Return of Reckoning

- Range healers do not need to invest at all in willpower through talismans in order to sustain their whole group. They can slot fully defensive talismans. Shield spec needs to slot strength, otherwise healing output is too weak to sustain a party.

As a result, shield spec, despite being in melee, has less defensive stats than range healing specs. This is I guess supposed to be "balanced out" by the block chances, but this is RNG defense compared to constant defenses : if you get unluncky, your health drops dramatically ; this RNG defense is also set to 0 as soon as an opponent is flanking you.

- Frontline healer should be the one stacking armor/toughness/wounds/initiative, yet if you do that, your healing output is so low you're always the weakest healer in scenarios (yes, I've tried to do that). This ends up as a different way of making you fragile, as you are unable to sustain even yourself.

- Because your defensive stats are low, you force a tank to put a guard on you, instead of a melee dps.

- Even with your strength investment through talismans, your damage output is low, now that tactics like Fanaticism or Divine Fury negatively impact your whole healing output. Also, even with full strength talismans, it cannot be said that you heal for more than range healers, you at best heal just as much as they do.

- There was one thing where shield specs were better at than range healers : spamming Divine Strike/Consume Essence would let you sustain your whole frontline in scenarios like Battle for Praag in a very efficient way. But these abilities were nerfed to single target healing, and this can no longer be done.

- It is far more draining to play as a frontline healer : you get controlled more often, you can easily get kited or bursted down, you have to make sure enemies are not flanking you to bypass your RNG defense, you also have to watch out UI frames and select each ally to use Divine Strike on him, you get countered by highly defensive or guarded targets and are constantly forced to try to find someone soft enough to attack. What do you get in exchange for enduring all of this ? Low damage, inconsistent defense, inconsistent healing output.

This gaps between frontline healers and backline healers seems to be both a problem of shield specs underperforming, and range specs overperforming. This week-end scenario is Caledoor Woods, there are Archmages and Shamans who spend the whole scenario sitting on the flag in the middle of the map, casting their heals, it is near impossible to kill them. It is almost as if backline healers were better frontliners because of how resistant they are, and how consistent their healing output is. Being able to play from range should imply in exchange a lower defense, but it is the opposite that happens.

Totally agree. The recent changes to shield healing on both DoK and WP have made the builds feel significantly weaker. While I haven’t done exact testing, healing feels like it’s been cut by 30–40%, and damage by 50–60%. The result is a playstyle that’s not just underperforming, but frustrating and punishing to stick with.

I used to love playing shield DoK in all game modes. It was challenging but rewarding—especially when holding the frontlines and keeping your group alive. But that sense of impact is gone, and for now, I’m shelving the class indefinitely.

This is why dok/wp having shield was insane idea in the first place and restricting skills that has always been there for dps+tome are suddenly restricted to shield only. I used to do dps Wp using tome in Aor and it worked great!

Adding Shield to Wp/Dok complicates things so much. There was no need for it and original Dps Specs got screwed. Sacrifice was an amazing grp melee heal and it should be returned and can be used while moving and most important part; No shield just 2h/Dw and need to do dmg to heal. Sacrifice was the exception needed.

Sacrifice was very good solution to " How do i heal when i have no targets to hit " and RoR team already answered this with sacrifice. Just remove the shield requirement and let all them skills be used doesnt matter what wpns you slot.

Bah they just need to make divine strike aoe heal around the defencive target like it used and gonna be fine probably that's the one thing mising.

Agreed. After patch it seems that shield heal is probably not very worth it anymore. I will still play it from time to time because I like it, but you are around 80% of what heal wp/DoK and AM/shams are right now after their big buffs.

And that is only with absolute endequip and a lot of effort in fight in comparisson to mindless spamming grp/single heals with a bit of prehot and positioning.

So still possible to heal, but with a lot effort and guard and best equip. So all in all not really worth it, at least if you are not a die hard fan of the specc.

Divine Strike/Consume Essence to aoe heal around deff target will definitely help, but personally I dont think that is enough.

Passive heals were to ignore HDs and that was the big argument for those speccs. But now with dmg output nerfed and all depending on the base heal, which again can now be influenced with HDs it does not make reasonable sense to play it like that, give the extra risk you are putting yourself in.

Well from my testing, it seems it is an interesting spec, but the cost/value equation is against shield specs, it does not provide enough dmg to compensate exposure to the front line, and the need for a tank to guard or pay additional attention to the frontline heal, and the dps version is still is not providing enough with the stat requirements to be valid.

Now i don’t see any advantages of a shield spec vs regular book/chalice.
I’m eager to hear what other players think about this.

As someone who was first skeptical when shields were first added in RoR, being used to the live version of melee heal, I ended up enjoying both WP and DOK Shield spec, especially for PvE and small scale RVR.

It was fun to play and probably the best PvE healer out there.

The changes brought with the Heal patch turnt an enjoyable playstyle into a complete hassle, especially with the builder being changed to a single target heal. To be able to achieve a measly 50 / 75% of what you could previously do (both dps and heal-wise), you have to achieve much more complex rotations, with constant target swaping.

The only apparent improvement is the tactic making both builders non defendable, which would have turnt shield spec into a much more viable pvp spec if both skills had remained unchanged. But their damage and heal output has been so nerfed that in the end, it's not even worth it.

The only way to play shield semi decently requires having BiS gear, while previously anyone able to get Bloodlord / VW gear could start enjoying the spec. Overall a big downgrade if it remains like this.

the tactic making both builders non defendable is only avaible for Doks, if i remeber correctly.

The nerf to Divine Strike/Consume Essence sounds particularly discouraging, as it removed one of the few advantages shield specs had in sustaining the frontline during intense scenarios. Meanwhile, range healers with strong defensive setups can hold their ground and support the team from a safer position, making them far more versatile overall.