DoK/WP with book/chalice...

[bloodi]

I like LtP because of its potential. I've run it before and had at times cranked out 600-1200 health a second, which allowed me to dedicated Divine Assault almost solely to healing the team. My only problems with it is that it's RNG based and requires your team to be attacking. It has great potential, but it's not fun having your defense be a roll of the dice.

Thats exactly my point, the potential of that skill is only for situations where all your team free to proc it for you.

That is where the "win more card" concept i have trouble with comes in, good tactics are good because they turn losses into wins, not because they turn wins into stomps.

[Azarael]

Sadly, yes. LTP's effectiveness scales dramatically with how well your team is doing as well as with the type of attack they're using, with Inevitable Doom and direct damage AoEs granting much more return. Thinking about it like that, it's not as dependable or amazing as it looks.

[bwdaWAR]

Spoiler:

Since the tome/chalice being broken as it is was brought up, I will offer this thought (that probably was entered in the extremely long WP Grace thread after I stopped reading it): it's not the chalice/tome, it's the basic class concept that is broken. (That is, a melee healer.)
My experience when playing various healers (ie. the people who have to watch team health bars and death icons) is that melee classes die the most often; tanks as well, but the non-tanks drop often and sometimes very fast, even if guarded. People with non-tank melee classes often complain that them appearing on the front lines (WEs/WHs especially) is basically putting a huge bullseye on their head as everyone will go for them for the easy kill. Now this is even more true for a healer, and a dead or seriously threatened healer is a DPS bait at best, but certainly not a healer. Also, when all fails and someone goes down, the healers are the classes with the resurrection, and a melee healer would need to rely on other healers for that, as pointed out earlier, fairly often since they don't really get any freedom in positioning. That's not a very good class to occupy a healer slot (not to mention people resurrected in melee range can get killed again easily).

But the main problem with the class concept is that it tries to be everything: tanky for survival, healer for (competitive with the other classes) healing and DPS capacity on the side. The trouble with jack-of-all-trades classes is that they are masters of none, and dedicated classes will outperform them in all of their roles and thus will be more popular (and more effective), the jack-of-all-trades class being a filler at best.
The only way to go around this problem is by making the hybrid class have decent enough performance in at least one of the roles it's supposed to fill - but then, since they keep the partial benefits from the others, they will be more powerful than the dedicated classes of that role. This is the current situation with WPs and DoKs. (And on a side note, complaints of the same nature are brought up about AMs and Shamans, another supposedly hybrid class: they can do one role very well, while still performing decently in the other.)
Because the class is trying to be a hybrid class, I don't think there is an actual solution that will make the class well balanced and not useless, or at least prohibitively difficult to play compared to all the others. Many times has it been said that groups insist on taking WPs/DoKs at the moment at the expense of other healers. If they are nerfed too much, it will be the other way around. If they're not, the current situation remains.

I'm not saying that improvements can't be made towards better balance. But I do think that this class type will always be a problem one way or another, and that the hybrid class issues should be kept in mind when making boosts/nerfs to the class: it is going to be either unpopular to play and take with you in your team, or stronger compared to the other classes when played in a certain way.

I think some compensation for the group cleanse tactic is a good idea, there are other tactics that, for example, decrease cast time but increase cost. Similarly, group cleanse tactic could have an increased resource cost or an increased cooldown (as suggested earlier).
The decrease in group healing range sounds good too. That way DoKs/WPs are still the best group healers - for a melee train. They stay near the melee classes (or close behind, thus still with some positioning options) and can keep them alive at the cost of increased risk (but not necessarily the same as being in melee constantly). Or do the same to the ranged, but they tend to be more scattered around and then they can't (group) heal the melee. The other two healer classes can group heal for less health, but better reach, and (hopefully) single-heal for more as well.

[SigmarPriest]

Hello,

something from me i want to throw in.

