[PTS] Patch Notes 28/02/2025

[Magusar]

IMO i would put hammer of sigmar/guilty soul the way it was before. Make divine impact the new ability that use fury and use the sigmar radiance animation for it.

I like it better this way too, but I think it's unlikely.
One of the main reasons for the Guilty Soul rework, as i can see, is the desire for dps wp to be useful in wb(spam smite + incoming damage buff). New Hammer of Sigmar - "every class need to be different". Last point not bad 100%, but it will be hurt.

New Guilty Soul is a strict downgrade for the AOE output of 2h WP compared to the old version:

• New version:

  Guilty Soul - Reworked to: Any time you critically hit with a direct damage ability or hit with Weight of Guilt, your target will suffer an additional 4 * (125 + 0.75*DB) Spirit Damage over 12 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times. Each stack of Guilty Soul on the target increases the damage of your Hammer of Sigmar by 10%.

• Old version:

  Guilty Soul - Any time you critically hit with a direct damage ability, your target will suffer an additional 4 * (175 + 1.0*DB) Spirit Damage over 12 seconds and if using a great weapon you gain a blessing which increases your damage from Path Of Wrath abilities and auto attacks by 5%. The blessing stacks up to 4 times.

Even if you could only spam Smite for 20s while Sigmar's Wrath was up, your damage output was quite higher before (even ignoring the Sigmar's Wrath bonuses)

The new version of Guilty Soul, and the new 2h WP in general, is pretty much built for ST damage and not for AOE pressure.

nobody talked about damage output. I talked about 2h wp profit for the others - its aoe buff damage for all not only for wp. It's clear that the direct damage from the wp has dropped, but the overall usefulness as a buffer has increased. For preassure there are other classes in this system.

[Aluviya]

I’ve been holding back on forming a strong opinion about this patch for a while now. As a main healer with all healing classes at least at RR 85, some nearing RR 90, I wanted to give it time to see how things unfold. However, I’d like to share some initial concerns from my point of view as a small-scale player, as many of these issues have likely already been voiced by others.
Looking specifically at Zealot and RP in small-scale games (scenarios, ranked, group ranked), these classes were already struggling with GCD management before the patch. They must juggle multiple tasks beyond just healing—such as maintaining good positioning, CCing enemy healers, cleansing targets, and dropping Talon when necessary.

Zealot/RP vs. DoK/WP – Cognitive Load and Playability Differences
DoK and WP, for instance, remain cognitively less taxing by design, relying on a limited set of core abilities, which can be beneficial for class learnability. Their kits require very little cooldown management while benefiting from strong, passively applied bonuses through covenants and prayers and a higher armor value which is very forgiving in terms of bad positioning. This is especially evident with the new 20% on-hit Bless for WP/DoK, which essentially provides a permanent buff that occurs passively.

Meanwhile, Zealots and RPs find themselves in a situation similar to BGs and IBs compared to other tanks—overloaded with essential skills that require constant cooldown tracking and management. As a comparison, DoK’s group healing HoT has a cooldown that almost matches its duration, making it seamlessly playable alongside just one additional healing ability with a 5-second cooldown. Those are essentially the only important cooldowns a DoK needs to manage.

In contrast, Zealots now have to juggle:

• Three ritual cooldowns

• A group HoT cooldown

• Upkeeping Marks/Runes individually

• Additional abilities depending on their build ~ Stagger~ Winds of Insanity

This results in significantly more GCD&CD micromanagement while also being inferior defensively—for example, their 50% damage reduction ability can be shattered and has a very high cooldown, whereas DoK and WP now have both ST and AoE detaunts for more consistent uptime while also having a significantly higher armor and also the luxury now to go into discipline tactics due to their regular defensive kit.

Build Diversity or Forced Specialization?
To put it plainly, I already fear that RP and Zealot no longer have a kit that feels enjoyable to play under these changes. The class was already micromanagement-heavy before, and this rework might exacerbate the issue. Additionally, I fail to see how this genuinely increases build diversity—instead, it seems to further enforce the necessity of speccing into master runes/rituals, making them feel even more mandatory rather than allowing for viable alternative build.

The Rising Power of AM/Shaman and Zealot/RP’s Declining Relevance
Furthermore, when considering changes to other classes, such as Shaman and AM, it seems Zealot/RP is being pushed out of relevance due to poor playability.

