Patch Notes 12/02/2026

[Deadpoet]

The change to oíl/elixir is a much needed adjustment in the right direction. Next is take away 600 absorb and stupid self heal from a class that already has stealth ffs.

[Deadpoet]

And bring back +crit % tactic to WE while you're at It. Less tank and more Assassin please.

[Nelly74]

The change to oíl/elixir is a much needed adjustment in the right direction. Next is take away 600 absorb and stupid self heal from a class that already has stealth ffs.

Totally agree. It’s a good start, but clearly not enough when it comes to stealth classes , they’re honestly all over the place. Thankfully, very few players actually seem to know how to use them properly.

[dassmouse]

Thank you for this new patch. You're great at introducing new visual and gameplay changes to the game. Casual players like me have run into the following problem: my bank can't accommodate all the things you're adding to the game. So, I have a favor to ask.
Can you expand players' personal banks by adding at least one tab in each of the capital city banks, similar to the guild bank?

[Alubert]

Thank you for this new patch. You're great at introducing new visual and gameplay changes to the game. Casual players like me have run into the following problem: my bank can't accommodate all the things you're adding to the game. So, I have a favor to ask.
Can you expand players' personal banks by adding at least one tab in each of the capital city banks, similar to the guild bank?

Me too ^

[kpihuss]

I was testing shield WP in a few scenarios yesterday. I wanted to get a bit of hands-on time with it before writing again about the Healing Hand change.

After testing, I can only reiterate my dissatisfaction with the change, because there’s a factor I hadn’t accounted for: the RF cost generated by Healing Hand (even if you’re not using the HoT on the whole party, but only on 2–3 teammates). With how difficult it is to regenerate RF after the Smite nerf as well, and given that you need RF in order to heal allies outside your party, plus the high RF cost of Sigmar’s Wyll, using the HoT is far too draining to use it on a regular basis.

Regarding Mentor’s Marks, I’d like to ask the GMs to make them account-bound rather than character-bound, since seed bags are account-bound (and if a purple seed drops, I assume that is too). It would be fair to be able to give these Mentor’s Marks to a character you have with Cultivation, so you could also help new players with whatever roles are needed (healer, tank, or DPS).

[live4treasure]

But a Shield WP is a melee healer, not a cast-healer. Their heals should come from hitting the enemy and healing the party, not from casting. If i want play as a caster, i can play on book spec.

The shield spec should have very strong heals based on striking the enemy, because they trade the safety of the backline and uninterrupted casting for the risk of being on the frontline. They should have that drawback (not being able to heal without attacking) to justify their heals being powerful. If they now turn Shield WP into a caster, then it loses its whole reason to exist: healing by fighting.

On a theme level, you are of course right. But I think this is almost an unavoidable thing to need as a healer. Regardless of which type of content you play, there comes a time when you need to kite or retreat, because you've exhausted your offensive advantage and opportunity. Not only are you trading your casted heal for the risk of being in melee combat, but actually the hidden cost is that during moments when you need to retreat or kite, you also lose the ability to heal, because you do not want to be in melee during that time.

That's a large part of what made it... not unplayable, but just worse than a regular healer. This way you can at least keep the healing going, especially since you can combine this hot with Benediction for a 35% bonus to the healing caused by it. That's no small benefit.

[kpihuss]

But a Shield WP is a melee healer, not a cast-healer. Their heals should come from hitting the enemy and healing the party, not from casting. If i want play as a caster, i can play on book spec.

The shield spec should have very strong heals based on striking the enemy, because they trade the safety of the backline and uninterrupted casting for the risk of being on the frontline. They should have that drawback (not being able to heal without attacking) to justify their heals being powerful. If they now turn Shield WP into a caster, then it loses its whole reason to exist: healing by fighting.

On a theme level, you are of course right. But I think this is almost an unavoidable thing to need as a healer. Regardless of which type of content you play, there comes a time when you need to kite or retreat, because you've exhausted your offensive advantage and opportunity. Not only are you trading your casted heal for the risk of being in melee combat, but actually the hidden cost is that during moments when you need to retreat or kite, you also lose the ability to heal, because you do not want to be in melee during that time.

That's a large part of what made it... not unplayable, but just worse than a regular healer. This way you can at least keep the healing going, especially since you can combine this hot with Benediction for a 35% bonus to the healing caused by it. That's no small benefit.