Ap healing vs Fury healing
Some players say often that it is OP that the wp/dok can heal with his career ressources. Here are some things why AP healing is not that bad

- AP healers have a base ap reg.
- AP healers have the option to use a lot of items that raise their AP reg while the dok / wp has only his book/chalice. Later he got some more but only a hand full. (The souv proc is another topic and need to be adressed)
- AP pool incraise when you reach some rr levels.
- Renown ability efficiency.
- AP healers can use AP pots
- AP healers can raise their ap pool with renown points
- Both classes have abilitys that helps them to reg ressources. But only ap healers profit fully from every grp member that also give you a bonus to your ap regeneration.
- Cost-value ratio. A level 30 WP grp heal heals plain 290 (with 50% healdebuff 145) with 1 second casttime and it cost 60 fury. A RP Grp heal with level 30 plain 533 (with 50% healdebuff 266,5). So WP / Dok need to invest more ressources then the ap healers. The cost-value ration from dok/wp is the worst under all healers.

I don't want say that ap heal > career ressources. Because at least it depens a lot from the enemey and how much room they give you. I just want to show some benefits from pure ap heals.


Another thing is the Dok/Wp need to be in the frontline. First of all when you play your WP / Dok pure as backline healer you waste a lot of potential. It is possible but not that effectiv. But that is not the point.
Every class except of the tank need a guard to be longer in the frontline. DOK / WP is not an exception here. It has a AOE detaunt yes but AOE detaunt < Guard and you need to waste a lot of renown points to get it. When you try to build a grp and you have a frontline dd you also add a tank for him. At least every frontline char has some kind of exit abilitys dok/WP has none.
So the place from WP/DOK is not the frontline for me the place its between frontline and backline there is the place were a dok/wp shine.

Ps. When you remove the ways that a wp/dok can reg fury without to be near an enemy. For example remove sublication. It direct destroy this class in every fight when he just can't be in the frontline or between frontline & backline. Keepfights for example or when the enemy is so overwhelming that the frontline = instant dead is.

[Minerva]

This ^

Now add lack of any kind of CC and instant heals and you have an anwser why WP/DoK has a medim armor.

[Shadowgurke]

The question is, can the power of the WP / DoK's backline spec be saved by forcing it to frontline more to build resource?

At some point you got to ask yourself whether this is the optimal way to balance the class, or if you just desperately want it to be that way. The whole gameplay of the DoK/WP from a design standpoint is fine, you have two ressources that build differently and you use them for different spells. The issue is just that his castspeed, survivability and utility is too much.

Here is why I think frontline healing is suboptimal in a 2/2/2 group or any group that relies on two strong core healers.
1) Positioning - fairly obvious. When kiting, healing or rezzing you don't want to be in the middle of battle. Not having a dedicated tank means a swift death, guardswitching is possible but opens up other holes.

2) Adaptability - You don't get to chose when to heal. The issue with Hybrid AM. You don't get to heal when you are at 5 stacks in the same way you don't get to chose when you can frontline to build ressource. Being able to heal at all times is basically a requirement in most situations.

3) UI Handling - The speed at which you heal is very important. The way the UI currently works with having a offensive target and a defensive target is okay for buffing etc., but healing becomes really difficult. Targets moving in and out of range while you have to stand still to heal but at the same time you have to use abilities to generate is such a bother that I doubt it's ever a real possibility.

Yes, by overcompensating big time for all of these factors and buffing grace to a ridiculous degree you might still make it worthwhile. But again, is this really the optimal way to balance the class?

[Nameless]

Spoiler:

Hello,

something from me i want to throw in.

