Grace WP/DoK Needs Help – Simple Start/Fix, Not a Rework

[jadin]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share my thoughts on Grace WP. Whether this opinion holds weight with the devs or other players especially those who main Grace/DoK is open for discussion.

I’ve playing this game since its original release, all the way through the official server shutdown. I also played Return of Reckoning around 2016–2018, I didn’t really take the game seriously until around 2020 during COVID. Honestly, that was one of the best times ever playing RoR. It felt like every MMO, private server, and game had a massive influx of players. RoR even hit peak population and had to open another server, which was pretty crazy at the time. Some of you might remember that it was a great.

That’s also when I hit level 40 and eventually reached RR82 on my main, all while playing Grace. I’ve seen and read all about the good, the bad, and the ugly with the spec.

To keep this from getting too long, I’ll jump to the recent healer patch. Almost every Grace/DoK main I’ve talked to feels disappointed with how the spec now plays especially in terms of healing and defense. I’ve been hearing the same concerns and suggestions across the board.

Personally, I think the class doesn’t need a full rework or a complete rollback. I think I see the direction the devs are trying to take the spec, and I don’t think we need to go backwards. I believe a few small tweaks and number adjustments could move Grace in the right direction.

Healing Buff Suggestions

To start, I’d suggest Removing Divine Strike but with a purpose. Its benefits should be redistributed across the toolkit.

• Sigmar’s Radiance

Small healing buff + increase Divine Fury generation from 30 → 40 to compensate for losing Divine Strike.

• Sigmar’s Will

The cost is currently way too high, especially if the goal is to encourage using heals outside the standard Grace rotation.

Small healing buff + Reduce cost to 50 Divine Fury minimum

These changes would make the rotation feel smoother and less clunky, allowing more flexibility in using other healing abilities.


Defensive Buff Suggestions

With upcoming stat changes and how fragile Grace WP currently feels, A few small adjustments could help:

• Shield of Faith (tactic)

Increase block bonus by +3% (total of 8% with a shield equipped)

• Sigmar’s Vision

Add +2% block (bringing it to 12%) and extend duration from 15 seconds to 20 seconds (Simple quality of life change) especially if you want to promote other healing capabilities while fighting.

Combined, this gives an additional +5% block, improving survivability while also allowing for more gear flexibility especially helpful for newer players.


Unlikely, but Wishful Thinking

This one’s a bit more ambitious.

With lifetaps now heavily affected by healing debuffs, the class feels significantly worse especially since Grace healing is already weaker than dedicated healers. The spec already requires complex positioning, rotations, and gearing, and now it’s even more punishing.

I think lifetaps should be affected by healing debuffs but not to the same extent as normal heals.

A possible solution:

• Reduce the effectiveness of healing debuffs on lifetaps by 50% for Grace players

This keeps the mechanic intact but makes it less punishing and more in line with how the spec is intended to function in heavy RvR fights. I know this change would ultimately require a lot more number tuning but could be worth it in the long run.

This is my suggestion. It's simple where to start but may take time and tuning numbers to find the sweet spot. I’m not a developer, so I don’t know how feasible these changes are, but they seem like reasonable adjustments rather than a full overhaul like I've seen some people suggesting.

Curious to hear what others think and thank you for reading. Decree/Martyr

[jadin]

If anyone thinks this is too much or too small feel free to express detailed reasons on why and any other suggestions or ideas I would love to hear them

[yoluigi]

Sorry man but they probably aint gonna change anything man. it's gonna be years before they touch again the class

[kpihuss]

Sadly, I’ve completely lost hope that the devs/balance teams will ever fix shield WP/DoK.

Looks like according to devs/balance teams, it’s a class that is better than ever and doesn’t need any help.

Nobody plays them because they’re supposedly unplayable? That’s true, but apparently it’s the players’ fault for not knowing how to play them. ¬¬.

And don't forget now the HoT scale with strenght!! This was a very nice patch!! ¬¬

So now the server has lost a lot of healers, which were already always in surplus everywhere, and gained a lot of DPS, which are apparently always in short supply.

It’s a shame, because it was one of the hardest and most fun classes to play.

[Mortgrimm]

A lot of people made a lot of really good suggestions in different posts over a long time. But sadly none of them are taken into consideration nor small balance patches.
It could be there are 1 or 2 shield priests still out there but most of us stopped playing this build. It was already a small scale build. Maybe that´s the reason it´s dead now. Small scale isn´t wanted.
so if u wanna play WP, go for book.

