[Warrior Priest] Making Wrath viable

[Ramasee]

1. Agreed.

3. Wrath is currently about DPS, yes. You agreed with some of us that a healer archtype that specs entirely into dps shouldn't be the most viable. That's why I would want to change the identity of wrath from the straight damage tree into a support via debuff dps. I would also do similar things for the damage trees of other healing archtype careers on both factions.

Bludgeon is a filler when everything else is on cool down, and even then only if you want do more efficient damage without healing (aka instead of grace's sigmar's radiance). The change to that tactic would give another reason to use bludgeon and prayer of righteousness if you were slotting the tactic. It also maintains the identity change and ideas presented here while not helping a no-wrath specced WP.

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A front-line healer should be able to heal as well as an RP/AM but much differently with a limited range. Currently we have 100ft range group-oriented abilities that makes us able to sit as far back from the lines as RP/AM except when we happen to need to smite (if we don't want to supplicate). However, trying to change this can be difficult, because people have been playing outside the WPs intended purpose ever since tome/chalic gained resource regen. That's a very long time.

Personally I'd like to see divine light, pious restoration, and martyr's blessing(listed just for the range buff) all be a 45ft PBAoE that heals the AoE cap of nine targets, but prioritizes anyone in your group that is in that range. That way to put out the most healing you can as a salvation, you have to be within 45ft of the front lines.

That was one of the least punitive ideas I could come up with to addressing the medium armor backline healer problem. Also yes our tankiness>AM/RP kiting. Specially now T4 is released.

But Salvation is for a different thread. This is certainly not meaningless and is a great discussion; similar to the old grace thread. The ideas presented here that have been molded and changed will make it to the balance forums where we as those who present them can place well-thought out ideas that were cross-examined.

[Agiond]

Just a little question: Why would we want to spec Wrath into a debuffer instead of giving it more damage?

Salvation = casting healer
Grace = melee healer (with mediocre damage)
Wrath = melee dps (still mediocre damage)

So... why are we afraid for asking Wrath to have more damage? We are still quite different from any other mdps in their purpose.

So correct me if i'm wrong:

-White Lion: Has Pounce and his lion cal pull enemies (if it's not working or the lion is a dumbass it's another matter, the devs will end up fixing him). So the White Lion has the hability to bypass any defensive lines to jump straight into the enemy mages and healers and stick on them.

-Witch Hunter: Has stealth and high burst. Seems quite obvious that he can flank the enemy, get into their backline and melt his target.

-Slayer: High damage, either AoE or single target. As single target it also has a much more powerfull "Divine Assault" to heal himself almost completly, but he can't use in on others (his is more powerfull, ours is more versatile). I think we all can agree that he's meant to be a frontline mdps.

-WP: As a backline healer, we all know how it works. As a frontline healer, we also know what he does. But what about his mdps role? That's what Wrath has always been about.
If we chose to completly commit to our mdps option, we lose our hability to "self"-heal (40% heal reduction is quite hard) and we still lack in damage compared to any of the other mdps.
We don't have stealth, nor we have a "charge" or jump, so we can't get into the enemy backline. We are meant to be a frontline mdps, just like Slayers are.
We don't have AoE damage, so we are limited to single target damage. Our only survavility comes from Divine Assault, tho if we commit to be a mdps we lose even that.

We NEED to be able to do more damage while not destroying our ONLY source of survavility. That's why Divine Fury and Fanaticism tactics need to get rid of the healing debuff. And that's why our Wrath skills need a damage boost.

Hammer of Sigmar needs to do more damage, what we have right now is a joke. Guess it's bugged or something, because it used to hit decently. Weight of Guilt needs more damage, as Castigation needs it. Even Bludgeon needs it (there's almost no reason right now to use it over Sigmar's Radiance). Even Prayer of Righteousness needs more damage.


Get that, and mdps WP will be able to be a frontline mpds able to bolster his partys' damage (prayer) and being able to help other frontline players to survive burst spikes (Divine Assault) and still being able to do some damage.
That's what should differentiate us from slayers: versatility. They must still be able to do more damage than us, but not by 400 miles.

[Vayra]

Agiond, you seem to be under the impression that DA (and other lifetaps) are affected by the heal debuff from Divine Fury / Fanaticism. This is not the case, all lifetaps are exempted from heal debuffs due to suffering from armour/resistance/toughness mitigation + parry/block.

[Agiond]

My apologies then, i was talking from memory. My WP is still on early T2 so i still don't have access to those tactics.

Thanks for your clarification.


Tho part of my point still stands: We need a damage boost on Wrath path, and only on it. Boosting Grace's damage would make melee WP a god damn OP char to deal with.

