Warrior Priest - Grace - The Survival Bible

[Rydiak]

If you are unable to obtain Sovereign Martyr gear pieces yet, and are looking for the best set you can get just prior to it, here is my recommendation:

• 5-piece Vale-Walker (shoulders, body, gloves, boots, jewel)/3-piece Bloodlord (helm, belt, cloak), Genesis Warrior Aspect+Remnant, Rough Gunbad Diamond, Titan’s Battlehammer of Reverence, Bloodlord Buckler – 5 Strength, 2 Wounds, and 2 Armor talismans

Hi, so I've recently acquired this gear combination, but I dont understand how am I supposed to slot the 9 talismans you're suggesting.

I have one slot in weapon and shield, that makes 2 ; I have one slot on bloodlord helm, that makes 3 ; then I have a slot on shoulders, chest, gloves and boots from Vale-Walker set, so 4 more slots for a total of 7 talismans slots.

Also with this gear, I got killed by a rank 33 SH in 1v1. He didnt even have to kite me, he just stood still shooting at me and I just died. I have no damage and my health gets melted by pretty much any dps despite the high chances of block, dodge, parry. If this is the result I get from pre-bis that I spent weeks to obtain, I pretty much feel that I've seriously wasted my time. The class feels overall weak, slow, unimpactful in many situations

Thank you for catching that error. I have corrected the typo in my guide.

In regards to the death you experienced, a bolstered SH can do a massive amount of damage to an unprepared melee character. Try to break LoS and force the fight closer to you. Barring that, using Shielding Grace while you close the distance will give you a sizable defense boost. As I say in my conclusion, the build is difficult and not for everyone. No harm in admitting you don't like a spec.

[Hulgore]

Thank you for catching that error. I have corrected the typo in my guide.

In regards to the death you experienced, a bolstered SH can do a massive amount of damage to an unprepared melee character. Try to break LoS and force the fight closer to you. Barring that, using Shielding Grace while you close the distance will give you a sizable defense boost. As I say in my conclusion, the build is difficult and not for everyone. No harm in admitting you don't like a spec.

Thank you for your answer. Regarding these advices against squigs, I find 2 problems :

1) the only way I have to break his channeled attack is to punt him away, which is problematic because he can then simply kite me with the distance I created myself. I could snare him using "Weight of Guilt" before using the punt, but that would require to use an ability like "Castigation' prior to that, and by the time I do all of that I already suffer massive damage and his ability is pretty much already over

2) using "Shielding Grace" to close the distance does not work because using "Shielding Grace" does not make you run faster, so you end up with a Squig 60ft in front of you, strafing in the same direction as you at the exact same speed than you, while he's shooting at you. While channeling you can't use "Judgement" to snare him, or you just burn all your Righteous Fury so you can't use "Judgement" at all. It's already barely possible to catch a target with "Judgement" because the slow is so low and so short, I don't see how I'm supposed to do that without snaring the target at all.

So when you say that I'm supposed to "force the fight closer" to me, well it's not like I have an instant AoE pull, or a sprint, or a 10s snare immunity, or a knockdown from distance, or a tactic that makes me run faster, or some kind of leap. I can only apply a 20% snare for 2 seconds if I have enough Righteous Fury. Now you can compare that with the toolkit of a squig herder or a shaman, and you can see how much chance I have to "force the fight closer" to me.

Then I'd just like to remind that against this Squig I mentionned, the entire fight was in melee. I jumped on him with my horse, used "Sigmar's Vision" and kept attacking him. He just stood there, face tanking me, and I died, just like that. I dodged and blocked I don't know how much attacks and I still died, and he was not even close to death when it happenned, because my damage are so low. So it's not so much that I do not like the class, it's just that getting killed this easily by a barely playing rank 33 squig herder while wearing invader level equipment is completely unacceptable when you see how much time investment is required to obtain this gear. This means that even if you remove the whole kitting problem it's not like you're actually threatening anyone.

Furthermore, I would like to add that in groups or warbands any chosen or blackguard can punt you away and you're useless as long as you're not back into melee, and you have no way to quickly recover the distance. Thats not a matter of liking or not liking the class, it's just that there are holes in it that make it very easy to counter.
If we come back to dueling a Squig, if I reach him in melee he can punt me away. I may manage to get back in melee by spamming "Judgement", but then he jumps away. So I have to dispell the snare from his jump, and I'm back to spamming "Judgement". Then if I succeed and reach him in melee once more, I get disarmed for 4 seconds and I can't attack and heal myself (I die), or I get knockdowned for 2 seconds before I can reach him and he recreates more distance (and I die).
Regarding these situations, there's nothing to like or dislike about the grace spec, and it's not a matter of being hard or not to play it, it's just that you have no tools to compete against all these controls and mobility, as the class is objectively very limited regarding these aspects (or you could argue that some classes are not limited enough). Now if you look at the amount of Squigs, Chosens, Blackguards and Shamans you encounter while playing the game, it's not abusive to say that you spend a lot of time not doing much besides running after you target, which is neither entertaining nor challenging for anyone

[diamond241]

Interesting guide. Question for you all:

For gear purposes why not:

5 SOV/4 TRIUMPH? (The 4 piece triumphant is pretty baller.) With greave of sigmar and the 4 piece proc you can potentially remove 250 of someone's primary sat.

