Is this the end for the RunePriest ?

[georgehabadasher]

Hi

If I understood correctly, the RP will undergo a phenomenal nerf. So I’m wondering if I should stop leveling mine and switch to the AM instead ?

"Phenomenal nerf" is an overexageration. As it currently stands on the proposed PTS patch notes, both Zealot and RP will lose around ~6% healing output in their rotation, and exchange some parts of their utility for others (trading more consistent Absorb Shield + Blessing of Grungni/Chaos procs on teammates for less consistent procs + better secondary effects on all their Master Runes/Rituals).

In my eyes this is not a huge nerf by itself, however when viewed in context of all the other healer class changes (net buffs) it can be underwhelming.

The balance team is aware of that and their last statement regarding Zeal/RP in the PTS Update 1 to the patch notes is this:

On behalf of the team, I would like to thank everyone who contributed with constructive feedback on our PTS patch notes, as well as to those who found and reported bugs they encountered on the PTS server. Based on your feedback we have made some adjustments. We have also taken your feedback on the Zealot's Rituals and Runepriest's Master Runes to heart, but are still considering the best course of action for those abilities.

While you are free to do as you'd like regarding class choice (especially if some of the reworked healers seems more interesting to you), but I wouldn't worry to much until we see where the Zealot/Runepriest changes end up on the PTS. For now they are still a bit up in the air it seems.

How did you calculate that 6% healing reduction?

[leftayparxoun]

"Phenomenal nerf" is an overexageration. As it currently stands on the proposed PTS patch notes, both Zealot and RP will lose around ~6% healing output in their rotation, and exchange some parts of their utility for others (trading more consistent Absorb Shield + Blessing of Grungni/Chaos procs on teammates for less consistent procs + better secondary effects on all their Master Runes/Rituals).

How did you calculate that 6% healing reduction?

You can find the analysis here (2nd half of that comment):
viewtopic.php?t=55469&start=110#p570968

I basically compared the old and new average healing values based on a current BIS Zealot build. Then I set up a skill rotation for both old and new versions of the class and compared the average healing output of that build.

Something I did not touch upon in that comment is that before BIS, nothing changes. A Zealot on PvE BIS (VW-Sent-Beastlord mix) will have around the same (184.6) Healing Bonus as BIS geared one. It's mostly the survavibility and heal crit that increases.
If anything, on builds before BIS, the extra 10% heal crit from the new Ritual of Lunacy should equalize things even more (if the Zealot can stay within range of it for it's duration).

Oh, and in case you are wondering how things would change if you were to use other skills as fillers instead of Tzeetch's Cordial (which had a 1.5% increase in healing) :

• Dark Medicine's equilibrium between old and new patch is at 140 Healing Bonus for 5 Mastery points in the tree --> at 186.4 HB that is a 4.4% heal increase of that skill

• No changes in healing for Flash of Chaos, or for Dust of Pandemonium (DoP). Only difference would be not having the Increasing Impetus proc up since that would lower the cast-time of DoP to 1.875 seconds --> 33.3% heal increase (on a per-second basis). This difference will rarely be the case obviously (in the linked comment, I calculated 50% uptime of Increasing Impetus for Old Zealot and 40% uptime for new Zealot)

• Elixir of Dark Blessings's equilibrium between old and new patch is at 137.7 Healing Bonus for 5 Mastery points in the tree --> at 186.4 HB that is a 3.3% heal increase of that skill

I'd expect the ~6% figure to remain consistent regardless of what you choose to use in your rotation.

[makh]

It nerfs an already underperforming class while again buffing up the 2 destro healers that have been OP since live...

You must be joking....
Right now RP/zea are close to best healers on both sides, bringing awesome heals and utility to their groups.
Regarding the patch notes looks like the ones Who got thr bests new toys are wp/dok followed by AM....so i cant find these 2 destro op healers...

Answering the OP, i was leveling a RP myself and switched to AM....the worst part of being an am is thats you are the really easy to spot and Focus in rvr...

The main reason they are wanted is because you know you will get only heals. The AM and WP both can do more than heals, and do it very well. The RP is a one trick pony that can easily be outhealed by both the AM and WP regularly. Nerfing the RP even more while making the other healers more dps is insane. As is it it takes 4-6 evenly leveled Order to take down ONE solo Shammy, while that Shammy is also taking out the 4-6 Order. While the RP dies as soon as a tank looks at it, let alone a DPS class. Been playing RP since live, I love that it's a healing only class, but to say it's the best or compare it to the others is just nonsense.

