[Warrior Priest] - Grace

[Azarael]

My opinion is that WP should always remain primarily within its archetype. It should be a healer, with the disadvantage of needing to go into combat, but the advantage of powerful heals and side DPS for doing so. I won't advocate any kind of buff to WP DPS unless it is demonstrated that such is needed.

[ThePollie]

So if I read this correctly your goal is to make the DPS WP more into a working support, rather than trying to make him a viable DPS option? I personally really like this approach, although I fear that a WP with decent scaling heals on top of what he has right now might just be too hard to take down, especially in lower Tiers

From my experience, melee warrior priests were still easily killed back then, as well. Divine Assault was our only melee heal, which certainly overpowered any singular attempt to kill us, but we had no AoE detaunt and Divine Mend would not save you from proper focus. Unless your enemy was incompetent, your only real option was to use Divine mend, healing hand, and run. Luck, support from allies, or a quick death was about all there was after that.

[Sigimund]

It is good to see that this might be tackled. On live I experimented with a lot of strategies and combinations to make melee healing work in all four tiers. I even bought the RR9x DPS 1H+book before I saved up for the caster book or pure DPS 2H. After farming the very best of LotD and using every addon, consumable or other potential advantage my conclusion was that melee WPs are good in duels and overpowered in PVE but would never be accepted in group RvR without changes.

To save space and because I played one I will use Warrior Priest terminology but assume that any changes would be mirrored appropriately to both careers.

Problems:
Salvation WPs are the dominant backline AOE heal spammers in the game. Overshadowing the other careers due to their combination of survivability and resource abundance and making any sensible discussion of Grace/Wrath problems difficult. Changes should make Grace healing competitive with Salvation without either buffing Salvation or nerfing it so hard that it ceases to be a viable playstyle.

Melee WPs are great in 1v1 and this gets used as an argument against improvements. But the focus of the game, and game balance, is not 1v1. You cannot avoid melee trains in the front line and lifetap healing doesn't work very well on tanks or when detaunted. At best melee WPs are seen as out of position healers to be stomped by the assist train. At worst, you are a dangerous example to other healers and your own side will cheer as you get stomped. Changes to address this should deal with survivability and effectiveness at the group level.

Melee healing is inconsistent and is timed around melee opportunities rather than when healing is needed. It would be beneficial if Grace WPs could dump excess RF into offspec heals while moving from target to target (or running away from death as the case may be).

Melee healing has a high skill floor, combining all the skills of a MDPS player with the bar watching of a healer. Lifetap healer image is not helped when the few who try it neglect to manage their defensive target while they focus on melee gameplay. This is understandable so it makes sense if melee healing is mostly AOE/smart and requires less additional micromanagement.

RF could be a good mechanic but at the moment it is just a way for Salvation to ignore AP and has minimal impact on the other two paths. There is Divine Assault but Grace could possibly use instant cast offspec heals as a mechanic dump and Wrath would benefit from a DPS ability that spent RF.

Hybrid gear but not hybrid mechanics, aka MAD. I will not repeat what has already been well covered.

My suggestions for changes:
Salvation: Nerf Touch of the Divine CD to 5s but make it instant cast and usable while moving. This should break up the spam and give Grace an AOE heal they can dump excess RF into while moving between targets.

Grace: Buff the Grace of Sigmar tactic until Sigmar's Radiance becomes the new AOE heal spam, as the high reward for high risk melee play. Personally, I am happy for this to remain a tactic as the minimum commitment required to be a lifetap healer. Especially if it buffs the ability beyond merely "usable".

Grace: Friendly pounce! Or charge or teleport if the tools allow. Position high in the Grace path. A friendly pounce would get you out from under the melee train and back to a friendly tank. This could replace Shield of Sigmar.

Wrath: Absence of Faith changed to be a DOT with a 50% incoming heal debuff, requiring a curse on the target. In every way a melee Shadow Sting. A large part of the acceptance some melee DoKs got was from the usefulness of their heal debuff.