I was also theorycrafting:

2 SOV / 3 WL / 4 TRIUMPH or

3 SOV / 2 WL / 4 TRIUMPH

You can either get more wounds with 3 SOV or more Weapon skill with 3 Warlord. It basically ditches block since blocking stuff is RNG and correct me if I'm wrong, you are only getting maybe 35% block if you really stack it. In ORVR and even some scens 30% block you won't really see much actual "blocking". In this case, stack Parry and and offensive stats/wounds.

Thoughts?

[Rydiak]

Yes, Victorious is a very good set.

[Inquisition]

So looking at this guide there is no mention of the Genesis weapon and upgrading into Fortress battlehammer. Is this ignored or considering not good enough?

Would love to see some kind of BiS ranking for main hand.

[Rydiak]

So looking at this guide there is no mention of the Genesis weapon and upgrading into Fortress battlehammer. Is this ignored or considering not good enough?

Would love to see some kind of BiS ranking for main hand.

Combat Hammer of the Subjugator is mentioned, but I am not a fan of the Fortress Battlehammer since the Titan's Battlehammer of Reverence absolutely crushes it in output. It is an option for a more defensive build, though once you've geared out in Sovereign Martyr you want more output instead of more defense.

[Scottx125]

Spoiler:

Interesting guide. Question for you all:

For gear purposes why not:

5 SOV/4 TRIUMPH? (The 4 piece triumphant is pretty baller.) With greave of sigmar and the 4 piece proc you can potentially remove 250 of someone's primary sat.

I was also theorycrafting:

2 SOV / 3 WL / 4 TRIUMPH or

3 SOV / 2 WL / 4 TRIUMPH

You can either get more wounds with 3 SOV or more Weapon skill with 3 Warlord. It basically ditches block since blocking stuff is RNG and correct me if I'm wrong, you are only getting maybe 35% block if you really stack it. In ORVR and even some scens 30% block you won't really see much actual "blocking". In this case, stack Parry and and offensive stats/wounds.

Thoughts?

Why would you mix Sov and Triumph for Grace?! Whole point of Grace is to do healing through damage. Surely you mean Off-Sov and Victorious? And sure you could go for 2 sets. But IMO Grace WP is stat starved. And whilst building defensive is possible. It doesn't feel good and doesn't fill as much of a role as an offensive Grace spec. That being you assist in dps and healing, whilst being somewhat defensive. Block is better than parry/d&d because it's essentially both in one. And is more efficient to invest in. All you'd do is get it to max along with futile strikes, 2 crit mele points and whatever else into parry. But this all follows the fact that you won't survive in large scale RvR unless you're a flanker group or something away from the main fight. Because you're not going to get a dedicated guard as they're usually reserved for actual DPS classes. And even building defensively, you're still going to die in most situations because all you do to kill a Grace WP is either kite or KD them. So you might as well go small scale, max 24v24. Find a decent ST group to support you and go full offence supporting your DPS and healing.

[Scottx125]

So looking at this guide there is no mention of the Genesis weapon and upgrading into Fortress battlehammer. Is this ignored or considering not good enough?

Would love to see some kind of BiS ranking for main hand.

You're honestly going to want high melee crit weps that give you supporting stats. From what I recall the 1H and 2H wep from SC are the best, as they also give AP regen which is gonna be important. Especially with all the AP drain. The SC shield is prob also the best as well.

[MonkeyWagon]

"the Buckler of the Subjugator for The Harbinger (from Crypts and Tunnels influence rewards)" i cant find this "The Harbinger" anywhere. Do you mean "Buckler of the Envoy"?

[mynban]

I don't want the discredit the outstanding effort you put into this thread however as 7+ grace WP, in my opinion when you invest as much as defensive stats as you suggest, then you will simply hit like a wet noodle even at the BiS setup you mentioned.

This is my experience that, when you do so little damage, then you are simply a target dummy nothing more. Because you have no utility beyond the damage you deal, and the lifetap you do based on the damage you dealt.

Low damage = low healing from lifetap. So in summary you would have little damage, little heals, but high defenses. What is the point of those high defenses when you can not soak damage on behalf of others with specialized utilities, the way tanks can do with guard. This is almost like a SnB tank that doesn't guard.

I think it is way better to softcap str, then even invest in crit (beyond mandatory 2 FS, full block and some (not max) parry, dodge/dist). Also you make it sound like parry, dodge, distrupt are equally valuable and over valuing dodge/dist RR based on that. Dodge/Dist is essentially range defense vs Parry being melee defense. By no means dodge or distrupt individually are as valuable as parry for a frontline WP.

P.S. on the topic of grace WP vs gobbos. That match up is as hopeless as a solo roaming BW/Sorc fighting back WE/WH ambush. It is utterly hopeless and there is absolutely nothing WP can do aside hoping to reach safety of a group before dying. If you try to catch a half decent gobbo you will just get kited in easy mode.