My comments will focus on rp healers not solo rp dps. On its own, a rp has more defensive tools (e.g., stoutnesss of stone, ancestral inheritance, sundered motion) than a zealot. If you find your rp dying to a single tank or dps, you could wear some warlord, buy some direct heal and hot potions, and invest in more defensive talis, renown tactics (e.g., futile strikes, deft defender, reflexes), and buffs (e.g., linis). Just because a rp can get soft cap willpower, 100+ heal power, and/or 30-40%+ heal crit, it doesn't mean that you have to gear your healer that way and become more and more squishy. If you're using super bright dye colors, your character may stand out more than others in mass rvr. However, the most important part to surviving as a rp is good positioning, kiting, and good communications with your teammates (e.g., switch guard to me I'm being melee trained, can you punt some dps away from me). If you're having trouble figuring out why your rp is repeatedly dying in the lakes one day, it helps to ask guildies for their feedback and see if they have any insights (e.g., could you be overextending, are you not staying mobile enough, are you not avoiding the "death ball" in mass rvr).

[Sulorie]

It nerfs an already underperforming class while again buffing up the 2 destro healers that have been OP since live...

You must be joking....
Right now RP/zea are close to best healers on both sides, bringing awesome heals and utility to their groups.
Regarding the patch notes looks like the ones Who got thr bests new toys are wp/dok followed by AM....so i cant find these 2 destro op healers...

Answering the OP, i was leveling a RP myself and switched to AM....the worst part of being an am is thats you are the really easy to spot and Focus in rvr...

...As is it it takes 4-6 evenly leveled Order to take down ONE solo Shammy, while that Shammy is also taking out the 4-6 Order. ...

You lost me here tbh. Don't blame collective failure on a single enemy class.

[Ashoris]

.....

You lost me here tbh. Don't blame collective failure on a single enemy class.

that was the best comment today !

[wardfan220]

You must be joking....
Right now RP/zea are close to best healers on both sides, bringing awesome heals and utility to their groups.
Regarding the patch notes looks like the ones Who got thr bests new toys are wp/dok followed by AM....so i cant find these 2 destro op healers...

Answering the OP, i was leveling a RP myself and switched to AM....the worst part of being an am is thats you are the really easy to spot and Focus in rvr...

...As is it it takes 4-6 evenly leveled Order to take down ONE solo Shammy, while that Shammy is also taking out the 4-6 Order. ...

You lost me here tbh. Don't blame collective failure on a single enemy class.

How did I lose you? The shammy can solo multiple Order classes at the same time all while they are "trying" to kill the shammy...

[Rapzel]

...As is it it takes 4-6 evenly leveled Order to take down ONE solo Shammy, while that Shammy is also taking out the 4-6 Order. ...

You lost me here tbh. Don't blame collective failure on a single enemy class.

How did I lose you? The shammy can solo multiple Order classes at the same time all while they are "trying" to kill the shammy...

No they can't, if you and 5 of your friends can't kill a shaman it's pure skill issue.

[Sulorie]

...As is it it takes 4-6 evenly leveled Order to take down ONE solo Shammy, while that Shammy is also taking out the 4-6 Order. ...

You lost me here tbh. Don't blame collective failure on a single enemy class.

How did I lose you? The shammy can solo multiple Order classes at the same time all while they are "trying" to kill the shammy...

If you try playing a "healing" heal class, you will notice that your chances to keep your team alive go up, if those players on their own do everything possible to make healing them easier. E.g. using skills to reduce incoming damage, move out of high pressure zones or just wait after revive until their health is back up before going in again. It's a combination of the healers and the healing recipients ability to support each other.

If now a single enemy class, no matter what, singlehandedly kills a group of 4-6 players, may it even be just 3, then all of them collectively played wrong in order to make it happen in the first place to be killed. A single healer in that group would already be able to keep them alive, especially if those players use skills to reduce incoming damage. Potions are healing too, don't forget that. Especially if you play solo, your potions play a big role in your ability to stay alive.
There are plenty details missing to judge the entire situation like ranks and class distribution, I would ask you to record it if a similar situation happens in the future since this would be a great case study to tell you by the second what everyone involved could have done better.
In rvr there are 3 outcomes when both sides meet, either side is killed, all ignore each other or they disengage if a fight can't be won.
If you vastly outnumber your opponent and the fight has already started, then the best result for the opposing shaman is to get away alive.
If the shaman manages to win, then all involved players basically "helped" the shaman to defeat them.