Let me explain:

With mandatory rituals, you are forced to opt out of one of the 13-point abilities—either Winds of Insanity or Stagger—which also means potentially giving up on core bonuses such as absorb tactic which AM and Shaman do not have either.

• Why take Stagger on Zealot (which has a decent chance of being disrupted) when AM and Shaman receive an undefendable silence that seamlessly integrates into their new mechanics as it consumes tranquility?

• Why go for Zealot bless tactic when rituals tactic appliance has been nerfed - while the 20% On-Hit tactic Bless on DoK/WP is most likely permaup.

The Issue With AM/Shaman’s DPS and Their Over-Simplified Playstyle
On the test server, I strongly dislike how the current mechanic seamlessly aids the DPS playstyle for both AM and Shaman, which was already overly simplified (apply several DoTs, then direct hit - check screenshot). Essentially the DPS AM/Shaman are now officially a 1 Button Gaming experience where you could use the ability sequencer to deal quite broken amount of damage.



Why is this problematic you might ask (I won't even go into NA timezone gameplay)? Neither Sorc nor BW, despite their high burst potential, can achieve comparable numbers on a similar channeling ability despite having absurdly high downsides - here again we see how difficult it is to reach "balance" when changing one class can affect other classes heavily.
We’ve already seen situations in the past where Sorc, even before its class mechanic nerfs, was abandoned in favor of DPS Shaman. Why?
DPS Shamans simply brought more to the table—AoE detaunt, auto-detaunt, running tactics, own healdebuff and resistance debuff, and the ability to self-heal and support teammates.
This patch seems to be pushing that advantage even further while reducing skill expression for AM/Shaman players.

Tranquility vs. Force – A System That Rewards One Side More Than the Other
I won’t go too in-depth on this, but after playing AM and Shaman as a healer for over a decade, I can confidently say that building Force under the old mechanic was rewarding, even though few players fully utilized it.

Previously, it required sacrificing GCDs to maintain better healing throughput rather than just padding stats, making it a conscious decision with a trade-off. Now, however, building Force feels virtually pointless compared to how Tranquility is rewarded - which leads to the next point....

Why Tranquility Feels Much Stronger Than Force
First of all, you can already enter every game with five stacks of Tranquility, meaning your first ability that consumes it will always be improved.

Given the way healers function, you naturally:

• Maintain HoTs on at least 2-3 targets

• Cleanse every 5 seconds

• Use AP drain on enemies

➡ This means you passively reach five stacks of Tranquility very quickly and very often.

The rewards for Tranquility also seem significantly more valuable, such as:
An additional HoT on your group heal & reduced cast time
Making your ST heal instant
Allowing your channel heal to be cast on the move while increasing its effectiveness by 30%
Undefendable Silence

When we look at Force, glaring inconsistencies arise.

A prime example:
➡ Why buff Phoenix’s Rejuvenation, which heals approximately 200 HP/sec (based on Sovereign AM gear) by X% the resulting healing value is minimal, when you could instead use an improved AP drain that restores AP to your entire group?

In practice, I also struggle to see a realistic scenario where either a Healer or a DPS AM/Shaman would be able to cast five consecutive direct-hit abilities without interruption to build Force. As for both healing and DPS, dropping DoTs, HoTs, or cleanses in favor of maintaining Force stacks is simply not practical.

Final Thoughts – Maybe a Step in the Wrong Direction
The new class mechanic means we've moved from a system that was difficult to utilize to one that is now automatically applied in a weaker version (which is an improvement in usability).
More importantly, from a healer’s perspective, building Force simply isn’t worth it. Consuming five stacks of Force to improve something like a single-target HoT is a complete waste of a GCD in the current meta, where many classes have core access to Shatter Enchantment (SE).
If SE is utilized even occasionally, keeping any HoTs alive—especially with at least two disenchanters on the enemy team—is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst.
Ironically, the old class mechanic actually provided some safety in this regard—building Force allowed for faster casting of spells with a buildup time, and when combined with the Triumphant proc, healers were able to keep their group alive without relying on HoTs.
This was something I personally wished/expected to be addressed in this patch, yet instead, certain classes—like DPS DoK—now receive additional bonuses for using Shatter Enchantment (...question mark?).

edit:
My personal wish is for all three healer archetypes to be equally challenging to play while maintaining distinct depth in their mechanics. I see a lot of potential in both the new and old class mechanics of AM/Shaman, but currently, none of the healers are truly on par in terms of difficulty vs. outcome.

