Shield Warrior Priest underperformance even with BiS gear

[Mvl130]

For scenarios, the build suggested by Demonito works better if you slot Divine Fury instead of United in Prayer

Full defensive seems better for warband, whre most of your utility comes from Sigmar's Will ; assist damage is rather irrelevant in these circumstances, and you will be healing a whole lot with this ability since a bunch of players are blobbed in one place

For scenarios where people are more scattered, Sigmars Will does not perform as much, as such full defensive does not work well ; the protection is average, healing is below average, damage is inferior to SnB tanks

Removing one heal bonus tactic and replacing it with one more offense balances this out, you can deal decent assist damage thanks to constant 25% bonus damage, also you have Opportunist IV that provides crit, instead of fanaticism that would perma-nerf your heal for only rng crit bonus ; your heal output is still very fine thanks to Exalted Defenses, and your lifetaps heal for more thanks to bonus damage ; enemies around die faster with your damage, as such you die less, your protection score can go higher because absorb aura keeps running in the background

You end up with something rather balanced, you're not top heal but you make up with good protection and assist damage. The main problem of this build however is the absence of dodge/disrupt chances, you are completely worthless against teams of rdps that simply destroy you

[Mvl130]

I actually found a workaround for dodge/disrupt problem, you use Liniment of Savage Vigor (+60 toughness, +5% Melee crit), this way you save the renown points of Opportunist IV, and can spend them into dodge/disrupt, and also some bonus parry

[Mortgrimm]

Imo the biggest problem is the damage part which effects the life tap. Maybe the devs can take a look at the life tap and/or dmg modifier. U need more dmg to heal more. Base heal gets busted by heal debuff. This makes this build kinda useless.

[Mvl130]

That's the kind of results you can end up with the build I described, assuming you're well assisted by a tank

[kpihuss]

That's the kind of results you can end up with the build I described, assuming you're well assisted by a tank

Good evening

It took me a little while, but I managed to find the SC on the killboard.

The data shown needs to be qualified a bit.

To be clear, I am not saying the shield WP played badly. I am saying the numbers need some context.

On this SC, the shield WP was the healer with the highest total healing. However, he healed himself for 75,432 and healed other allies for 122,339. That means that, out of his total healing, 38.1% was spent on self-healing. At RR83.

The WP who came second, with only 7k less total healing, healed himself for 23,043 and healed other allies for 163,417, meaning only 12.4% of his healing was self-healing. At RR67.

The third WP healed himself for 12,268 and healed other allies for 159,938. That was 7.1% self-healing. At RR69.

To put more data on the table: the shield WP received 220,659 protection, making him the player with the highest protection received in the scenario. Behind him, the next player with the most protection received was a Slayer, with 139,637.

Even with all of that, the shield WP died 4 times, while the other WPs died 2 times each.

And all of this was with a pocket tank permanently guarding him.

In other words, with 2 players dedicated to making one character heal, they still did not manage to produce numbers comparable to the other healers playing on their own, while also “locking down” a tank that would have been needed by the DPS and reducing the group’s overall utility.

The data provided still shows that the shield version of the class remains in a bad state, even with the build mentioned.

In the detailed SC data, the shield WP is the highlighted row. I will refer to that character only as “the shield WP” to keep the comparison focused on the build and its performance, not on the player.

Captura de pantalla 2026-07-03 231511.png (110.23 KiB) Viewed 943 times

[Mvl130]

I don't think the argument of self healing is valid, as the damage would have been inflicted to someone else anyway, and would have required being healed, even if you weren't there ; it just happens that since you're a healer in the frontline, you take more damage than a backline healer, that's not surprising, and you have to heal yourself quite heavily because the enemy is heavily targeting you

You also end up for this reason with a higher amount of protection received, enemy players simply hard focus you because of what you are, and they would have focused someone else if you werent there. It's just that indeed tanks have to do for you a job that they don't have to do for a backline healer, the tradeoff for this is the assist damage provided, and the almost tank-like protection score (you nullify a lot of damage through block and absorbs)

If you pile up the total healing + total protection + assist damage provided, it's quite decent, and the 4 deaths are also explainable by the nature of the map, being quite open and making you an easy target for enemy rdps ; despite the amount of deaths, and so the amount of time wasted into waiting for a rez and running back into the fight, the score isn't bad at all compared to others

Then it is true that you indeed need to be heavily assisted by a tank for this to work, and you really have to put in a whole lot more efforts in terms of actions per minute, than a backline healer. Also, you need really good equipment and high renown for passives. Despite all of that, you can still die rather quickly

[kpihuss]

If that shield WP had played as a book WP with RR83 and Sov gear:

• He would have healed much more simply because book healing is more stable and has a higher critical rate. Keep in mind that the almost BiS shield WP only did 7k more healing than an RR67 book WP using Onslaught.
• He would have freed the tank from the need to constantly protect him, allowing the DPS players to deal more kill damage by having the guard on them instead.
• The damage received by the team would still have been taken anyway, but he would have healed it just the same while exposing himself less.
• By dying less, he would also put less pressure on the other healers.
• And a shield WP usually will not give APs to the healed players, when a book WP can do it on 95% of the builds.

If he had doubled the healing compared to the other WPs, or at least achieved a clearly higher amount, or contributed significant kill damage, or even utility, I would understand the resource investment.

But the issue is that he did almost the same healing as WPs with 20 fewer Renown Ranks and much worse gear, while still needing a pocket tank to achieve those results.

