Shield Warrior Priest underperformance even with BiS gear

[kpihuss]

In the detailed SC data, the shield WP is the highlighted row. I will refer to that character only as “the shield WP” to keep the comparison focused on the build and its performance, not on the player.

- Of course, the quality of data matters
- Of course, Player Skill matters
- Of course, who is the player matters
- Of course, the group quality matters

Self-healing has been stated repeatedly as some sort of inflated fake number like it doesn't matter. Especially in Scenarios where damage is centralized on Single Target, no matter who is being healed - it is effective and valuable protection and healing.

Healing Numbers are not a reliable metric to use. Others have already said this multiple times. You can not base any research on healing numbers when those numbers are spread based on the quality of the match, and not even remotely based on the class or its performance.

More unreliable data is being shown about Shield Warrior Priest, yet the same 2-3 Warrior Priest Players are showcased ( which I understand in a low population ) but if we ignore the performance of the shown Warrior Priests, top performing players who have been mentioned here like Iyvans are not being used in most of the data, which skews conclusions.

Proper 6v6 or 12v12 matches should be organized as a baseline to gather data, with vetted groups who know how to play in said content and work together as a group, since the whole game is balanced around group-play and group synergy - which has been said multiple times by the devs. Pug gameplay and random teams can not be the baseline for a serious balance discussion, especially not with such a huge difference in performance as you witness on RoR.

I don't see any data being shown here that gives context about proper group compositions, level of teamwork and class synergies which are all necessary to discuss a class's proper state and performance.

If he had doubled the healing compared to the other WPs, or at least achieved a clearly higher amount, or contributed significant kill damage, or even utility, I would understand the resource investment.

Here is another City Log From Iyvans, clearly outperforming all other healers by a mile, and he consistently does it in a competitive environment.
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 013db20a7a
We will have another City tonight with multiple Shield Healers in the comp, and I have a feeling the results will be outstanding again.

Player skill on RoR is volatile and the difference between Player A and Group A can be anywhere between 50% - 400% in performance versus Player B and Group B.

If we based other balance proposals on the performance of the average playerbase on certain classes then then the below careers could be considered garbage:
- Magus
- Engineer
- Witch Hunter
- Witch Elf
- Choppa
- Black Orc

Yet all of these specs have proven to be incredibly powerful in the hands of decent players and groups that know how to utilize them. Some of them are borderline broken, and people still call them "weak" or "bad".

Good morning.

The data I have shown comes from Weekend Warfront scenarios collected from 22 May until now.

In total, the sample includes 11,145 scenarios and 98 shield WP entries out of a total of 2,014 WP entries.

Important clarification: the 2,014 active WP count is not a count of unique players across the whole period. It is accumulated by period. If the same WP appears in several weekends, that WP is counted once for each period in which he appears. For measuring weekly spec presence, however, this is still a valid metric.

This gives an average of around 503 WP entries per weekend, of which only around 24 were shield WP. Of those shield WP entries, approximately 50% were level 40, and some did not even play 3 scenarios during the same weekend, so they were not included in some parts of the analysis.

I think such a broad sample should be taken seriously when discussing the practical state of the spec. It does not show the absolute maximum performance that the best possible player can achieve. For that, a player like Iyvans is obviously useful.

But one excellent player shows the ceiling of the spec, not its normal performance, its adoption rate, or the resource cost required to make it work.

Regarding Iyvans: I did not exclude him. The system collects the data automatically. If his shield WP is not present in the dataset, it means he did not appear in the Weekend Warfront scenario sample collected from 22 May onward.

The same applies to your shield WP. I have not collected shield WP scenario data from you because, as far as this dataset shows, you did not play that character in that content during the sampled period. It would be useful if you played some Weekend Warfront scenarios on shield WP so that your data could also be included.

About self-healing: of course self-healing matters. If a shield WP cannot keep himself alive, he dies. I am not saying that self-healing is fake or useless.

What I am saying is that when comparing shield WP to book WP, total healing can be misleading if a large part of the shield WP’s healing is spent on himself.

That distinction matters because healing yourself is not the same thing as healing the rest of the group. If a shield WP produces similar or lower total healing than a book WP, but a larger part of that healing is self-healing, while also requiring more protection and still dying more often, then the issue is not only healing output.

The issue is efficiency and resource cost.

I also agree that healing numbers alone are not a definitive metric. I am not claiming they are. The point is that the numbers show several relevant patterns at the same time:

• WP players overwhelmingly prefer book healing or DPS over shield healing.
• Shield WP has extremely low representation compared to the other WP variants.
• Shield WP healers usually produce less total healing than book WP, even when self-healing is included.
• Shield WP tends to receive more protection.
• Shield WP still tends to die more.
• Shield WP does not usually compensate for this with clearly superior kill damage or unique measurable utility.