As I previously mentioned, nothing inherently changed about DoK and WP—their kit remains largely the same:
➡ Hit/pray to build class mechanic & use mechanic to heal

There’s no tactical depth in this approach—nothing comparable to what AM/Shaman must now manage or the GCD struggles that RP and Zealot continue to face.
edit2:
After extensive testing I am pretty much convinced the way healing abilities scale now will break the game heavily. There are certain classes such as DoK who are able to cast 3,8k healings on a 0.5 sec cast ability or 3,1k group healing in 1 sec in certain circumstances. I don't really think it's healthy for the game to change scaling values with Healpower especially considering that all other DPS archetypes have not a similar scaling and if they have - there is still armor or resistances preventing insanely high outcome values. For healing what you cast is what you get, there are no resistances or armor that scales down the values. I do especially feel also that DoK and WP are extremely overbuffed - as the only healerclass that was already tankier by nature due to higher armor tier. Giving these classes perma access to 25% healcrit values with tactics seems not healthy to me and draws out RP/Zealot from having any viablity. I already see that many DoK's and WP's will become the new backline healer that are semi Healpower specced as there is then nearly no difference between them and other healers - just factually way more healing for free.

[leftayparxoun]

nobody talked about damage output. I talked about 2h wp profit for the others - its aoe buff damage for all not only for wp. It's clear that the direct damage from the wp has dropped, but the overall usefulness as a buffer has increased. For preassure there are other classes in this system.

How is it an AOE damage buff for all?
The description in the patchnotes states:

Guilty Soul - Reworked to: Any time you critically hit with a direct damage ability or hit with Weight of Guilt, your target will suffer an additional 4 * (125 + 0.75*DB) Spirit Damage over 12 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times. Each stack of Guilty Soul on the target increases the damage of your Hammer of Sigmar by 10%.

Outiside the dot, it basically only buffs your new ST ability

Hammer of Sigmar - Now at 9 pt in Path of Wrath and reworked: Damaging. 0 AP. 5 ft range. No CD. Requires Great Weapon. Requires 80 Righteous Fury. - With the power of Sigmar, you hit your enemy with a devastating blow, dealing (375 + 1.5*DB + 1.5*WDPS) damage.

Does it somehow work differently on the PTS than described here?

[Magusar]

nobody talked about damage output. I talked about 2h wp profit for the others - its aoe buff damage for all not only for wp. It's clear that the direct damage from the wp has dropped, but the overall usefulness as a buffer has increased. For preassure there are other classes in this system.

How is it an AOE damage buff for all?
The description in the patchnotes states:

Guilty Soul - Reworked to: Any time you critically hit with a direct damage ability or hit with Weight of Guilt, your target will suffer an additional 4 * (125 + 0.75*DB) Spirit Damage over 12 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times. Each stack of Guilty Soul on the target increases the damage of your Hammer of Sigmar by 10%.

Outiside the dot, it basically only buffs your new ST ability

Hammer of Sigmar - Now at 9 pt in Path of Wrath and reworked: Damaging. 0 AP. 5 ft range. No CD. Requires Great Weapon. Requires 80 Righteous Fury. - With the power of Sigmar, you hit your enemy with a devastating blow, dealing (375 + 1.5*DB + 1.5*WDPS) damage.

Does it somehow work differently on the PTS than described here?

When i tested the description of Guilty Soul directly on target was something like "Incoming damage is increased 10% /20% /30%(Depend on stuck), the dot deals x damage of spitit damage". I was surprised when I saw this. Wanted to do screenshot, but cant login on test anymore - client crashed with application error.

[Everdin]

Ritual of Superiority: Healing. 35 AP. 80 ft range. Instant. 30s CD. You may only have 1 Ritual active. - A Ritual of dominance that lasts for 10 seconds, every 2 seconds group members within 50 feet gain a shield that will absorb 375 damage for up to 10 seconds. Heals group members within 50 feet for (168+ 0.8*HB) every 5 seconds.

2 sec looks like very often for an absorb proc, removing 375 damage for almost every gcd for 10 sec is not a minor problem.

Maybe increaste value a bit but set it on 3 sec proc? Not sure if 240 toughness take away that much damage

[yoluigi]

nobody talked about damage output. I talked about 2h wp profit for the others - its aoe buff damage for all not only for wp. It's clear that the direct damage from the wp has dropped, but the overall usefulness as a buffer has increased. For preassure there are other classes in this system.

