Hazmy wrote: Mon Jun 22, 2026 10:15 am
Rubbish, re-read your own post.
You yourself are arguing for both the lack of healing and viability of Shield Warrior Priest, whereas now you point out other players without knowing the context and other weak excuses like pugs and bad players.
Your data is almost useless to consider from a useful statistical point of view. 50 Scenarios? For any of these numbers to matter, it would need to be a significantly higher pool and over the course of months due to the nature of RoR, where if you play 1 afternoon or even a weekend you just keep matching against the same players and with the same players with no performance shift whatsoever.
Healing is dependent on the quality of the fights, who you fight against and how much damage is taken. It is a completely invalid stat to base any average analysis on, because even with a wide pool of examples the IQR of your statistics, the middle range, is so stretched that your results are useless.
Average Healing is a functionally useless stat to determine any accuracy.
Also basing any real balance feedback on the average performance? The average ror player unfortunately, but objectively is so underperforming and below the bar that it is in fact one of the reasons the server is struggling to heal itself and become fun again.
Regarding Iyvans, until 1 month ago when we all stopped going to City together, he was still playing Shield Warrior Priest and Shield DOK every single city - well mostly DOK because he had to play Destro against us and he was outhealing all healers, who are also considered top in their classes. How do I know this? Because I played and we analyzed the cities together.
City 1 Top Healer:
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 3838eb0687
City 2 Top Healer:
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... d5834dce1b
City 3 Top Healer:
https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... bfdf4892c1
And no, I say that Shield Warrior Priest is still insane healer in both Blob Fights, Warband vs Warband and City. While 1 ability is most of your healing, you still have significant amount of utility you HAVE to use as shield Warrior Priest, that already makes it an active class to bounce buffs around - so it's far from a 1-2 button class. ( Most classes are 3-4 buttons anyway in ror, why are we pretending they aren't )
Tanks can learn how to guard-swap, it is not rocket-science. DPS and Healers can learn better positioning, using de-taunt and be aware of the enemy team. Yes even Shield Priest shouldn't be in the middle, but on the sides hitting a healer - and targeting someone taking damage in the group.
RoR is a team-game, pugs being **** should not be an excuse, nor is it that there aren't enough tanks on the server. There's more to the game than the 2/2/2 comp and the same boring gameplay everyone has been doing for the past 4 years. Classes are supposed to support each other and so do players - classes and design of the game should not be further dumbed down because the playerbase is slowly becoming too lazy to play a video game and learn it.
We all know where that got us, and it's this clown-fiesta of people logging off after 1 defeat or PvDoor with 100% AAO only. Yeah let's make it so Tanks and Healers are not needed so everyone can just make a 24 dps warband mindlessly.
With that said, feel free to buff Shield Priest, it is already an op healer - if it gets buffed then the people who actually know how to play it will be even more overpowered.
Specifically the changes you are asking for are OUTRAGEOUSLY overtuned, almost every point.
TLDR: Put a Guard on your Shield Priest - and tell one of the useless DPS player who doesn't press buttons and deals 0 damage anyway, to play a Tank instead.
I think several different points are being mixed together, so I will try to clarify my position.
First: right now, I am not saying that Shield WP is unplayable right now. I am also not saying that no good player can get good numbers with the spec.
My argument is more specific:
Shield WP seems to have a poor ratio between the useful value it brings to the group and the amount of defensive resources it needs in order to function, especially in scenarios.
That is not the same as saying “the spec can never perform”.
About the sample and statistics
I agree that 47-50 scenarios from a single player are not enough to draw a definitive balance conclusion. RoR has many variables: matchmaking, repeated players, premades, pug quality, stomps, bad compositions, enemy quality, tank support, etc. However, these scenarios were played across a 3-day period and at different times of the day.
But that does not make the data useless.
Average healing alone would be a weak metric, I agree. Healing depends on how much damage the group receives, the quality of the fights, and many other factors.
