Albais wrote: Tue Mar 11, 2025 8:23 am
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.
