Changelog 15/11/16

[Marsares]

Really really interesting changes, Devs, and thanks for those. I do not play a WP or DOK, but it always bugged me that they were not as they were meant to be and therefore completely out of kilter with the other healers.

I do not understand the changes in its minutiae, because I don't play the class, but what does raise the hairs on the back of my neck is Ade - and I'm paraphrasing - saying that melee DOK/WP may have the highest HPS of all healers and how people are going out of their way to explain how good the classes are after these changes.

That worries me. The AM/Shaman has had a lot of changes recently - most of which I tested beforehand - but those changes mostly made their DPS modes somewhat more group-friendly. It did not dramatically alter the heal-mode, other than having the ability to toss a decent damage rotation if your mechanic is on tranquility and giving the class a bit more mobility. Generally, the class is in a much better shape than on Live, but none of its core down-falls have been addressed: stationary game-play due to long cast times and high set-backs, coupled with squishiness and the lack of a killer utility like, for example, group cleanse.

There is already a lot of talk about multiple WPs in a six-man. I appreciate this needs a lot of testing in reality, and that all this talk is at this moment conjecture and theory-crafting, however, if that is turning out to be the case than the changes have not broken the meta and WPs remain the alpha healer.

In that instance, will things be revisited? I can already not justify my AM in a six-men and have stopped playing him (besides solo DPS roaming) and my fear is that with the WP/DOK changes other healers will even more struggle to get a look-in into competitive play.

[adei]

Really really interesting changes, Devs, and thanks for those. I do not play a WP or DOK, but it always bugged me that they were not as they were meant to be and therefore completely out of kilter with the other healers.

I do not understand the changes in its minutiae, because I don't play the class, but what does raise the hairs on the back of my neck is Ade - and I'm paraphrasing - saying that melee DOK/WP may have the highest HPS of all healers and how people are going out of their way to explain how good the classes are after these changes.

That worries me. The AM/Shaman has had a lot of changes recently - most of which I tested beforehand - but those changes mostly made their DPS modes somewhat more group-friendly. It did not dramatically alter the heal-mode, other than having the ability to toss a decent damage rotation if your mechanic is on tranquility and giving the class a bit more mobility. Generally, the class is in a much better shape than on Live, but none of its core down-falls have been addressed: stationary game-play due to long cast times and high set-backs, coupled with squishiness and the lack of a killer utility like, for example, group cleanse.

There is already a lot of talk about multiple WPs in a six-man. I appreciate this needs a lot of testing in reality, and that all this talk is at this moment conjecture and theory-crafting, however, if that is turning out to be the case than the changes have not broken the meta and WPs remain the alpha healer.

In that instance, will things be revisited? I can already not justify my AM in a six-men and have stopped playing him (besides solo DPS roaming) and my fear is that with the WP/DOK changes other healers will even more struggle to get a look-in into competitive play.

Understandable, group wise I can say its very good for the healing, they still suffer from the main issues that is cc and interupts, like any other class in the game if you focus it and cc it properly, its dead. the highest HPS goes for when you are actually in those o **** moments, if you spam TE/SR your hps will be very high, but you will run out of AP fast and be forced into using RS/DA in which all it takes is an interupt followed by a KD at the right moment, and your toast, its just going to require some teamplay.

[Azarael]

In that instance, will things be revisited? I can already not justify my AM in a six-men and have stopped playing him (besides solo DPS roaming) and my fear is that with the WP/DOK changes other healers will even more struggle to get a look-in into competitive play.

Yes. We're not done with AM/Shaman yet, and lack of continued progress is mostly down to lack of power. While I dispute, of course, that AM and Shaman did not gain significantly in terms of healing from the .ex mode, especially when used correctly, I acknowledge that more can still be done.

The aim here is to make WP and DoK an example of how we mean to go on - a class with most if not all of its skills and trees "live" and viable.

[Zamoth]

The "change" of the Wp/Dok will ruin the class. It would have been better to cut down the range of the heals down to 50 feet to force ppl to fight in the frontline. As a heal dok i don´t want to run around hitting ppl, i just want to heal my group.
The dok simply lacks the ability to kite as Zealot and esp. Shaman do. So if you try and "heal" the old way you will get killed in no time. RangeKD & WL pounce ftw!
Like Tesq said before: the nerf hits too hard.

[Azarael]

The "change" of the Wp/Dok will ruin the class. It would have been better to cut down the range of the heals down to 50 feet to force ppl to fight in the frontline. As a heal dok i don´t want to run around hitting ppl, i just want to heal my group.
The dok simply lacks the ability to kite as Zealot and esp. Shaman do. So if you try and "heal" the old way you will get killed in no time. RangeKD & WL pounce ftw!
Like Tesq said before: the nerf hits too hard.