But my argument is not based only on average healing.
I am looking at several metrics together:
- Healing per minute.
- Healing to others.
- Protection to others.
- Self-protection.
- Protection received.
- Deaths.
- Kill damage.
- Deathblows.
- Comparison with healers in the same scenarios.
- Comparison with global T4 healers.
- Comparison with healers using similar detected gear.
The important point is not one isolated metric. The important point is the pattern.
And after adding more players to the analysis, the pattern is still quite clear.
Aggregated data from several players
I added more players to the analysis, not only my own character. Some have small samples and I would not use them as strong evidence, but filtering only level 40+ players with at least 10 valid scenarios gives a much more useful sample.
To do this, I mined killboard data by extracting all server deaths between June 17 and June 21, a total of 211,783 deaths. Then I searched for Warrior Priests who had participated in a kill involving Sigmar’s Will, to make sure they were Shield WPs, and then extracted their list of scenarios played during that period, including all the data shown here.
After that, I also verified that they were actually playing Shield WP in each scenario by checking their damage score. If the damage was extremely low or close to 0, that scenario was discarded as valid, since it was probably a spec change between scenarios or a book spec.
As an interesting note, out of 546 Warrior Priests with activity during that period, only 21 had activity with shield. Of those, 9 were tier 3. If people felt that Shield WP worked well, I would expect more people to appear in this list.
In total, filtering only level 40+ players, with at least 10 valid scenarios, and with damage compatible with Shield WP when compared against the active DPS players in their own scenarios, the data is:
Code: Select all
Players included: 4
Valid scenarios: 157
Combined winrate: 45.2%
Healing/min: 12.1k
Healing to others/min: 8.7k
Protection to others: 12.3k
Protection received: 37.4k
Average deaths: 1.69
Compared against the healers in their own scenarios:
Code: Select all
Healing/min: 81.9% of the average of other healers
Protection to others: 65.9% of the average of other healers
Protection received: 362.1% of the average of other healers
Deaths: 177.4% of the average of other healers
This is the central point.
In this aggregated sample, these Shield WPs are healing less than other healers, protecting teammates less, receiving more than three and a half times the external protection of other healers, and dying considerably more.
This does not mathematically prove every balance point of the spec, but it does show a worrying pattern.
Player-by-player data
Looking at individual players, there are different cases. I am anonymizing third-party names.
Code: Select all
Player Lvl/RR Valid SCs Detected gear Healing/min Healing to others/min Protection to others Protection received Deaths
Kpihuss 40/90 47 Sov Off x5; Victorious x3 11.9k 8.3k 8.6k 49.6k 1.55
Rxxxxx 40/90 42 Sov Off x5; Victorious x4 18.5k 14.6k 22.4k 46.2k 1.05
Pxxxxxxx 40/72 58 Victorious x7 8.4k 5.3k 9.0k 23.9k 2.47
Dxxxxx 40/84 10 Sov Off x5; Victorious x4 7.9k 6.0k 6.2k 22.1k 0.60
It is important to be honest with these numbers.
Rxxxxx is a positive case. He heals very well, above the average of the healers in his scenarios. That shows that the spec can perform in good hands and/or under good conditions.
So I am not saying that getting good numbers is impossible.
But that case does not remove the general pattern. Even Rxxxxx, who is the strongest positive example, receives much more protection than other healers.
Compared against the healers in their own scenarios:
Code: Select all
Player Lvl/RR Detected gear Healing/min vs other healers Protection to others vs other healers Protection received vs other healers
Kpihuss 40/90 Sov Off x5; Victorious x3 78.4% 47.6% 476.4%
Rxxxxx 40/90 Sov Off x5; Victorious x4 108.2% 90.8% 344.8%
Pxxxxxxxx 40/72 Victorious x7 63.1% 58.6% 298.9%
Dxxxxx 40/84 Sov Off x5; Victorious x4 66.8% 41.1% 205.2%
Rxxxxx shows that the spec has a high ceiling. But even in that case, protection received is more than three times higher than the average of the healers in his scenarios.