How is it an AOE damage buff for all?
The description in the patchnotes states:

Guilty Soul - Reworked to: Any time you critically hit with a direct damage ability or hit with Weight of Guilt, your target will suffer an additional 4 * (125 + 0.75*DB) Spirit Damage over 12 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times. Each stack of Guilty Soul on the target increases the damage of your Hammer of Sigmar by 10%.

Outiside the dot, it basically only buffs your new ST ability

Hammer of Sigmar - Now at 9 pt in Path of Wrath and reworked: Damaging. 0 AP. 5 ft range. No CD. Requires Great Weapon. Requires 80 Righteous Fury. - With the power of Sigmar, you hit your enemy with a devastating blow, dealing (375 + 1.5*DB + 1.5*WDPS) damage.

Does it somehow work differently on the PTS than described here?

When i tested the description of Guilty Soul directly on target was something like "Incoming damage is increased 10% /20% /30%(Depend on stuck), the dot deals x damage of spitit damage". I was surprised when I saw this. Wanted to do screenshot, but cant login on test anymore - client crashed with application error.

It only buff hammer of sigmar dmg. Before ALL your wrath abilities had 20% more dmg + auto attack dmg (40% of my dmg comes from my auto attack) it's a big nerf. Like i said earlier it's fine we remove 25% armor pen but cant nerf all the other stuff. Unless you can put 5 tactics goodluck.

-just keep the armor debuff to replace our 25% armor pen we had. The post earlier i said was pretty much what was needed to make the class good.

¨ IMO i would put hammer of sigmar/guilty soul the way it was before. Make divine impact the new ability that use fury and use the sigmar radiance animation for it - quote
we still lose more dmg but we got more utility in group for the armor debuff.
i mean could be tweak to guilty soul 3 dot instead of 4 etc. But let's face it wp 2h was in the lowest tier class meta.
also hammer of sigmar is 10 seconds cooldown. soo it's more of a big flat dmg at the right time while divine impact would be more of a rf dump for extra dmg. could make it cost 80 rf like the new HOS. more synergy in abilities Right now divine impact is in a weird spot.

[Magusar]

How is it an AOE damage buff for all?
The description in the patchnotes states:



Outiside the dot, it basically only buffs your new ST ability



Does it somehow work differently on the PTS than described here?

When i tested the description of Guilty Soul directly on target was something like "Incoming damage is increased 10% /20% /30%(Depend on stuck), the dot deals x damage of spitit damage". I was surprised when I saw this. Wanted to do screenshot, but cant login on test anymore - client crashed with application error.

It only buff hammer of sigmar dmg. Before ALL your wrath abilities had 20% more dmg + auto attack dmg (40% of my dmg comes from my auto attack) it's a big nerf. Like i said earlier it's fine we remove 25% armor pen but cant nerf all the other stuff. Unless you can put 5 tactics goodluck.

-just keep the armor debuff to replace our 25% armor pen we had. The post earlier i said was pretty much what was needed to make the class good.

¨ IMO i would put hammer of sigmar/guilty soul the way it was before. Make divine impact the new ability that use fury and use the sigmar radiance animation for it - quote
we still lose more dmg but we got more utility in group for the armor debuff.
i mean could be tweak to guilty soul 3 dot instead of 4 etc. But let's face it wp 2h was in the lowest tier class meta.
also hammer of sigmar is 10 seconds cooldown. soo it's more of a big flat dmg at the right time while divine impact would be more of a rf dump for extra dmg. could make it cost 80 rf like the new HOS. more synergy in abilities Right now divine impact is in a weird spot.

Well, if it just a tooltip - new dps wp is bad from all sides if compare with current dps wp and dps new Dok.

[Reivren27]

When i tested the description of Guilty Soul directly on target was something like "Incoming damage is increased 10% /20% /30%(Depend on stuck), the dot deals x damage of spitit damage". I was surprised when I saw this. Wanted to do screenshot, but cant login on test anymore - client crashed with application error.

It only buff hammer of sigmar dmg. Before ALL your wrath abilities had 20% more dmg + auto attack dmg (40% of my dmg comes from my auto attack) it's a big nerf. Like i said earlier it's fine we remove 25% armor pen but cant nerf all the other stuff. Unless you can put 5 tactics goodluck.

-just keep the armor debuff to replace our 25% armor pen we had. The post earlier i said was pretty much what was needed to make the class good.

