WP - New ability in Wrath, is it viable?

[Spierron]

make the resurrection unusable if Divine Fury slotted but give between 25-50% damage crit ?

[Mystry]

The very act of going Wrath and getting the required tactics means that you cannot heal in any significant amount. With DF and Fanaticism active, healing abilities do so little that they can't outpace a single DoT, and CERTAINLY cannot keep you alive through a DPS hitting you. The only possible exception to this is Divine Assault because I can't remember if it's reduced by those two tactics or not.

Additionally, Wrath SHOULD be able to be a fully functional DPS. Thinking otherwise reeks of 'muh pure' classism that permeated early MMOs, where said pure classes constantly attempted to get hybrids to be worse than them because they had the choice of other roles. I'm going to rant a bit here because this subject sets me off, but that argument is completely fallacious and holds no water.

If a class had the ability to be two roles at the same time (such as healing and DPS) THEN I would understand the necessity of them being marginally worse than a class that could do only a single role, but that situation literally never happens, because hybrids universally have to choose to do one role at a time. You can't heal WHILE DPSing, you either slot DF/Fanaticism and DPS, or you don't and heal. You can't do both at the same time, not even as Grace. Sure, Grace does SOME damage in melee, but it's a miniscule amount compared to a WH or WL or Slayer, and serves only as a vehicle to deliver healing via lifetap. There is absolutely no valid reason that Wrath should not be a fully fledged DPS as it's ability to heal is nearly completely disabled from tactics and the fact that Wrath has 0 Willpower from gear. /rant

In fact, one of the big reasons that I loved experimental mode so much was because you were dis-incentivized from wasting RF on healing abilities that couldn't heal a small abrasion much less an actual DoT. You NEEDED to stay in melee and keep your RF high to keep your damage output up to snuff. But like you said, I'm preaching to the choir.

[Snoxx]

I've seen Salvation WPs using it before to great effect. The silence immunity has to be stripped away.

Indeed, a WP could spec group hot and group shield in the Salvation-tree along with the new ability from Wrath. If he is RR60+ he can also get the aoe detaunt tactic (or at RR50+ skip the group absorb-shield from Salvation instead).

That's clearly not intended.

Problem is, silence immunity is the same as disarm immunity. Salvation-spec healing WPs should not have the former, but Wrath-spec melee WPs are supposed to have the latter.

This is somewhat solved by linking the cooldown to a tactic no salvation-spec WP will ever slot: Divine Fury. But having a silence-breaker and an escape-charge-ability on a 5 minutes timer is still damn good.

Possible solutions:

a) The new ability shouldn't break silence. Make it unable to use when silenced. (due to game mechanics, it might still give silence immunity after being used to break a disarm, but since nobody disarms a salvation-spec healer WP this is a non-issue)

b) The new ability should require a two-handed weapon. (that will prevent salvation-spec healing WPs from using this ability, unless they try to heal with a two-handed hammer, but if they do, they have to fight at the frontline - just like wrath WPs do. So giving a two-handed salvation-heal WPs access to the new ability should be okay. That build would suck anyway, no need to worry about it )

[Snoxx]

You're preaching to the choir. My main has been DPS WP on Order for a while, and I know their damage is lacking, but nonetheless I am appreciative a bone has been given. If you want higher numbers, it must come at a cost: we would need to think of a way of making Wrath DPS more viable, while drastically reducing their survivability so it is akin to other MDPS.

For starters, we could improve wrath WPs to be as viable as torture DoKs. This doesn't have to come at a cost. It's just balancing.

[retekelek]

It's not as simple as just modifying the numbers on existing abilities. You have to bear in mind potential power imbalances, power creeps, and so on. While increasing Bludgeon's damage by 10% probably wouldn't spell the end of the world, you need to think these things through - particularly when it is a hybrid class, lest they start to render pure DPS classes useless. This is why I believe that any increase to Wrath's damage should come at a significant cost to their survivability/lifetap potential.