Wrath: Hammer of Sigmar to cost a chunk of RF but no AP and do spirit rather than physical damage. This way both Grace and Wrath have spirit damage RF spenders appropriate to the focus of their path and the WP mechanic becomes a true dual resource system. Also an armor penetration buff for Wrath.

Other: Great weapons to bypass 10% parry rather than block. This will fix an annoyance of many 2H users.

Other: WP Exalted Defenses tactic and DoK Covenant of Celerity to be mirrored between the two classes. Destruction can stop complaining about the WP tactic while WPs get one of the other abilities that brought melee DoKs relatively closer to acceptance.

I considered suggesting that all healers get the RP/Zealot stances to solve MAD, like Grimnir did in his blog, but decided not to as there might be better solutions that do not take away from the uniqueness of RPs.

[peterthepan3]

So if I read this correctly your goal is to make the DPS WP more into a working support, rather than trying to make him a viable DPS option? I personally really like this approach, although I fear that a WP with decent scaling heals on top of what he has right now might just be too hard to take down, especially in lower Tiers

Bear in mind that Sacrifice/Grace DOK/WP is intended to be a front-line support healer. Classes should not be balanced as per how they are in lower tiers, as many classes are semi-OP in t1/t2.

I am all for these changes. The detaunt thing being exclusive to 2h/dual wield would add as an extra incentive to ditch the book, and play the class as it should be!

Any suggestions regarding Torture/Wrath trees? Personally I find they ain't too bad, but some sort of brute force/armor ignore for their execute would be ideal.

[Genisaurus]

Gear and Stats

Hybrid classes need access to sets dedicated to either spec, appropriately named. "of Piety" and "of Fury" would be my suggestions for divergent sets.

Why not change the itemization/set bonuses for what's already there? I'm not above making such a large change, after some planning and investigation.

[Azarael]

The Torture and Wrath trees are my lowest priority, because I view the healing element of DoK and WP as the fundamental thing to get right before looking at their DPS and offensive support abilities.

My suggestions for changes:
Salvation: Nerf Touch of the Divine CD to 5s but make it instant cast and usable while moving. This should break up the spam and give Grace an AOE heal they can dump excess RF into while moving between targets.

For the moment, this is too far-reaching an adjustment. Making any kind of serious modification that also hits the Salvation spec hard has no chance of passing until much later, if at all.

Grace: Buff the Grace of Sigmar tactic until Sigmar's Radiance becomes the new AOE heal spam, as the high reward for high risk melee play. Personally, I am happy for this to remain a tactic as the minimum commitment required to be a lifetap healer. Especially if it buffs the ability beyond merely "usable".

Also an option, though I do still think being forced to blow a tactic slot on being able to melee heal viably is too much.

Grace: Friendly pounce! Or charge or teleport if the tools allow. Position high in the Grace path. A friendly pounce would get you out from under the melee train and back to a friendly tank. This could replace Shield of Sigmar.

Creating new skills isn't something we're able to do at the moment, I'm afraid.

Wrath: Absence of Faith changed to be a DOT with a 50% incoming heal debuff, requiring a curse on the target. In every way a melee Shadow Sting. A large part of the acceptance some melee DoKs got was from the usefulness of their heal debuff.

Due to the way Absence of Faith works on the client, my proposal for this skill would be that it remains as it is, except that if the target is already Cursed, the heal debuff increases to 50%.

Wrath: Hammer of Sigmar to cost a chunk of RF but no AP and do spirit rather than physical damage. This way both Grace and Wrath have spirit damage RF spenders appropriate to the focus of their path and the WP mechanic becomes a true dual resource system. Also an armor penetration buff for Wrath.

AP costs are something we can't change yet.

Other: Great weapons to bypass 10% parry rather than block. This will fix an annoyance of many 2H users.

This seriously needs to be considered, as the 10% block bypass is useless.

Other: WP Exalted Defenses tactic and DoK Covenant of Celerity to be mirrored between the two classes. Destruction can stop complaining about the WP tactic while WPs get one of the other abilities that brought melee DoKs relatively closer to acceptance.

I'm generally against mirroring unless it's absolutely and totally necessary to do so. That and there's no buff that I can draw from to implement a theoretical 20% snare on PoD.

