Questions regarding the playstyle of WP

[Rydiak]

and you're telling him "yeah Grace is great if you run with a premade group, are 40/70 and have top-notch gear."

I am not saying that, quite the contrary. Even with Merc you can do decently as Grace (I leveled most of my RR as Grace long before even the new changes came in), but you have to play smart and be defensive. Salvation is easier to play and there is no doubt about that, but Grace has a much higher skill ceiling and can do so much more to affect the battlefield than Salvation can. I would definitely give the nod to Salvation in terms of regular ORvR play, especially during "typical PUG" gameplay, but in Scenarios you can carry as Grace.

[HappyHubris]

I'll defer to your broader experience in general but will note that personally I found my attempts at Grace to be short-lived and sub-optimal.

[HappyHubris]

To pivot away from arguing, what do you think would make WP Grace smoother and/or more consistent? The first thing that I think of is consolidating some of the buffs (e.g. why is +10% blocking an entirely separate buff to maintain? Just add it to an existing skill or tactic) and increasing buff duration.

[Rydiak]

My only current suggestion is for a lower cooldown on Sacrifice (Grace WP) and Blood of my Blood (Sacrifice DoK). The ability is incredibly powerful (arguably the best group heal in the game), but is offset by a hefty cost, both a big Righteous Fury drain and a big life cost.

The ability is best utilized in short, controlled bursts so you can essentially "equalize" the health between you and your group-mates, but a 30s cooldown hampers this. The cooldown is effectively 20s if you have a full RF pool and use the ability for its entire 10s duration, but it is very dangerous (and potentially deadly) to do that. I would prefer a 5s to 10s cooldown reduction on the ability compared to any increases in life healed or decreases in life lost, as this would buff the flexibility/up-time of the ability without directly increasing its performance.

This buff would have the benefit of increasing a Grace/Sacrifice WP/DoK's healing capability at range (when they can't get into melee combat with an enemy) while also making the core ability more flexible to use.

[Snoxx]

I was playing grace melee-heal WP on live-servers and here on RoR for many years.
I stopped playing after the 1h+shield changes were made, because this already weak (but fun) spec got even weaker.
My melee WP was RR80 already and had the best available gear when that awful 1h+shield patch came out and destroyed the build.

So I cannot recommend going the 1h+shield route.

If you wanna heal, do it as backline healer with book.

If you wanna melee, do it as a wrath dps spec WP with 2h-hammer.

(wrath spec used to be very weak but recently got some nice buffs and is somewhat viable now. You need minimum RR45 and a mix of merc/dominator gear to make it work, and you need a trustworthy guard tank)

[Rydiak]

I have to disagree 1000000% that Grace got weaker after the 1h+shield change. Like, I cannot even fathom how you could think that.

[Snoxx]

I wrote it all in this thread, read my postings on page 2:

viewtopic.php?f=75&t=29559&start=10

It's very detailed and a lot of text. Maybe that's the reason why hardly anyone seems to read it.

There are some suggestions how to fix the problems as well.

[adamthelc]

The group is more important than the gear. You can fit a salvation WP into any group it will provide some value. If you are trying to pug as grace in a scenario you are going to get some match ups that render you pretty impotent.

I think the changes were good overall. Like has been mentioned, its tricky to fix any shortcomings because the spec could become too good very easily.

More power to you if you like the idea of grace and want to try and make it work. Just be aware it's easier and more reliable to be effective as salvation.

[Ashoris]

You can play him as a melee Healer and that is true, but in every Group a "Backline" WP is more viable.

to put all the discussion into context :
Rydiak who plays a melee WP is referencing to part 1 of my sentence but ignoring the 2nd part.

Snoxx (one of the best and well known meleeWPs on this Server) is knowing part 2 of this sentence and therefore mentioning that you should play either with book or as 2H.

[Rydiak]

I'm not ignoring the second part of your statement, but the OP's original question wasn't whether or not Salvation was the most viable WP build, it was whether "melee heal" (Grace) is viable. It is viable, and I happen to think it is highly viable.