Thank you for your post based on hours of testing and experience of the new mode and complete understanding of the changes I posted. It is clear from your post that you have completely understood how the healing mode works, and down to the last detail, nothing is wrong with what you just said.

I think I'm going to moderate every critical post which does not quote from Ade's post. In fact, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Want to criticise? Make reference to what Ade posted, because I'm not interested in reading posts from people who haven't played the changes, have skimmed over the changeset, misunderstood it, not read a single previous post in the thread that isn't from someone who didn't play the changes and just want to dunk their opinion in on the last page as if this is some kind of vote. If you don't want to use the melee skillset of a class with half its skills devoted to melee, roll a Zealot, but don't try to protect a class which became overpowered precisely because it was allowed to ignore half of its skillset while keeping all the benefits designed to allow it to use that skillset.

Also, bear in mind that I can see if you play a backline WP/DoK from the account search. :^)

[Arbich]

Hybrid
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=wp; ... 4:;0:0:0:0:
All the way up for HoS for some extra damage, even without the 40% its still going to be decent with the automatic crit and extra damage from previous patch, also gives you an opportunity to swap into PoR for some surprise execute damage. Taking GoS again here because unlike DoK you don't need a tactic for the HD, so just more solid heals making you harder to kill.

Exactly this build seems too strong. Your opinion as an experienced dps-DoK (and WP?), what do you lose regarding heal/dps with this skillset (and 2 skill points in reserve) when you play dps-WP? This skillset looks like jack of all trades device (if right translation of "eierlegende Wollmilchsau" ) for me.

[adei]

Hybrid
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=wp; ... 4:;0:0:0:0:
All the way up for HoS for some extra damage, even without the 40% its still going to be decent with the automatic crit and extra damage from previous patch, also gives you an opportunity to swap into PoR for some surprise execute damage. Taking GoS again here because unlike DoK you don't need a tactic for the HD, so just more solid heals making you harder to kill.

Exactly this build seems too strong. Your opinion as an experienced dps-DoK (and WP?), what do you lose regarding heal/dps with this skillset (and 2 skill points in reserve) when you play dps-WP? This skillset looks like jack of all trades device (if right translation of "eierlegende Wollmilchsau" ) for me.

Basically all I will lose is soulfire (I know, but meh its something to pre cast and build RF) and GS, so basically just sacrificing some damage, and if I'm slotting GoS I'm likely not using bludgeon, so my damage is going to take a big hit there as well. You are basically sacrificing damage under the assumption that you will be swapping to PoD even more, comes down to if you want more damage or more healing. Taking GoS is basically admitting you are going to lose some damage by using SR instead, but again its all going to be situational and how long you can maintain in PoR without having to use SR over bludgeon.

[Tesq]

-sw change will results into not real change they could crit me for 3970 two days ago.

This only happens with M2/VoN, and assuming you don't dodge FA. The rest of the time, it is not worth using FA because of 3s cast time + nerfed tactic.

So now the tactic is back and FA will do more damage outside of M2/VoN combo, making it more viable. However, you won't see crazy 7k+ (or more) Festerbombs due to the damage cap. You will see 4k at most.

ah i didn't think about it, so this is even a buff to sw out of m2 then ? ok..........

[Freyn]

Tested dok melee tho and I dont think you get str from will power (or did I read notes wrong?)

Mmm, with .ab ex on my strength stat does not change. My willpower goes up when the stacking buff appears but my strength on stat sheet doesn't move at any point.

I've been playing my DoK as sacrifice spec on live and ror, treating it as a hybrid DPS/Support, heals less than a full healer but compensates by doing some damage as well, albeit less than a regular DPS. From some testing and looking at numbers it would appear that it is now intended as a full healer with reduced damage over the current sac spec. For me at least, the damage applied while healing was the pay-off for putting yourself into harms way, so I'm unsure how I feel about that reduction. The ability to cast decent heals while in 'melee mode' but without being in actual melee range is nice, although it could be suggested that the lack of it was the counter-balance to it being a dps/healer mix.

Shall see how it fares over the next few days/weeks, is there a time-frame on how long the .ab ex changes are intended to run before changes/implementation?

[Azarael]

.ex modes run for as long as is necessary to confirm the following:

- Class remains viable (or if was underpowered, was improved)
- Secondary objectives regarding skillcap were met