Zealot - mastery tree rework discussion

[roadkillrobin]

I'll try to explain why Zealots and RP Mastery trees look the way they do.
It's part of the design of the healer classes all together.

All healer classes mechanics were designed to be hybrids where to fully utilize the classes you would swap from healing to use damage/debuff skills every now and then into your rotation.

Archmage/Shaman have their 5-1 mechanic. 5 Heals which all powers upp a dps spell.
DoK/WP have their resource gain mechanic. Heal- Heal - Smash - Smash - heal- heal

RP/Zealot came without the Rune of Breaking/Harbinger. They were designed to be a free choise of cast and instead of representing weakness/strenght from a mechanic the strenght is the free choise of skill type but limited by the situational mastery you have chosen.

The reason this was implemted badly is partly due to TTK doesn't allow for healers to really waste GCD/AP to use skills at the rate it was designed for and partly that the game wasn't built for Deft Defender and Parry/Block rates + Hold The Line which means the free cast often goes wasted.

The implementation of Rune of Breaking and Harbinger toggle fixed 1 issue but complety trashed the whole class concept. I would look into fixing these skills instead and instead of being a toggle maybe it should be something that activates as a passive mechanic somehow.

Example: All Alchamy heals have a 25% chance of Triggering Harbinger of Alchamy - Next Alchemy spell will be casted using healing statistics and also vice verse All Alchamy dps skills have a 25% chance to triggering Harbinger and next Alchemy heal uses dps statistic. Without changing the primary stat that the current toggles does.

The problem with this argument is the Dok/WPs have a strong, solid, viable and dedicated heal tree and the AMs/Shams have a half good tree (the Shams getting a wicked Hot and AMs a ST+).

Perhaps buffing the "heal your defensive target on damage" skills might improve things a bit for the Zeal here?

The problem with DoK and WP design is that they were given regen tools that change their intent design and removes the requirement of putting em into close proximity to meele range. Blood Offering and Supplication is the main issue imo. If they would be required to be within 30-50 feet of the frontline consistantly the strong healing tree would be justified imo. This is were I feel the AoR redesign of the classes made one of the biggest mistakes, instead of forcing em closer to the fight they gave em more tools to stay in the backline with better ST healing and ressing while nerfing their group healing.

[Telen]

I dont think reworking the trees is the right idea. The trees have been that way since launch when healers were meant to dps aswell..
Archmage and Shaman have been returned closer to what they were at launch with abilities moved back to their old trees and old tactics coming back. They now play closer to how healers were intended.
Harb/RoB are pants because why would you want your mechanic to buff the role you arent specced for? With AM/Shammy you can buff your spec through the mechanic by prehots or lifetaps. Harb/RoB just buff what you arent specced for. It should act more like a priest shadowform where it pushes you more towards dmg when on and more towards healing when off and not just swap what your specced for over to what you arent. You can tell the mechanic was added on later because its not thought out at all.

[Valarion]

The problem with DoK and WP design is that they were given regen tools that change their intent design and removes the requirement of putting em into close proximity to meele range. Blood Offering and Supplication is the main issue imo. If they would be required to be within 30-50 feet of the frontline consistantly the strong healing tree would be justified imo. This is were I feel the AoR redesign of the classes made one of the biggest mistakes, instead of forcing em closer to the fight they gave em more tools to stay in the backline with better ST healing and ressing while nerfing their group healing.

Im in complete agreement with you. The Salvation tree for WP should have had at a minimum a reduced range requirement forcing the WP or Dok to commit to close range healing. My point was that they at least have a heal tree to pull from. So do the Shamans and AMs.

A cohesive heal tree for the Zeal/RP simply doesnt exist.

[dalen]

Making the divine fury tactic built in to the Harb/RoB would go a long way towards fixing it. So when you turn it on you would in addition to the current effects get +25% damage and -20% healing, and that tactic itself would be removed from Zealot/RP. Then the ability would be somewhat viable without switching tactics as well, which isn't possible in combat.

It would also buff the DPS side of RP/zealot by giving one extra tactic slot, which would be a nice buff without making the healing side any stronger than it already is.