That combination is what matters. It is not just one isolated healing number.

Regarding group composition, yes, group quality and player skill matter. Nobody is denying that. But with more than 11,000 scenarios, individual differences begin to average out.

Also, the new scenario matchmaker attempts to create more balanced teams by archetype and to separate premades from pugs more than before. It is still not perfect, of course, and the killboard cannot tell us whether players were on Discord, coordinated, distracted, or drunk.

But the data is still measurable.

Organized 6v6 or 12v12 testing would also be useful. I agree with that. But it would answer a different question.

Controlled 6v6 or 12v12 tests show how the spec performs under ideal or semi-ideal conditions.

Weekend Warfront scenario data shows how the spec performs and how often it is actually played in live conditions.

Both types of data are useful; one does not invalidate the other.

About the City log: Iyvans clearly performing well is valuable information, but City Siege is not the same environment as Weekend Warfront scenarios. It has different group structure, different objectives, different pressure, and in stage 3 the City Champion system can heavily distort the numbers.

City Champions have additional buffs that affect outgoing healing, outgoing damage, max health and mitigation, so stage 3 numbers are not directly linear with the rest of the players.

This is not meant as criticism of Iyvans. Quite the opposite: he is obviously a very strong player.

But for data purposes, it would be more useful to see the numbers before the Champion phase, or to separate stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3. If you can take a screenshot before the Champion phase tonight and share it, that would be genuinely useful.

My position is simple:

Exceptional players can show the ceiling of shield WP. But this still very close to a book WP.

Large scenario samples show the practical state, popularity, consistency and cost of the spec for the wider playerbase.

A serious balance discussion should look at both, not only at the best possible example.

Bonjour j'utilise cette spécialisation que je trouvais fiable il y a quelque temps mais qui l'ai moins maintenant (faute de tank pour faire de vrai impact). ce que je regrette du Prêtre Guerrier , c'est la perte du Heal de zone sur 18m par coup que l'on avait avant. Hello, I use this specialization which I found reliable some time ago but which is less so now (due to a lack of tank to make a real impact). What I miss about the Warrior Priest is the loss of the area heal over 18m per hit that we used to have before.https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/c ... ior-priest


what do you think about it?

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[leftayparxoun]

The elephant in the room here is the underlying assumption that shield specs are designed around scenario gameplay (when I would argue in large part they aren't).
In my eyes, when the healer rework dropped, the shield DOK/WP got transformed into an orvr/city spec when it previously was a 6v6/scenario/PvE spec. And that happened without any proper communication on the matter from the balance team. Here's what the patchnotes for that patch had to say for example:

We believe that with the newly designed abilities, the playstyle of damage based healing will become much more interesting. By having the abilities be negatively affected by Divine Fury, we reduce the damage output of these specs, but giving them a lot of utility in return by making the healing count as direct healing. Additionally, weaving in Willpower based healing has become a lot more viable, promoted further with the new Benediction and Khaine’s Encouragement abilities.

and

The Grace spec has been fully reworked with the following core design: Divine Strike and Sigmar’s Radiance are your single target and AoE Righteous Fury builders. Divine Assault and Sigmar’s Will are you single target and AoE consumers of Righteous Fury. Around that you have abilities such as the new Benediction, allowing you to efficiently use Salvation heals or Sigmar’s shield to help keep one target alive.

We also see this empirically from the fact that City is where shield healers seem to shine best.

Now that is not a problem inherently, but trying to suggest balance changes towards an environment where the spec is not balanced around does not make much sense imo.

I would be really interested to see the same data analysis adjusted so as to compare the average relative shield healer performance vs the number of people in the scenario (or even better, vs total number of healers in scenario). My intuition says that you will see their relative performance spike up, the higher the pop gets.

[Mvl130]

Are there any circumstances where book spec underperforms ? Meaning, if you go book spec into oRvR or City, is this going to be a bad decision, compared to taking shield spec instead ? Because if you say that now the shield spec is not supposed to be really playable in scenarios, but really shines in warbands, then I really wonder why do I see all these book specced warrior-priests in warbands, while also being there in scenarios

The underlying statement in your post here is that shield spec would now be sub-optimal for scenarios, but book as such would be sub-optimal for oRvR and Cities then ? I really don't see it

[Mvl130]

I also really like that quote from patch note :

weaving in Willpower based healing has become a lot more viable, promoted further with the new Benediction and Khaine’s Encouragement abilities

Out of the few remaining shield healers out there, including DoKs, is there a single one that increases its willpower stat ? This statement is completely contradicted by the fact that Healing Hand/Infusion now scale off strength when wearing a shield

[Cullenn]

Shield was completly fine before, they could just bring old shield WP back and the sov set would be usefull, and make offensive/defensive sets for it a thing again. Now? it sucks.