Changelog 18/11/16 (2)

[catholicism198]

So Divine Fury has NOT been reverted (yet?)

And it looks like Khaine's Invigoration is gone but Transfer Essence has taken it's place.

[CecilHarvey]

Why the change to defendable on TE/SR? Melee healing is already susceptible to punts,snares, and AP drains. Blocks and parry are going to make melee healing far too unreliable.

The way it works currently if you hit a 1 armor 1 toughness target or a 6,000 armor 1,000 toughness target it heals all the same. I understand your point on not wanting to reward melee healing for picking poor targets, but currently picking perfect debuffed targets and assisting a melee train does not change the amount you heal nor does it limit their denial of your party role, healing.

I feel the risk vs reward balance for melee healing is off. Maybe a 15% parry/block strike through attached to TE/SR is viable? It does not remove defense entirely, and keeps things like Shield Wall and Confusing Movements morales melee healing needs to watch out for.

[Sigimund]

Getting a lot of lowbie WPs saying that they get an error message when they try to use SR. Apparently the game thinks they are not high enough level to use it.

[cevi]

To be a good melee you need a guard bot. So -1 guard for a real dd. If you reduce the damage from melee healer, you waste a slot for a dd. Ok so you just go with 3 tanks, dd and 2nd heal. All is fine, tanky, great heal, cc power, dps. Is that the way to go with a grouped melee healer?
DD spec is fine, but why play DoK/WP then? Fun part with them are green numbers and they are just too cc prone to be a real threat (if balanced dps wise).
You are changing a million parameters to adjust 1 slightly overpowered spec and ignore the reasons why this spec is/was so common.

Way back in live WAR on 2008 they added passive fury/soul reg. Well why? To give dok/wp to possibility to be a healer in line with the other healing classes. They just could't find a real (casual friendly) way to place them in front line healing.
I played a lot as sacridok in group which was fun. Good dmg, great healing. That changed with souv+ sets, since dd dps went crazy and backline healing became much more powerful.

Good luck to you. All changes until now don't address the real flaws with melee healing.

[Azarael]

Why the change to defendable on TE/SR? Melee healing is already susceptible to punts,snares, and AP drains. Blocks and parry are going to make melee healing far too unreliable.

The way it works currently if you hit a 1 armor 1 toughness target or a 6,000 armor 1,000 toughness target it heals all the same. I understand your point on not wanting to reward melee healing for picking poor targets, but currently picking perfect debuffed targets and assisting a melee train does not change the amount you heal nor does it limit their denial of your party role, healing.

I feel the risk vs reward balance for melee healing is off. Maybe a 15% parry/block strike through attached to TE/SR is viable? It does not remove defense entirely, and keeps things like Shield Wall and Confusing Movements morales melee healing needs to watch out for.

They have 20%, in line with .ex Balance Essence and I'll Take That!. The reason they had undefendable and not strike is because of Guard, which is now a problem that has been addressed.

No melee healer is or is expected to be completely a melee healer. The melee skillset's too restricted for that. The intent was that there would be a balance between melee and casted healing for Devotion players. Consider that S'R and TE spam has been occurring and the best way to deal with it is to make that skill more situational.

[catholicism198]

I get the "too low to use this ability" message as well, but the ability still goes off. It's annoying but.........no but.

Spoiler:

To be a good melee you need a guard bot. So -1 guard for a real dd. If you reduce the damage from melee healer, you waste a slot for a dd. Ok so you just go with 3 tanks, dd and 2nd heal. All is fine, tanky, great heal, cc power, dps. Is that the way to go with a grouped melee healer?
DD spec is fine, but why play DoK/WP then? Fun part with them are green numbers and they are just too cc prone to be a real threat (if balanced dps wise).
You are changing a million parameters to adjust 1 slightly overpowered spec and ignore the reasons why this spec is/was so common.

Way back in live WAR on 2008 they added passive fury/soul reg. Well why? To give dok/wp to possibility to be a healer in line with the other healing classes. They just could't find a real (casual friendly) way to place them in front line healing.
I played a lot as sacridok in group which was fun. Good dmg, great healing. That changed with souv+ sets, since dd dps went crazy and backline healing became much more powerful.

Good luck to you. All changes until now don't address the real flaws with melee healing.

Melee healing has a ton of flaws- but at least they're trying to find a solution to make it viable.

Yes, they did add passive fury/soul reg items to make backline healing possible but they forgot to adjust their armor to match the other backline healers.
They were granted access to heavier gear because they were meant to be in the FRONTLINE.

[Azarael]

The first build of melee healing had so few flaws that WPs and DoKs that were using it were labelled as unkillable... in fact, the problem now more than anything else is building in flaws to the playstyle that don't result in the healer getting blown up too easily.

[Strykhe]

Backline WP / DoK are now a real problem with regen fury. Take that in consideration. See tonight, on eataine.

-50% armor is maybe too much for this healer who need to take a few damage for good regen fury. No potion for that, contrary to other heal. That is the raison why they have more armor on live.

For the melee, DoK / WP need guard, and on or two heal on party, is true. Go on melee zerg with your heal, and see. Undefendable aren't sufficient. Please, dont kill one class in RvR for pleasure of a few player premade / BG / party roam.

Who want give a really sense for melee spe, you really dont need to kill the heal spe in zerg.. Whatever the change, DoK / WP arent a tank, and isn't possible for her to push on zerg melee. Without guard. And if we are 2 heal in party, guard are more used on a really DPS AoE, not on melee heal.

Tonight, they are really very little WP / DoK in RvR. You're change isn't for the RvR vision. Up one spe for BG / Roam, isn't kill other for zerg and RvR player.

[dur3al]

I'd just like to suggest, if you wanted to make back line DoK/WP (before any of these changes) be more at the front line (in order to make sense them having high armor values), why didn't you just made it so the regen of the mechanic from chalice/books would be nerfed and you'd gain more regen from melee skills, or regen up to 8 essence the closer you are to x enemies? You could also do that and make skills to regain their mechanic, such as Blood Offering to scale with the amount of enemy players around him in a certain range, so he would need to be closer to the front line to heal properly, and his high armor values would make complete sense... right now if you just nerf armor aboard, you're also pushing classes who has armor bypass and ignore out of the table, such as WH/WE.

That way you've added high risk to playing back line dok/wp since they'll need to be closer to the fight in order to heal properly, or risk not having enough essence for necessary heals. You are at the same time:
- Not changing the class completely;
- Adding the necessity for good positioning and situation awareness for them to be as effective as before;
- Adding counter play since they are required to be closer to the fight (as opposed to cloth healers who can stay all the way back), so they can be targeted more - which then would make sense them having high armor (defensive stats) values.

Then you could go forward and shift some skills/tactics in the trees in order to make some sort of hybrid build possible (what we have now), where you can basically go normal back-line healer + life tap skills with some small damage when you're being interrupted to much (which is basically what I played today in these new .ab ex changes [prior to the 5 min lockout which I don't agree on]). But you also must keep the high armor values, which as I mentioned before - brings other classes with armor ignore to be more viable and interesting.

Then you could go on to address the dps WP individually.. which would probably be so much easier then what you're attempting now mixing all mechanics at once with stat conversion & stance mechanics which are not really stances since they'll have a 5 min cooldown? I dunno.

[TenTonHammer]

Its not just about making WP/DoK come to the frontlines, its about making melee healing viable while nerfing their strength of ez mode backline healing potential