¨ IMO i would put hammer of sigmar/guilty soul the way it was before. Make divine impact the new ability that use fury and use the sigmar radiance animation for it - quote
we still lose more dmg but we got more utility in group for the armor debuff.
i mean could be tweak to guilty soul 3 dot instead of 4 etc. But let's face it wp 2h was in the lowest tier class meta.
also hammer of sigmar is 10 seconds cooldown. soo it's more of a big flat dmg at the right time while divine impact would be more of a rf dump for extra dmg. could make it cost 80 rf like the new HOS. more synergy in abilities Right now divine impact is in a weird spot.

Well, if it just a tooltip - new dps wp is bad from all sides if compare with current dps wp and dps new Dok.

I totally agree, wp is complete garbage based on these preliminary changes.

[Hugatsaga]

Commenting only heal specs and lifetap AM/Sham since I didn't test others too much (although 2h WP & DPS dok heal channel seem a bit bonkers right now). Also with WP/DoK I speak mostly about WP but since buffs are more or less mirrored, most of it applies to DoK as well.

Pros:
-Trying to make lifetap AM/Sham spec viable. Really appreciate this one. Time will tell if it actually works out but let's see. +1 or +2 viable specs & playstyles is big and makes me somewhat excited to new patch regardless of the negative stuff I'm going to say later in this post.
-Bunch of new cool abilities
-Sacrificing renewal seems cool
-Heal AM is going to be fun (might even be OP)

Cons:
-After patch nobody in their right mind is going to play heal RP (if they like winning at least)
-Willpower change: Makes hybrid builds even harder to pull off (not that they were popular anyway but still).
-Zeal/RP Rituals going 30 -> 10 sec for already GCD starved classes especially after GCD change while back. Also why does every other class gets plethora of buffs while RP/Zeal especially RP gets the middle finger? Zeal to lesser extent since +10% crit for your team ritual is pretty insane and talon is still good.
-Heal WP & DoK getting like 10 buffs (well more like 8 to be precise if you count indirect ones including ini change). I agree that heal WP/DoK needed little bit of love but I think you went *a bit* overboard with this. I mean how many buffs do you want? WP was already really good in hands of a good player (good WP players like Halta for instance were already pumping pretty insane heals with it):

WP buffs
Willpower change alone is a BIG indirect buff for WP (relative vs other healers) since its naturally tankiest healer with medium armor. Even more so with 2 core detaunts now. It's also mobile now with divine aid castable on move and Sigmars Shield not requiring melee attack is huge so you have big save with no preconditions castable from downtown. That on top of existing big conditional save (m1 reverse talon). That being said, you still probably want to stay in close whenever possible (and you probably often can thanks to 2 detaunts) so you can weave in the new ability that buffs heal by +35% heal and proc exalted defences from random stuff (I assume you'll be parrying a lot with ws-initiative change) for more +% healing. Also if you want more +% healing you can press new off gcd for yet another +25% on RF heals. And in case you want even more +% healing you can slot the new United in Prayer tactic for yet another +25% extra healing. I haven't tested which one of these stack with each other but even if they don't stack, you consistently have some +% healing buff up and if all/most of them stack its going to bats**t crazy. Divine Warding got nerfed which is something but you have so many good tactics & 2 detaunts that you dont need that anyway.

I know that certain balance team member is WP/DoK main, doesn't play RP and has campaigned to make WP great again for ages but come on man. Most of the buffs in vacuum are cool and innovative (imo pretty much all of them apart from removing Sigmar's shield positional/melee attack requirement) and I'd have been fine with giving WP/DoK any 1 or even 2 of those but 8~ is a bit too much.

[ismetto]

Not trash, dealing damage is not the job of a DPS DOK or DPS WP anyway. With a DPS WP or DOK, you take a tank with you and roam in RvR—that’s normal. If a DPS DOK or WP is considered the main DPS in a group while WE/WH, Marauder/WL exist, that's just ridiculous.

The game has shifted towards RvR, and that's fine. Melee DPS damage combinations have been adjusted accordingly, and that's also normal. You have to respect the fact that small group and solo players are now a minority.

By the way, some players, when they realize they are about to die, somehow manage to retreat into the Warcamp in SCs. I have no idea how they do it.

Also, you enter an SC, and there’s no healer! No tank! So you’re forced to die. Whoever came up with the Quitter Buff, thanks. A player who gets the 10-minute quitter debuff just leaves the game anyway.