[Warrior Priest] - Wrath Mastery Tree

[peterthepan3]

I am thinking about damage conversion to Spirit damage. Wrath could use slight % increase in damage output, but crit bonuses is plain OP. Remember you are healing yourself.

If you are Wrath, the only real heal you'll have is in a Grace tree. Relying on procs from dots that keep refreshing ain't really a self-sustainable form of healing.

[Sigimund]

I agree that the scope of this thread should be limited to the Wrath path and not ideas for Grace or Salvation but they still have to make sense in endgame where you have 29+ mastery points and access to everything you need from a second tree.

I do not think a Wrath review will come soon but using this spec is like playing on hardmode so here's my wall of text:

How I see the role: DPS with buffs and offhealing. In the Grace thread the goal was to make a well rounded healer but here the focus should be offensive, only healing on a support level. In my opinion, Wrath would make more sense if it was mostly never worth using willpower heals and their support healing was purely from Sigmar's Radiance and Divine Assault.

MAD: Wrath should not need to split stats. The new sets will not divide stats between melee and casting so this item can probably be dropped for Wrath.

Hammer of Sigmar: Currently lacklustre but I love the animation and sound of this and would want it to be the signature ability of Wrath. Ideally, hard hitting spirit damage costing RF rather than AP (maybe even scaling damage with RF) so that it becomes a finishing move and also has symmetry with Grace's Divine Assault. The devs can't change AP costs and I do not know if RF costs can be added but whatever can be done to bring it closer to this ideal would be great.

Absence of Faith: Just terrible. Most pressure DPS use healing debuffs and sustainability to wear down their targets. Wrath has some sustain from self heals but AoF is a joke. My suggestion: 50% if there is a curse on the target. If possible add a bit of damage, possibly as a DOT, as the original Mythic devs said they preferred not to have debuff abilities which were not also attacks. Duration, CD and damage should be inspired by what is typical on similar abilities on other careers.

Gap closing: This came up in discussion again and again, it's a real problem. Charging is one way to close a gap. Ranged snares work too. A snare could be baked directly into Judgement, maybe with 2H requirement, or it could be procced in some other way. The unavoidable comparison is the DoK snare proc aura.

Soulfire: Like Sigmar's Shield in Grace I'm happy to just leave this off the list until the devs have the power to completely redesign abilities.

Tactics: Intimidating Repent is only useful to Salvation now so move it to core and put a dps tactic in that position. Something like Brute Force or Great Weapon Mastery but pushing Wrath further away from willpower heals with another penalty to healing. The tactics bar is getting crowded though so maybe just put Fanaticism in that spot and make it more extreme with bonus strength and the reduction to casted healing rising to 50%.

End result: Wrath priests get a dangerous debuff, a hard hitting RF spender, improved anti-kiting and more damage from tactics at the cost of their viability when using willpower heals.

Apart from pure DPS, the big difference from an endgame 2H Grace/Salvation spec would be that Wrath/Grace would get more burst out of Sigmar's Radiance and Divine Assault but would not be able to maintain healing during breaks in melee or when pounding on a shield tank and would therefore not be an appropriate choice for a healer slot in a group.

[ThePollie]

Hammer of Sigmar: Currently lacklustre but I love the animation and sound of this and would want it to be the signature ability of Wrath. Ideally, hard hitting spirit damage costing RF rather than AP (maybe even scaling damage with RF) so that it becomes a finishing move and also has symmetry with Grace's Divine Assault. The devs can't change AP costs and I do not know if RF costs can be added but whatever can be done to bring it closer to this ideal would be great.
I like the idea of this costing RF, instead. Wrath lacks a meaningful way to spend RF, aside from cross-mastery abilities and spamming Healing Hand and Divine Assault.

Absence of Faith: Just terrible. Most pressure DPS use healing debuffs and sustainability to wear down their targets. Wrath has some sustain from self heals but AoF is a joke. My suggestion: 50% if there is a curse on the target. If possible add a bit of damage, possibly as a DOT, as the original Mythic devs said they preferred not to have debuff abilities which were not also attacks. Duration, CD and damage should be inspired by what is typical on similar abilities on other careers.
Agreed.

Gap closing: This came up in discussion again and again, it's a real problem. Charging is one way to close a gap. Ranged snares work too. A snare could be baked directly into Judgement, maybe with 2H requirement, or it could be procced in some other way. The unavoidable comparison is the DoK snare proc aura.
The trouble with either a charge or a ranged snare is that it doesn't deal with the ground problem - We are too easily snared, ourselves. We have no means to break them but spamming Purify and hoping nothing blocks the cleanse, or that we aren't simply snared again.

Soulfire: Like Sigmar's Shield in Grace I'm happy to just leave this off the list until the devs have the power to completely redesign abilities.
Just an internal cool down and a larger heal would do a lot for Sigmar's Shield, Soulfire is equally simple to fix. Remove the cast time, possibly increase its damage.

Tactics: Intimidating Repent is only useful to Salvation now so move it to core and put a dps tactic in that position. Something like Brute Force or Great Weapon Mastery but pushing Wrath further away from willpower heals with another penalty to healing. The tactics bar is getting crowded though so maybe just put Fanaticism in that spot and make it more extreme with bonus strength and the reduction to casted healing rising to 50%.
Great Weapon Mastery would be nice. Extra damage, better defenses. Both things Wrath lacks in.

End result: Wrath priests get a dangerous debuff, a hard hitting RF spender, improved anti-kiting and more damage from tactics at the cost of their viability when using willpower heals.

Apart from pure DPS, the big difference from an endgame 2H Grace/Salvation spec would be that Wrath/Grace would get more burst out of Sigmar's Radiance and Divine Assault but would not be able to maintain healing during breaks in melee or when pounding on a shield tank and would therefore not be an appropriate choice for a healer slot in a group.
Wrath shouldn't be using Radiance unless they're insane desperate. It's subpar outside of Grace, better off using Divine Assault and trying to simply kill their attacker.

[Koha]

Absence of Faith is one of the worst way to spend a GCD and 25 AP : no dps and only 25% debuff

Compared to the DOK tactic : 50% debuff no dps loss, no cooldown = change target, the debuff will follow. With Dual wield, chance to proc are better as always.... (debuff and snare at 65 feet ? chance is tiny but possible with the dok)

If the debuff change to 50 % on Absence of Faith, will it bother anybody ? If we add some dps like bludgeon will it change anything ?

[Azarael]

I also received a report stating that Fell Sacrifice should proc the DoK heal debuff... so it procs even on DoT ticks. It's even better than I thought.

[ThePollie]

I also received a report stating that Fell Sacrifice should proc the DoK heal debuff... so it procs even on DoT ticks. It's even better than I thought.

It does? God damn.

[Scrilian]

I also received a report stating that Fell Sacrifice should proc the DoK heal debuff... so it procs even on DoT ticks. It's even better than I thought.

It does? God damn.

As far as I remember dot tick was never a hit.

[ThePollie]

I also received a report stating that Fell Sacrifice should proc the DoK heal debuff... so it procs even on DoT ticks. It's even better than I thought.

It does? God damn.

As far as I remember dot tick was never a hit.

I know Wrath's Tactic Guilty Soul doesn't proc on DoT ticks. Would be nice if it did, would allow you to spread it around with Soulfire.

[Azarael]

The relevant report is https://github.com/WarEmu/WarBugs/issues/2788

[ThePollie]

The relevant report is https://github.com/WarEmu/WarBugs/issues/2788

Well, that's depressing. I almost hope that's not a bug. DoKs having an AoE 50% heal debuff while we're toting a lowly 25% single-target one with 50% uptime at best.