But every healer has a different playstyle. I’ve played shield WP for a long time, both in scenarios and in small groups in RvR, and often even leading warbands with it. It’s true that during retreats I struggled, but it wasn’t impossible to pull back using your normal HoTs combined with Sacrifice, Sigmar’s Shield, and Shielding Grace. It’s also true that in those moments the party’s second healer was important because they could keep healing on the move better than I could, but that was the price you paid for what a shield WP could do.

Like I said in my previous messages, I don’t want a healer that heals a lot in melee, heals a lot while casting, and is tough as steel. What I want is a melee healer that has powerful melee-based healing precisely because it’s weaker at casted healing and has clear weak points (like pulling out of combat, or when it has to deal with ranged DPS). But right now shield WP neither hits, nor heals, nor casts, nor holds up in melee, nor brings any real utility at all (maybe in PvE…).

And Benediction, honestly, makes no sense for shield WP. If it’s a healer whose healing is based on lifetaps, then it should get abilities that improve lifetaps, not casted heals.

[Grafzahl1111]

Funny to see non stealth class Player being happy about wh/we escape nerfs, its part of the game and has ever been, its not only zerg game

What i am really missing is a balance patch of def/regen WE...but maybe we will never see
It's embarrassing to see such an obviously unbalance for so long...

[Ysaran]

Great patch! The change to DoK/priest is in the right direction, but still not enough imho. I have yet to try it, but even now I would not use soul infusion over another skill. The tooltip value is higher for sure, but the contribution of stats to hots is pitiful and you stil won't crit.

I believe a good step in fixing shield don/priest would be to make both soul infusion e khaine vigor scale on str and crit on melee crit upon slotting a shield. Actually, upon slotting a shield every heal should scale on str and crit on melee crit, but that may be too much.

I think the direction matters a lot here. A shield WP/DoK is not meant to be a caster healer, and this HoT approach is fundamentally a caster tool. Shield is supposed to be the “melee healer” archetype: you take the risk of being in the frontline, and your healing output is tied to actually hitting enemies (strike → heal, lifetaps/conversion, heal-on-hit), not to playing like a backline HoT bot.

So improving/adding a HoT as the main “fix” is a step in the opposite direction. It nudges the spec toward being a caster disguised with a shield, and that’s exactly what many of us who have played the spec don’t want. We want it to remain a melee healer — not a caster in plate with a shield.

Also, from a counterplay perspective: the way you punish/counter a shield WP/DoK is by disengaging from them. When you get peeled off / kited / detargeted and you can’t keep contact, that’s the moment a shield WP usually knows they’re dead (or at least out of impact), because their healing and sustain are supposed to come from staying stuck in melee. If we improve the “disengaged” option via stronger HoTs, we’re effectively removing one of the few clean counters the spec has and rewarding exactly the state it shouldn’t be good in: being unlinked from melee combat.

We want a fair spec, not an OP one. It should have clear counterplay options for other players — not a healer that can do everything (frontline pressure, strong sustain, and still perform like a caster while disengaged). If shield WP/DoK is strong, it should be strong for the right reason: staying in melee and committing to that risk, with the obvious downside that if you get peeled or you lose contact, your effectiveness drops sharply. That tradeoff is what makes the spec healthy and skill-based. As a WP healer i want strong heals on melee to sustain me and my allies, but weaks heals when i'm not engaged

If the goal is to make shield WP/DoK viable, the lever shouldn’t primarily be HoT scaling. It should be reinforcing the strike-to-heal loop: better heal-from-damage conversion (especially now that these effects can be debuffed), more reasonable resource costs on the key melee-heal buttons, and incentives that reward staying engaged in melee. That keeps the identity intact, preserves counterplay, and actually addresses viability.

I agree with you BUT there are things that every healer in the game have to be able to do. This is a balance reason, the game was balance with the idea that everyone healer have these base tools, which are:

Sustained healing in the form of hots
Cleanse
Absorb
Big aoe healing
Big st healing

As of now, shield dok does not have a melee hot. What you have is khaine's encouragement+khaine vigor, which is completely underwhelming since the hot can't crit.

Atm Shield dok lacks sustained healing, and this can't be solved by optimising resources cost or increasing damage -to-heal conversion.

What I envision in not a backline shield dok spamming heals, but a frontline shield dok using khaine's vigor every 10s instead of just spamming transfer essence and rend soul on CD.