[Ramasee]

A debuffer indirectly increases the overall damage of your party by increasing the amount of damage your actual damage classes do; and actually for that matter anyone else hitting the same target (s) as you. Warrior Priests are NOT a damage career; they are a healing (aka support) career. You want damage, roll the careers where that is the only thing they can do.

If you read the posts in the thread, no has tried to give bonuses to any trees outside of wrath; we have actively avoided doing so. We have also buffed most of the damage aspects of the tree (bludgeon, hammer of wrath, and castigation), while adding debuffs or increasing AP efficiency (weight of guilt, soulfire, hammer of wrath). Adding damage just wasn't the focus.

Also as a melee warrior priest, you still can provide resurrection, buffs, dispels, off heals, and morale heals (which aren't effected by heal debuffs). That is a TON of utility. The point of the thread is to make wrath a viable and useful option; but in doing so you can't just turn him into a mdps; simply because of all of those things above.

[freshour]

I'd just like to add that a Grace WP heals nearly double what a Sac DoK heals for. So you might have 50k damage and 150k heals vs 100k damage and 100k heals - That is a very common scoreline.

So for wrath I'm not really sure what you need. I've said it once and I'll add in again that wrath has 1 DoT.. DoK's have 2 good ones and their version of soulfire which is 1 second and not 2 second cast.... soulfire should be a 1 sec cast, not really sure why its never been changed, but lets just agree that has to happen. HD aside, with a slower AA WP will never compete with DoK for sustained damage.

BUT - with a raise in some ability damage - it could have more of a burst factor. I love a lot of these ideas, but keep in mind we are trying to mirror a 2h vs DW when the majority of the damage is white/prayer damage.... I mean when one class has devour essence and the other doesn't... any comparison at all will be difficult. keep it going though

[Agiond]

DoK has a lot of damage options that we don't and combat utility. Burning AP from their enemy, debuffing parry, ... a mdps without action points will deal no damage. That's something a WP has no option to do.
But they don't need to be mirrors, it's the overall efficiency that should be balanced.


Ramasee, WP has always been about versatility. Saying "reroll to a mdps if you want to deal damage" means nothing, because WP is already a mdps. A bad one, we both agree on that, but it's a mdps.
In my opinion, it would be easier and better to just give Wrath WP a damage boost. Getting into "debuffer land" is dangerous and prone to unbalancing. The line between overpowered and underpowered is quite thin when you are touching buffs/debuffs.

[Stmichael1989]

I get the idea of wanting Wrath to be viable from a DPS standpoint, but I don't think that's the best goal for the game. Full well half of the games classes are DPS, and on top of that tanks are a good 50/50 split between tankiness and DPS. I feel that while Grace should be the defensive, melee healing warrior priest, Wrath should still be a supporting role, but offensively focused.

If we go down the path of trying to "balance" Wrath around damage, we're directly competing with other melee DPS. Given that we have a number of inherent support abilities and some added survivability through healing, we will either be inferior DPS with utility or equal DPS and imbalanced due to the added extras.

Balance in this case should be to provide our value to the group or warband in a way that doesn't directly compete with straight damage. Things like AoE snares, damage buffs against a target, AoE debuffs that compliment knight auras, etc.

[Earthpac]

Post got deleted so I'm just gonna write it out in short:

Wrath was built as the WP tree for damage so diverting it from that goal will probably be very difficult with only server-side changes. It makes sense that so many classes are dps though because that's how you kill the enemy and win. The only reason there are all the different classes to begin with is flavour, and that's exactly what Wrath offers.

If people didn't care about flavour we would all be out levelling Slayers rather than whining on forums that "Crazy Flagellant" flavour of mdps sucks, so it's obviously important.

So buffing Wrath to be usable isn't pointless because Slayers will be better anyway and I don't think we need to completely redesign Wrath's role for that reason. Just make it so its useable would satisfy a lot of players.

Risk of making some OP monster is also fairly low in this regard imo. If buffs are focused on Hammer of Sigmar and it's damage is kept physical then Wrath will be kept separate from the other trees by a fair margin.

[peterthepan3]

I'd just like to add that a Grace WP heals nearly double what a Sac DoK heals for. So you might have 50k damage and 150k heals vs 100k damage and 100k heals - That is a very common scoreline.

No offence but you seem to be posting a lot of erroneous comments as of late. A sacrifice DOK does more healing than a Grace WP - assuming both are well played - because of Devour Essence. This alone makes the DOK 10x better than the WP, imo.

How does the Grace WP do more healing than a Sacrifice DoK? Empirically verifiable facts, please.