[Albais]

Something I did not touch upon in that comment is that before BIS, nothing changes. A Zealot on PvE BIS (VW-Sent-Beastlord mix) will have around the same (184.6) Healing Bonus as BIS geared one. It's mostly the survavibility and heal crit that increases.
If anything, on builds before BIS, the extra 10% heal crit from the new Ritual of Lunacy should equalize things even more (if the Zealot can stay within range of it for it's duration).

As a sidenote since this thread is specifically about runepriests: as of now, the powerful 10% crit buff is zealot-specific (same as the nice recurring absorb effect from the new Ritual of Superiority which is also not mirrored).

Extra toughness from the new Master Rune of Stability and occasional automatic cleanses via the new Master Rune of Adamant are okay but not quite on the same level.

[leftayparxoun]

As a sidenote since this thread is specifically about runepriests: as of now, the powerful 10% crit buff is zealot-specific (same as the nice recurring absorb effect from the new Ritual of Superiority which is also not mirrored).

Extra toughness from the new Master Rune of Stability and occasional automatic cleanses via the new Master Rune of Adamant are okay but not quite on the same level.

That is correct in a vacuum.
Instead of ~6% less average healing ouput as for Zealot, Runepriest will be having around ~7.5% less.
However this does not factor in how RP's healing was already slightly better than Zealot's due to KOTBS' Dirty Tricks:
With a permanent Dirty Tricks buff for a BIS Runie, the old rotation, described in my initial analysis, would result in 2882 heal/s (compared to Zealot's 2829/s) while the new rotation would lead to 2668 heal/s (compared to Zealot's 2651/s)

If Runepriest were to have a 10% crit buff on their Master Rune, this would essentially compete with KOTBS' Dirty Tricks since they wouldn't stack. Therefore the bonus of such a Master Rune would effectively be 5% instead of 10% for most Order comps.
I know very well that for BT warbands this is not an option, but I do not think that racial warbands are the main point of focus during the balancing process.

Speaking of the non-mirrored Master Rune effects now, the auto-cleanse every 2 seconds seems incredibly powerful imo in static situations (keep/fort defenses/sieges, city fights) and in general a great tool to stop ST focus (that is usually enhanced by applying key debuffs on a target before the burst). For Keep/Fort defences specifically it will take a huge amount of pressure off the party healers, allowing them to cross heal (HoTs) much more effectively. The 10s uptime is an issue, yes, but it should add up the more RPs there are in a warband.

The TOU buff one (180 to 240 Toughness depending on Mastery point allocation) is in most cases weaker than Zealot's absorb shield counterpart (291 to 375 absorb every 2 s depending on Mastery point allocation). I believe that it will ouperform Zealot's version in certain cases though:

• When the incoming damage rate is extreme (e.g. in blob v blob fights where the TTK is around 5 seconds or less)

• When the party already has a lot of other sources of absorb shields due to how Damage Absorption works; it does not factor in armor/resistances, just Toughness for the mitigation. This means that it will pair very well with Warrior Priest's new Absorb Prayer, their (now more frequent) Divine Light and of course with RP's own Absorb Shield procs from Ancestor's Echo too.

• Against heavy ST damage on a party member(s). This is because the vast majority of damage skills have high Damage Bonus scaling coefficients (1.5 or higher). In comparison, most AOE attacks have a scaling of 1.0 or lower.

Conversely, the cases where the Toughness buff will be less useful overall are:

• Against mostly AOE damage, specifically from Sorcs and especially Mara. Both of those classes have very low DB coeffiecients in their most important skills (0.67 on Disastrous Cascade and 0.38 on Wrecking Ball), meaning that Toughness has much less effectiveness against them as a mitigation tool. In comparison, both of those AOE classes are hard-countered by absorb shields which basically remove their base damage before it can either crit or go through armor/resists.

• When you already have a Toughness Aura from a KOTBS in the party (since they won't stack and it will just overwrite the Aura when active).

Overall I think the Runepriest is not that much worse off than Zealot but, similarly to Zealot, the new utility trade-offs make them very effective but conditionally. I think that can be a good approach as it does not hinder different party compositions (previously almost any party without a Zeal/RP would be unoptimal), but their new kits do need some adjustments, which thankfully the devs are aware of.