[PTS] Patch Notes 28/02/2025

[Brew]

Melee DoK heal debuff still requires 30 SE. Melee WP heal debuff now builds RF instead of costing RF.

With the new Drowning in Blood mechanic making melee DoK dependent on SE generation (whereas the WP does not have to interact or rely on this mechanic) what was the thought process behind making this change to WP and not to just DoK or both?

both classes are losing class resources about the same, but here's the thing: the doc has the ability to slow down rdps, WP doesn't. the doc will now have at least some semblance of burst damage due to drowning in blood, WP doesn't have this. And WP is much more dependent on the critical strike chance due to the main tactics of guilty soul, which there is nothing to replace. Both classes are about the same level in the dps spec, but wp has no tools at all to close the distance with rdps classes, except for weapons from the dungeon, but with it wp loses more than it gains.

Melee DoK now revolves around Drowning in Blood Uptime (12.5 seconds with full SE) and our heal debuff, which is obviously going to be used during that window, costs SE. WP have the same ability and it builds RF. The difference is that WP aren't punished for using their heal debuff when DoKs are. I'm referring to a specific interaction with a new ability they have attached to melee dok that now costs SE, please don't quote me if you're not going to address exactly what I'm asking.

[Solshar]

Solshar, 83 Runepriest main, The Jempire

I don't think any Rune Priest is going to be excited about these changes, we're already the least played healer on Order side.

Keeping a single party stable is the strength of the Rune Priest. With the changes to Master Runes and Blessing of Grungni no longer being unique to the class, this role is at risk. The buffs to Book Priests make them stronger in this single party role, while still retaining their dominance in warband healing. Rune Priests are getting nothing to improve their laughably bad out of party healing, yet we are now expected to share the niche that we currently occupy - The small tweak to Rune of Serenity will not fix this.

Class popularity and play rates are a strong indicator of perceived power by the player base. Jempire healing comps frequently contain 1-2 Rune Priests, 1-2 Archmages and 6-7 Book Priests. Our more enlightened Book Priests, while not complaining about the buffs to their healing are scratching their heads at the rationale behind it.

It's not uncommon for top Book Priests in Jempire to post 3x the healing numbers of Rune Priests at the end of a play session. If I play well and with a bit of luck, I might place 3rd/4th in heal numbers out of 8 healers. This requires me to run 1050 Willpower and +175 Heal power while taking a hit to survivability. Meanwhile our Book Priests spend nothing on healing output and can stack everything into defensive stats.

A final note on Blessing of Grungni being given to Warrior Priests. This is the biggest slap in the face and it is flying under the radar due to the noise around Master Rune changes.

To be clear:

• RPs are facing a nerf to their ability to apply this class defining tactic to the party.

• This is happening due to changes in the range, duration and pulse frequency of the Master Rune.

• This tactic is now being given to Warrior Priests, the most played healer on Order side.

• They are having existing tactics moved to core abilities to free up space to slot it.

• It has a 100ft range, the range of the pre-nerf Master Rune.

• The range bubble moves with the Warrior Priest.

• The Warrior Priest does not have to waste any global cooldowns to activate it, it's always on.

- Solshar

[yoluigi]

Soo for dok i would remove the resource needed for the anti heal and nerf some rf stuff.

For wp shield only thing is

Charged Fury - Reworked into: Whenever you hit an enemy with a melee ability, heal your friendly target for 150. Can only trigger once per second.

That's bad just make 25% chance on hit to heal 600. like that the RNG make it could proc often or less. More fun and probably better.

[Tupan]

One ability I'd like to suggest a review is the ressurection. I didn't see it on patch notes, but if the team is going to fix this ability then sorry.

When we try to res someone, and the dead player accept other res, made by other player, the ability we're casting continue and then gets in cd. The correct should be the ability stop when the dead player accept other res.

[Endari]

So I played around some more with the DPS WP changes on test and I don't think I've changed my mind, I just don't understand most of these changes.

Guilty Soul was nerfed so hard that for my favorite playstyle(solo) I probably won't even use the tactic and instead use the new Blessing of Sigmar(bludgeon gives %15 armor pen) and Beacon of Courage(AA+25% dmg/bludgeon +25% base dmg) along with the staples of Divine Fury/Fanaticism. So a major loss of DPS(lost AA haste) and burst(nerfed Hammer of Sigmar) for maybe some reliable DPS on higher armor classes while also still leaving enough RF to use Divine Assault and maybe even use Divine Light once in a while. I suppose this could be that fabled build diversity they talk about!

Divine Impact - REMOVE IT. I already have a 2sec cast ability I don't use in most situations(Soulfire only in AoE situations) why do I need another? Even with the recent change I will never even have this ability on my hotbar as using it is always a large dps loss and its just soooooooooooo easy to interrupt, at least Soulfire is AoE so your target cant just get to close to cancel the ability, let alone running out of the 5ft radius. Really whats the use case for this ability?