I considered suggesting that all healers get the RP/Zealot stances to solve MAD, like Grimnir did in his blog, but decided not to as there might be better solutions that do not take away from the uniqueness of RPs.

Agreed with him there. There are other ways to solve MAD for the Archmage, and I think tying the MAD solution for WP and DoK to actually attacking targets would be better.

[Azarael]

Gear and Stats

Hybrid classes need access to sets dedicated to either spec, appropriately named. "of Piety" and "of Fury" would be my suggestions for divergent sets.

Why not change the itemization/set bonuses for what's already there? I'm not above making such a large change, after s I me planning and investigation.

The issue for me would be set mixing. Other classes are able to mix sets to gain double stat bonuses while having the complete assurance that each set will be devoted to their useful stats (outliers notwithstanding, like WS on Zealot gear). WP and DoK should be afforded the same privilege.

For influence items it's a lot easier. Each choice within a level of influence should cater, and cater well, to one of the two playstyles.

[Sigimund]

Guard Reliance

I think this one is a simple fix, and it's a bilateral one between both WP and DoK. The Intimidating Repent and Terrifying Aura tactics should be removed, and their effects should apply to the standard detaunt if the caster is wielding a two-handed weapon (WP) or is dual wielding blades (DoK). This takes a tool that the backline spec doesn't need and shouldn't have away, and gives it to the 2H and dual wielding DoK in all circumstances - thus providing a concrete benefit to opting to use offensive weapons. It also means that melee DoK and WP aren't as dependent on Guard and that it's less effective on them if it is given.

A good idea but there are 1H+book combinations with melee stats at the SC vendors and it would be a shame to kill off that variation on Grace gearing. No group will tolerate a healer that heals well in melee but zero when moving to a new target or running for his life and books allowed for offspec heals in this situation. I used Divine Fury and geared for pure melee but it was better than nothing.

Another possibility would be to add this effect to a tactic that no Salvation WP would ever use (eg Fanaticism, Divine Fury) or have the AOE detaunt apply an outgoing heal debuff to the user.

Grace of Sigmar

That tactic should, as the OP proposed, be absorbed into the basic healing skill. As aforesaid, a tactic affecting a single skill should make that skill awesome. It shouldn't merely serve to make it viable.

Lifetap Mechanics

Honestly, this one is over my head. I need to hear suggestions on this, because I'm not really sure what to do. I think a general chance to 10% parry strikethrough on two-handers (as opposed to block strikethrough) could be of some assistance here. If casted heals are given a means of working with the melee spec, it might not be necessary to change anything more.

There are tactics in the game that make certain abilities undefendable. If the current Grace of Sigmar effect was made baseline to Sigmar's Radiance there would be room for the tactic to make this attack undefendable (and/or other effects as needed). As long as it scaled with melee stats the portion of the Sigmar's Radiance heal that is not tied to damage could be adjusted to achieve a minimum viable level that was not affected by armor or detaunts.

Multiple Attribute Dependence

This has to be solved in a way that doesn't allow book WP to benefit. My original proposal for this was as a stacking buff which applies when dealing single-target melee damage and causes a portion of the user's Strength to also count towards Willpower for x seconds, to ensure that playing offensively meant continually having to go in and fight to power Willpower heals and prevent abuse of Supplication / Blood Offering.

This could work very well. To iterate on an earlier point, melee priests need to be able to heal both as they melee and while they are looking for something to melee. So as long this buff persisted for long enough to carry your non-melee heals while you looked for a new lifetap donor it would be a very helpful change. RF starvation might be an issue but melee books and/or abusing the cleave attack could help.

Gear and Stats

Hybrid classes need access to sets dedicated to either spec, appropriately named. "of Piety" and "of Fury" would be my suggestions for divergent sets.

This exists at Sovereign level and it was a real relief to get it after leveling in mixed half sets that were tiers apart from each other. Are you proposing introducing divergent sets in lower tiers?

[Azarael]

A good idea but there are 1H+book combinations with melee stats at the SC vendors and it would be a shame to kill off that variation on Grace gearing. No group will tolerate a healer that heals well in melee but zero when moving to a new target or running for his life and books allowed for offspec heals in this situation. I used Divine Fury and geared for pure melee but it was better than nothing.