[kpihuss]

A lot of people made a lot of really good suggestions in different posts over a long time. But sadly none of them are taken into consideration nor small balance patches.
It could be there are 1 or 2 shield priests still out there but most of us stopped playing this build. It was already a small scale build. Maybe that´s the reason it´s dead now. Small scale isn´t wanted.
so if u wanna play WP, go for book.

A shield WP in small-scale fights or SCs just doesn’t work right now.

The healing it puts out is ridiculously low across all its abilities, and it gets vastly outperformed by any backline healer. For example, its strongest single-target heal, Divine Assault, barely heals for 200 per tick if you’re lucky, although if you spend your time hitting pets you can get it up to 500!!!!

The only ability that has enough healing output to compensate for the healing debuff is Sigmar’s Will, and its RF cost (80) is so absurdly high that it can’t be sustained over time in small-scale fights, because with Smite (15RF per hit not blocked or parried) you’re not able to generate enough RF to keep it going.

So the only situations where a shield WP works are in the RvR blob or in defensive sieges, and in both cases with perma-guard. Because you can spam Sigmars wills and Smites.

You can see some video reports about shield WP on this topic viewtopic.php?t=60334

[Mortgrimm]

@Kpi
That´s what i mean.
I played shield before and also after the initial healer patch, only in small scale. They made the shield priest too strong even if i liked it
But what they did with the second patch was ridiculous, the end of the shield priest.
@Jadin
viewtopic.php?p=592570#p592570
Rework the shield WP (get rid of the name and the shield) and recall it Grace. Also Tesq, Kpi and a lot of others made a lot of suggestions to make it work. It´s up to the devs to work with it or not. Probably not.

[Demonito]

Spoiler:

The healing is split in a Base Heal and a lifesteal part, where only the lifesteal part is based on the damage you deal.
The lifesteal part of the damage is a separate heal that does not count as direct healing, cannot crit (as the damage can already crit), and remains unaffected by heal (de)buffs.
Their damage and healing (of the Base Heal) use Damage bonus.
The Base heal from these abilities can critically hit and uses Melee/Magic Crit for its crit chance and Critical Damage modifier to the critical heals.
The Base Heal does not scale with weapon damage.
The Base heal from these abilities has the same 10% additional crit chance as other healing abilities.
The healing from the Base Heal counts as direct heals.
The healing from the Base Heal is affected by incoming heal (de)buffs.
The healing from the Base Heal is affected by outgoing heal (de)buffs.
Even if the attack gets defended, it will still heal for the Base Heal.

The following abilities use this new design:
Divine Strike / Consume Essence
Sigmar’s Radiance / Transfer Essence
Sigmar’s Will (New) / Khaine’s Force (New)
Benediction (New) / Khaine’s Encouragement (New)
Balance Essence (If using Expanded Control) / I’ll Take That (If using Waaagh! Frenzy)
Transfer Force (If using Expanded Control / Bleed Fer’ Me (If using Waaagh! Frenzy)
Energy of Vaul / Fury of Da Green
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.

Lifetapes were overpowered before, now they still bypass a bit healdebuff
(Exception on Divine Assault wich still bypass completely)
What's wrong with shield spec is the blurry utility of willpower and str, since gear is str based
Maybe next gear rework will change things

For now, only few buff needed:
-Divine Aid/Pious Restauration : May scale on strength too
-World of Wisdom : Reduce the ressources cost
-Sigmar's Will : Reduce the ressources cost

I like the idea of more % block buff since shield means frontline
Nice idea too for Sigmar's Radiance 30->40 / Imo Sigmar's will to 60 will be enough
But don't remove Divine Strike :p it's really useful in few situations like 1v1 / 2v2

For dok some tactics may be reworked :
Gift of Khaine ain't great since the changes on Khaine's Force
Transferred Focus is overpowered for 1v1 in dps and not much useful for shield, since Khaine force is the key
Wp can provide healdebuff while it's not possible for dok (same for book/chalice) ;
HD could be for Sanguinary Extension instead of endtree tactic

RoR.builders - Warrior Priest
RoR.builders - Disciple of Khaine

That new hybrid spec is actually real fun to play
You may change some tactics depending pvp/pve (fueled one really useful)