[Hazmy]

In the detailed SC data, the shield WP is the highlighted row. I will refer to that character only as “the shield WP” to keep the comparison focused on the build and its performance, not on the player.

- Of course, the quality of data matters
- Of course, Player Skill matters
- Of course, who is the player matters
- Of course, the group quality matters

Self-healing has been stated repeatedly as some sort of inflated fake number like it doesn't matter. Especially in Scenarios where damage is centralized on Single Target, no matter who is being healed - it is effective and valuable protection and healing.

Healing Numbers are not a reliable metric to use. Others have already said this multiple times. You can not base any research on healing numbers when those numbers are spread based on the quality of the match, and not even remotely based on the class or its performance.

More unreliable data is being shown about Shield Warrior Priest, yet the same 2-3 Warrior Priest Players are showcased ( which I understand in a low population ) but if we ignore the performance of the shown Warrior Priests, top performing players who have been mentioned here like Iyvans are not being used in most of the data, which skews conclusions.

Proper 6v6 or 12v12 matches should be organized as a baseline to gather data, with vetted groups who know how to play in said content and work together as a group, since the whole game is balanced around group-play and group synergy - which has been said multiple times by the devs. Pug gameplay and random teams can not be the baseline for a serious balance discussion, especially not with such a huge difference in performance as you witness on RoR.

I don't see any data being shown here that gives context about proper group compositions, level of teamwork and class synergies which are all necessary to discuss a class's proper state and performance.

If he had doubled the healing compared to the other WPs, or at least achieved a clearly higher amount, or contributed significant kill damage, or even utility, I would understand the resource investment.

Here is another City Log From Iyvans, clearly outperforming all other healers by a mile, and he consistently does it in a competitive environment.
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 013db20a7a
We will have another City tonight with multiple Shield Healers in the comp, and I have a feeling the results will be outstanding again.

Player skill on RoR is volatile and the difference between Player A and Group A can be anywhere between 50% - 400% in performance versus Player B and Group B.

If we based other balance proposals on the performance of the average playerbase on certain classes then then the below careers could be considered garbage:
- Magus
- Engineer
- Witch Hunter
- Witch Elf
- Choppa
- Black Orc

Yet all of these specs have proven to be incredibly powerful in the hands of decent players and groups that know how to utilize them. Some of them are borderline broken, and people still call them "weak" or "bad".

[Saintpastissier]

Bonjour j'utilise cette spécialisation que je trouvais fiable il y a quelque temps mais qui l'ai moins maintenant (faute de tank pour faire de vrai impact). ce que je regrette du Prêtre Guerrier , c'est la perte du Heal de zone sur 18m par coup que l'on avait avant. Hello, I use this specialization which I found reliable some time ago but which is less so now (due to a lack of tank to make a real impact). What I miss about the Warrior Priest is the loss of the area heal over 18m per hit that we used to have before.https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/c ... ior-priest


what do you think about it?

[Mvl130]

If that shield WP had played as a book WP with RR83 and Sov gear:

• He would have healed much more simply because book healing is more stable and has a higher critical rate. Keep in mind that the almost BiS shield WP only did 7k more healing than an RR67 book WP using Onslaught.
• He would have freed the tank from the need to constantly protect him, allowing the DPS players to deal more kill damage by having the guard on them instead.
• The damage received by the team would still have been taken anyway, but he would have healed it just the same while exposing himself less.
• By dying less, he would also put less pressure on the other healers.
• And a shield WP usually will not give APs to the healed players, when a book WP can do it on 95% of the builds.

If he had doubled the healing compared to the other WPs, or at least achieved a clearly higher amount, or contributed significant kill damage, or even utility, I would understand the resource investment.

But the issue is that he did almost the same healing as WPs with 20 fewer Renown Ranks and much worse gear, while still needing a pocket tank to achieve those results.

These are fair points, I'd agree with them

Regarding what Hazmy stated, I don't think taking a top player as an indicator for the spec efficiency is relevant. Normally, you do not need to be a top player for your class to simply work sufficiently well. The datas Kpihuss takes to compare shield and book specs are taken from the same environment, random players in scenarios. Backline healers end up with overral better performances without being top players themselves, or without optimized group compositions. And Kpihuss only has 4 shield WP in his data because hardly anyone plays shield spec these days, I never ever encounter shield healers in scenarios

Also, you say that healing numbers are not a reliable metric to use, but then you use that metric to say that since Yvans has great numbers, it proves that the spec works well
But if there is only a handful of players who manage to have the spec working, in a very specific environment only, in a very organized setting only, then there's a problem with the spec ; you just discard everyone else based on performances that are not representative of the general environment, and you discard that by simply stating that the average player is just so bad, that pug environment is just awful and so on, but how can you tell ? I see consistently backline healers in pugs scenarios doing just fine in every scenario, they just stand there and heal for thousands in an instant

And regarding the list of classes you provided at the end of your post, I mean, does anyone ever say that Witch Elf is awful ? Everyone complains about how broken they are, including on destro side. Just a few days ago, a post was created asking about the performances of BO, everyone replied the class is excellent. You really pull things out of nowhere, like : "Player skill on RoR is volatile and the difference between Player A and Group A can be anywhere between 50% - 400% in performance versus Player B and Group B", where are these numbers coming from ? And you do that while completely discarding the datas shown by Kpihuss who makes an actual effort and also improved on this effort based on feedbacks he received here