy targets. Has some pros and cons to introduce it again we can test it
i think 1.) and 2.) should work, without reskill, due to adjusting it to enemies (more range more melees) in bgs
b.) should be the aim for the melee healer but not be mandatory a.) should be possible but, as long as hitting tanks, with reduced healoutput
Damage
Is overall working good i think would perhaps need some more runs with full grps for tries
Some balance issues due to the hard work to give the wp all the juicies of the dok:
WP doesn't need a tactic slot for healreduce, thus having a free tactic slot compared to dok.(Don't think a long discussion about critluck and spamabalitiy is usefull now) DoKs is probably a bit better when not having bad critluck(debuff).
WP has ini debuff instead of toughness -> instead of ~20 dps more on target you get 5-15% critchance(depends on target base ini). In full grp, even without aura you have 2-3 thoughness debuffs making it quite useless, while ini debuff is really rare and very usefull. Would recommend to give dok also ini (or another destro melee class while little weaking for wp)
WP has the only lifebuff in the game, if someone starts again now with "it can be shattered" have a look on the "proc meta" and see how people react to shatterable buffs. Especially when starting to burst a new target it can really make a difference. Would recommend to give it also to a destro class, which needed some love to a tree.
Greetings Starilas
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