Ap healing vs Fury healing
Some players say often that it is OP that the wp/dok can heal with his career ressources. Here are some things why AP healing is not that bad

- AP healers have a base ap reg.
- AP healers have the option to use a lot of items that raise their AP reg while the dok / wp has only his book/chalice. Later he got some more but only a hand full. (The souv proc is another topic and need to be adressed)
- AP pool incraise when you reach some rr levels.
- Renown ability efficiency.
- AP healers can use AP pots
- AP healers can raise their ap pool with renown points
- Both classes have abilitys that helps them to reg ressources. But only ap healers profit fully from every grp member that also give you a bonus to your ap regeneration.
- Cost-value ratio. A level 30 WP grp heal heals plain 290 (with 50% healdebuff 145) with 1 second casttime and it cost 60 fury. A RP Grp heal with level 30 plain 533 (with 50% healdebuff 266,5). So WP / Dok need to invest more ressources then the ap healers. The cost-value ration from dok/wp is the worst under all healers.

I don't want say that ap heal > career ressources. Because at least it depens a lot from the enemey and how much room they give you. I just want to show some benefits from pure ap heals.


Another thing is the Dok/Wp need to be in the frontline. First of all when you play your WP / Dok pure as backline healer you waste a lot of potential. It is possible but not that effectiv. But that is not the point.
Every class except of the tank need a guard to be longer in the frontline. DOK / WP is not an exception here. It has a AOE detaunt yes but AOE detaunt < Guard and you need to waste a lot of renown points to get it. When you try to build a grp and you have a frontline dd you also add a tank for him. At least every frontline char has some kind of exit abilitys dok/WP has none.
So the place from WP/DOK is not the frontline for me the place its between frontline and backline there is the place were a dok/wp shine.

Ps. When you remove the ways that a wp/dok can reg fury without to be near an enemy. For example remove sublication. It direct destroy this class in every fight when he just can't be in the frontline or between frontline & backline. Keepfights for example or when the enemy is so overwhelming that the frontline = instant dead is.

but dok/wp got both and there are tools to transfer one of resourses to other one. So all pluses you point for AP are valid for them aswell + rf regen that dont stop while casting, undebuffable secondary pool and so on. While you could ap harass backlines healers you could not shutdown dok/wp healing resourses.

[Runes]

Honestly, easiest way to balance would be just to buff the AP healers - faster group heal + single target heal. You'd see alot more balance immediately (and healer variation) without agonising over how to balance WP and DOK healing trees.

[Scrilian]

To me it looks like the whole Holy Paladin sort of thing from wow, where every expansion Blizzard desperately try to push poor old hpally into the front line by altering this and nerfing that. And when they fail it it, every expansion, they roll it back to the changes.

People just love the whole concept of armored defensive-ish back/middle line healer that laughs at the enemy attempts to damage him/her and drop the class once they are forced to frontline/melee.

Yes, Salvation/Rites sound especially cheesy with their heavier armor, aoe cleanse/detaunt, second resource but there are downsides to them as well, like no way to benefit and scale past the 8rf book/chalice, lack of single target burst healing, barely any ranged CC (aside of the damned Celerity slow).

Mythic in the original game stated that the wanted healers to do substantial damage as it is reflected in the healers having more dps trees than the healing ones. But I'm yet to encounter an MMO where this idea was done right, without producing armies of never-dying healer-mdps/rdps solo players, that are able to kite around forever, and viable in group play when their leech attacks are avoidable/mitigated/stuck in CC.

My idea is to leave one tree to be a utility-type of tree. Focus on first tree being backline healer, the other a mdps-hybrid. So that leaves some mastery points to spend in, for example, Grace.

[arthur2k]

Increasing the cd on cleanse when group tactic slotted would be a good start, this would bring the idea of a RP,ZEA in groups with lower cd cleanse.
And as stated lower the FT from 150ft/100ft to like 100/80ft

OR we can just wait until T4 is released. Cause when I played on live we always ran DoK/Zea and it was masterrace and we had no problem facing 2wp whatsoever in orvr or sc or premade or what so ever.

p.s rp's and zealots can me made in to tanking machines. We had a zealot called Astrotrain and he tanked everything really.
I think most tings balances out in t4 also. BUT lowering the cast time on big heals for other healers would be a great start.