Vanquish - I like it but does the game really need another armor debuff?
Empowered Smite - NO MORE AOE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL!!!
The Comet’s Gift - not enough tactics slots to ever use it but I like the idea of it.
Hammer of Sigmar - no, please revert.
Bludgeon - good change
Guilty Soul - wow this is such a nerf, bring back the old version that healed for its dmg please
Beacon of Courage - I would use it while missing the AA haste.
Judgement - good change maybe think of adding the 2sec snare back.
Weight of Guilt - good change maybe just be like all other melee snares with no pre req needed.

I mostly agree with yoluigi in that I'd discard most of the changes you added and just stick with the Judgement and Weight of Guilt changes and adding some way to deal with kiters and you have a fairly well balanced DPS class.

and ismetto sorry to break this to you but the DoK and WP were designed with DPS in mind from day 1 Live to RoR, they have had a viable DPS mastery spec Wrath/Torture.

[live4treasure]

I just wanted to comment, that in fact, you never would want to use it at 5 mechanic points. The reason is because that entirely screws up your rotation and kills your potential to score a kill.

You in fact always would want to use Fury of Asuryan -> Another damage spell -> Laser.

What your nerf primarily achieved was making non-full-combos less attractive. So something like 4 dots (4 tranq) -> radiant lance -> dissipating energies / shammy equivalent -> fury of asuryan -> Searing Touch.

Removing the damage portion from searing touch makes this quicker, less committed combo a less viable option.

There is a tactic that allows for 50% higher crit damage 5 seconds after you used a 5 point skill. You need that to burst down a target. It is not about general dps as you describe it but rather dps in a small time frame. I managed to do 7k damage in 3 seconds earlier if you have lucky crits. Otherwise its around 5k.

You build up force with full dot setup. With 5 tranq you go: storm of cronos -> dot -> Asuryan -> searing touch -> radiant lance -> Asuryan -> storm of cronos. Searing touch now crits with ~1250 and previously with 1600.

Afterwards you can decide if you want to build force and use law of conductivity as a setup for your next (weaker) burst phase. What you described gets me (no cleanse tactic against target dummies) 735 dps compared to the one using 5 stacks with ~850 dps

I think you haven't quite understood what I meant. If you'd read the whole context, what I am saying is that the preferred burst combo was always:

5 tranquility with law of age + dots -> fury of asuryan for 10% outgoing damage and 50% critical damage -> dissipating energies -> searing touch (with increased conductivity tactic)

You would never have wanted to use 5 stack searing touch previously, because even with the 30% damage boost by itself it would not be enough to threaten a kill in 6v6 or a competent smallscale environment.

The short form combo with 4 stacks is just that. As a ranged character that has to stand still to cast, you can be in different situations where you have a differing amount of time available to you to set up a damage combo. Sometimes you won't have the space and you're looking to use 4 for the faster cast times, because you need to start looking for a kill right now, and doing so is not about overall dps. For this reason, searing touch being an instant cast spell is something that you would always use at the END of a series of spells. The classic combo before was Radiant Lance - Dissipating Energies - Fury of Asuryan - Searing Touch, which squeezes in the maximum amount of damage into the shortest possible window of time, aka what is called Timestamping.

Using Searing Touch at 5 stacks of tranquility does the opposite of timestamping, and thus I am saying that no one would ever have normally wanted to use it like that anyway, and this nerf primarily effects spell combinations that are done in the 1-4 bonus range.

[Fenris78]

Solshar, 83 Runepriest main, The Jempire

I don't think any Rune Priest is going to be excited about these changes, we're already the least played healer on Order side.

Keeping a single party stable is the strength of the Rune Priest. With changes to Master Runes and Blessing of Grungni no longer being unique to the class, this role is now at risk. The buffs to Book Priests make them stronger in this single party role, while still retaining their dominance in warband healing. Rune Priests are getting nothing to improve their laughably bad out of party healing, yet we are now expected to share the niche that we currently occupy - The small tweak to Rune of Serenity will not fix this.

Class popularity and play rates are a strong indicator of perceived power by the player base. Jempire healing comps frequently contain 1-2 Rune Priests, 1-2 Archmages and 6-7 Book Priests. Our more enlightened Book Priests, while not complaining about the buffs to their healing are scratching their heads at the rationale behind them.

It's not uncommon for top Book Priests in Jempire to post 3x the healing numbers of Rune Priests at the end of a play session. If I play well and with a bit of luck, I might place 3rd/4th in heal numbers out of 8 healers. This requires me to run 1050 Willpower and +175 Heal power while taking a big hit to survivability. Meanwhile our Book Priests spend nothing on healing output and can stack everything into defensive stats.

A final note on Blessing of Grungni being given to Warrior Priests. This is the biggest slap in the face and it is flying under the radar due to the noise around Master Rune changes.

To be clear:

• RPs are facing a nerf to their ability to apply this class defining tactic to the party.

• This is happening due to changes in the range, duration and pulse frequency of the Master Rune.

• This tactic is now being given to Warrior Priests, the most played healer on Order side.

• They are having existing tactics moved to core abilities to free up space to slot it.