Another possibility would be to add this effect to a tactic that no Salvation WP would ever use (eg Fanaticism, Divine Fury) or have the AOE detaunt apply an outgoing heal debuff to the user.

The effect on books doesn't bother me, the reason for this being that in my view you shouldn't be using a book to frontline. It would then be making a choice between having passive RF regeneration and having the ability to frontline without reliance on Guard. As long as there's no way to cover for the requirement of Guard and how you get crushed whenever you're focused, nothing will change imo.

This also stops forays into Wrath to get Intimidating Repent from being mandatory, which is another problem I wanted to solve here.

There are tactics in the game that make certain abilities undefendable. If the current Grace of Sigmar effect was made baseline to Sigmar's Radiance there would be room for the tactic to make this attack undefendable (and/or other effects as needed). As long as it scaled with melee stats the portion of the Sigmar's Radiance heal that is not tied to damage could be adjusted to achieve a minimum viable level that was not affected by armor or detaunts.

I'd say that the undefendable element would be best attributed to Divine Assault and Rend Soul. S'R lays down sustained AoE healing but Divine Assault is used for burst, and it's a real blow when it gets defended against.

Multiple Attribute Dependence

This has to be solved in a way that doesn't allow book WP to benefit. My original proposal for this was as a stacking buff which applies when dealing single-target melee damage and causes a portion of the user's Strength to also count towards Willpower for x seconds, to ensure that playing offensively meant continually having to go in and fight to power Willpower heals and prevent abuse of Supplication / Blood Offering.

This could work very well. To iterate on an earlier point, melee priests need to be able to heal both as they melee and while they are looking for something to melee. So as long this buff persisted for long enough to carry your non-melee heals while you looked for a new lifetap donor it would be a very helpful change. RF starvation might be an issue but melee books and/or abusing the cleave attack could help.

Yes, and to link into my earlier point - if you're playing Grace you should have 250 RF whenever you disengage. If you need more RF than that to sustain your group in the backline, you should still be within Smite range or be able to Supplicate for it. Using a book for that would by no means be a necessity.

What matters is that you actually HAVE the option of throwing out heals that are as powerful as they should be, which is what I'm trying to solve here.

Gear and Stats

Hybrid classes need access to sets dedicated to either spec, appropriately named. "of Piety" and "of Fury" would be my suggestions for divergent sets.

This exists at Sovereign level and it was a real relief to get it after leveling in mixed half sets that were tiers apart from each other. Are you proposing introducing divergent sets in lower tiers?

Yeah, that's my proposition.

[bloodi]

Since we still have our hands kinda tied with how much we can change skills, i decided to take a look around other careers for what WP/DoK could steal for themselves,since as always i already forgot what can be modified, here is some probably non viable ideas:

Master rune of adamant/ritual of lunacy: A group hot that only works within x feet of where it was casted, would work thematically, only helping those in melee range with a range adjustment, would solve to an extent the issue of not being able to heal if you dont hit, as long as you got some hits in the aoe would be activated and healing even if you were cced or out of range.

Energy of Vaul/Fury of da green: Aoe damage that heals your defensive target, its completely worthless on both shaman and archmage, would not be so bad for a melee healer, with cast range and the ability to do damage to multiple targets it may save you or your defensive target for when you are just not in range of melee.

Arcing power: Whenever one of your attacks hhits an enemy, your defensive target gets healed for a 25% of that damage, once again worthless on the AM but may be a good thing on wp/dok, may inceintivize using pure damage skills and going for squishies for extra damage and thus healing.

Every Great weapon tactic: Read what it does, its great.

Challenge: I know it sounds ridiculous but hear me out, its impossible to match the healing of a pure healer, the damage of a pure dps or the cc and protection of a pure tank but he can at least have some of each, melee dok/wp dont have something to reduce opponents damage, challenge may help and well, it still has all the downsides of being a melee wp/dok and casting something that asks people to hit you in order to remove it.


So let me know what you think.