This also assumes that Wrath WP should actually be able to fill in as a DPS, which is arguably a subjective point of view (some may consider Wrath a harder-hitting damage dealer, but whose focus should still be on healing - as per their archetype).

omg i wrote a lot than pressed wrong buttom...

first of all new changes a made really enjoyable wp for solo roaming

for party also nice, but if u trying to fill dps role in a party even whit high rr/gear u will be just a moderate dps, and that should comes from that u can also heal whit your abilities.
im thinking on if Bludgeon would get much more damage from scale of points spent on wrath tree, than it could fix a bit about it, because at this point it not worth to use it even if you try to fill dps role in a party, since sigmars radiance also heals the party.
i got 6 points on grace rest in wrath and still around 50 or so the damage difference between the 2 ability.
That change would making it more usable skill if u want to go full dps than using sigmars radiance that helps ur healers aswell (and that means u spending points on the wrath tree, so u cant use it as an op damage ability whit a grace wp) Also since u still got divine assault the numbers should be adjusted well, not making it too op, but at least you could get closer to be an actual dps
or stay whit radiance and have the same dps output what u can now do whit the hybrid dps/healer helper thingy

[Mystry]

One minute you are saying its atrash and should be a 5 point ability, the next grace are going full ham for 15 points in wrath

Not sure who you are replying to, but In Pursuit is an extremely good ability.
I do think it should require a 2 hander equipped to use though, to prevent Salvation WPs from using it. Salvation already has enough going for it.

[retekelek]

You're preaching to the choir. My main has been DPS WP on Order for a while, and I know their damage is lacking, but nonetheless I am appreciative a bone has been given. If you want higher numbers, it must come at a cost: we would need to think of a way of making Wrath DPS more viable, while drastically reducing their survivability so it is akin to other MDPS.

For starters, we could improve wrath WPs to be as viable as torture DoKs. This doesn't have to come at a cost. It's just balancing.

thats also a good point, don't feel wrath wp would be more defensive than a torture dok while they putting out more damage than wp-s can

[Snoxx]

One minute you are saying its atrash and should be a 5 point ability, the next grace are going full ham for 15 points in wrath

Now as you mention this:

I actually tried to wrangle the new ability somehow into my usual grace WP spec, but it doesn't work. The goodies in the grace tree (most important: "Grace of Sigmar" tactic for better melee heals) are too deep in the tree. There is no meaningful way to spec 15 points into wrath and still act as a melee-healing grace-spec WP.

A salvation-spec with 15 points into wrath however is possible, because the important salvation skills are reachable rather early in the tree. Only the Cleansing Power tactic is unreachable, but against the prevalent single-target assist-trains it's useless anyway.

[Snoxx]

im thinking on if Bludgeon would get much more damage from scale of points spent on wrath tree, than it could fix a bit about it, because at this point it not worth to use it even if you try to fill dps role in a party, since sigmars radiance also heals the party.

Interesting idea about increasing the damage of Bludgeon.

Unfortunately, I don't think the players would use Bludgeon even with increased damage. There is simply no room left in your skill rotation. With the existing wrath-skills Castigation, Weight of Guilt, Smite and Hammer of Sigmar you already got more than enough to do, and you still have to fit in some self-buffs from grace tree (Sigmars Fist, Sigmars Vision), and of course the defensive stuff like Divine Assault, Detaunt, Cleanse, HoT, Sigmars Radiance. On top of all this you got utility like Silence, Purge, Healdebuff, AOE-Knockback, ...

How on earth are you gonna fit all this into a 10 seconds rotation and still have time to spam Bludgeon?

You don't!

Bludgeon would have to deal damage comparable to Hammer of Sigmar, or I wouldn't even put it on my hotbar.

[peterthepan3]

Logical solution if Salvation WPs are using it (probably not intended) is to make it have a 2h requirement, if this is possible.

Mystery: even in full Wrath DPS gear, I can put out decent melee heals via spammable and Divine Assault. Contrary to what 'some other' WP said earlier on, Guilty Soul also provides pretty good supplementary heals on your defensive target - particularly if you get multiple GSs rotating simultaneously. These are the 'heals' (mainly spammable and DA) I refer to when I say they, too, should be nerfed if we are opting to improve Wrath DPS (note: nerfed only for Wrath/DPS WPs - not Grace!).

I am a huge advocate of variety; it is one of the things I loved about WoW. I, too, believe a Wrath WP should be able to fill in as a DPS, but its lifetaps in current iteration (even if spec'd full Wrath/DF and Fanaticism) would still be overperforming if damage was increased significantly to enable Wrath WP to do just this.