• It is being given the effective range of the the pre-nerf Master Rune

• The range bubble moves with the Warrior Priest

• The Warrior Priest does not have to waste any global cooldowns to activate it, it's always on

- Solshar

Thanks, you explained far better than me the main concerns about RP/Zeal who are getting another nerf, instead of an overhaul of their (already unreliable) healing abilities.

Nothing in this patch is going to define, and refine, the RP/Zeal role as a healer, especially since other two archetypes are getting similar tools, with better efficiency, more out of the group healing, and far beter survivability without real tradeoff on other aspects.

It looks like team's efforts has been focused on buffing already overperforming healers, and trying to get DPS healers even more toxic, but not really trying to balance healing output of each archetype, even less refining their key aspects as pure healers (that they should mainly perform, not trying to wannabe DPS).


As a side-note :

Role-Blending enforcing attempts is a concerning trend in RoR, since hybrid DPS/Healer specs can very easily slip out of control by their combined skills ; a healer you cannot healdebuff (see lifetap skills for instance) is a healer you cannot kill, and very quickly those kind of classes are becoming far too powerful by themselves (and become solo roaming unkillable abominations).

But if you enforce current strengths on their MAIN role, you balance out the game and allow everyone to perform best, accordingly to their intended role.

- Playing a DPS, you cannot become uber tanky (saving regen builds abominations wich need to disappear entirely)
- Playing a tank, you cannot become pure DPS even with 2H builds
- But for some reason, playing a healer, you are allowed to become as (even more) efficient than a pure DPS, or nearly as tanky as a pure Tank archetype (either by kiting abilities or protection/healing ones), already mentioned lifetap not being healdebuffable on top.

This is this flawed logic that need to go away for the Health (choice of words) of the game.

[Farrul]

Guilty Soul was nerfed so hard that for my favorite playstyle(solo) I probably won't even use the tactic and instead use the new Blessing of Sigmar(bludgeon gives %15 armor pen) and Beacon of Courage(AA+25% dmg/bludgeon +25% base dmg) along with the staples of Divine Fury/Fanaticism. So a major loss of DPS(lost AA haste) and burst(nerfed Hammer of Sigmar) for maybe some reliable DPS on higher armor classes while also still leaving enough RF to use Divine Assault and maybe even use Divine Light once in a while. I suppose this could be that fabled build diversity they talk about!

If your favorite playstyle is solo imho need to be more concerned with the removal of Repent than anything else, unless all you plan to do is duel melee classes who never kites.

To me if these notes goes live this is the sad part of the overhaul that the devs could not recognize the basic need of a mdps spec to have basic tools to defend itself vs ranged classes which have tons of kiting potential with knockbacks, snares , overpowered dots etc. I have never seen a melee spec this gimped in any other MMO game ive played. Even ''that game'' the WoW warrior had some defences vs a kiting frost mage.

[Reivren27]

Guilty Soul was nerfed so hard that for my favorite playstyle(solo) I probably won't even use the tactic and instead use the new Blessing of Sigmar(bludgeon gives %15 armor pen) and Beacon of Courage(AA+25% dmg/bludgeon +25% base dmg) along with the staples of Divine Fury/Fanaticism. So a major loss of DPS(lost AA haste) and burst(nerfed Hammer of Sigmar) for maybe some reliable DPS on higher armor classes while also still leaving enough RF to use Divine Assault and maybe even use Divine Light once in a while. I suppose this could be that fabled build diversity they talk about!

If your favorite playstyle is solo imho need to be more concerned with the removal of Repent than anything else, unless all you plan to do is duel melee classes who never kites.

To me if these notes goes live this is the sad part of the overhaul that the devs could not recognize the basic need of a mdps spec to have basic tools to defend itself vs ranged classes which have tons of kiting potential with knockbacks, snares , overpowered dots etc. I have never seen a melee spec this gimped in any other MMO game ive played. Even ''that game'' the WoW warrior had some defences vs a kiting frost mage.

Thanks to recent changes, repent can be used in dps spec again. Basically, dps wp 2 detaunt now. The problem of reducing the distance with rdps is still open and, most likely, the developer will not do anything about it. It's a shame that dps dok has at least some ability to slow down rdps, and wp only has a "wheelchair"

[Farrul]

Thanks to recent changes, repent can be used in dps spec again. Basically, dps wp 2 detaunt now. The problem of reducing the distance with rdps is still open and, most likely, the developer will not do anything about it. It's a shame that dps dok has at least some ability to slow down rdps, and wp only has a "wheelchair"

My mistake I didn't see the update. Yes indeed and it would be interesting to know why the devs do not consider this as a balance issue, it obviously is.

If nothing else they could perhaps add Judgment snare back with a new condition, only workable from the back(like WH ability). Imho like throwing a bone to a starved dog but better than nothing at all, which is currently the case , sadly.

P.S. or maybe even, give the WP a short duration speed buff when judgement hits from behind ( 20-25%). Only works with a 2 -hand equiped.