That is exactly part of the problem I am pointing out: not only output, but real group efficiency and the cost in defensive resources.
Total protection versus useful protection
Another important point is that total protection can be misleading.
Many of these characters show good total protection, but a very large part of it is self-protection, not protection applied to the group.
In the aggregated sample of level 40+ players with at least 10 valid scenarios and damage compatible with Shield WP, self-protection represents approximately 71.1% of total protection.
That means looking only at “total protection” overestimates the real support impact of the spec.
What matters is not only how much the Shield WP protects himself. What matters is how much he actually protects his teammates.
And there, the result is much weaker.
Top 1 in self-protection versus real support
The rankings show the same pattern.
For example:
Code: Select all
Kpihuss:
Top 1 healing: 4/47
Top 1 self-protection: 35/47
Top 1 protection to others: 5/47
Rxxxxx:
Top 1 healing: 5/42
Top 1 self-protection: 26/42
Top 1 protection to others: 1/42
Pxxxxxxxx:
Top 1 healing: 3/58
Top 1 self-protection: 31/58
Top 1 protection to others: 5/58
This reinforces the same point: the spec stands out much more in self-protection than in group healing or actual protection to teammates.
About the top-player example and Cities
I also want to point out something important about the cited example.
The player (Yvans) being mentioned is not an average player. We are talking about one of the best Shield WP/DoK players in the game, with many ranked leagues won or finished in the top 3 healers.
In other words, that example does not represent the normal performance of the spec. It represents the performance of an elite player, in an organized environment, with very high class knowledge and with a group capable of playing around him.
The fact that such a player can get top healing in Cities does not prove that the spec has good practical efficiency in normal scenarios.
It proves that the spec has a high ceiling in exceptional hands and under favorable conditions.
That does not invalidate my argument. On the contrary, it qualifies it: if the spec needs an elite player, good coordination, good guard swaps, good group positioning, and an organized environment in order to shine, then those requirements are part of the real cost of the spec. Also...
Shield DoK is not an exact mirror of Shield WP
There is another important point: Shield DoK is not an exact mirror of Shield WP.
Using Shield DoK results as direct proof that Shield WP is equally fine is not a clean comparison.
Shield DoK has tools that improve or stabilize its healing output significantly.
For example:
- Gift of Khaine makes Khaine’s Force additionally heal allies over time. This is very important because Khaine’s Force is already a core ability of the shield lifetap playstyle.
- Transferred Focus makes Consume Essence and Transfer Essence undefendable, greatly increasing reliability. (Sigmar's radiance can be blocked or parried.
- Devour Essence damages up to 4 enemies around the target and heals the DoK and one ally for 150% of the damage dealt.
These tools matter.
So the fact that a Shield DoK can produce very high numbers in City does not automatically prove that Shield WP has the same performance, the same scaling, or the same efficiency.
Shield DoK performance can be useful context, but it is not direct proof against concerns about Shield WP.
About pugs and the real game environment
I also think the pug environment cannot be dismissed so easily.
People can say “RoR is a team game”, and I agree. But we also have to recognize how the server is actually played most of the time.
Right now, the RoR team’s effort has largely gone in the direction of a game environment built around pugs, public warbands, random scenarios, imperfect compositions, and casual players.
Many changes over a long period of time have gone exactly in that direction: making the game more accessible, reducing friction, helping the casual player, and making it easier for people to participate without always depending on perfectly coordinated closed groups. Examples include the removal of exclusive content currencies, the addition of BiS sets through PvE, the team-based guard system, RR gain increases, increased War Crest drops, etc.
So saying that “pugs/casuals are bad and do not matter” is not a valid argument to me.
Pugs and casuals are not a marginal situation. They are a central part of the current game.
I am not saying the game should be balanced only around the worst casual player. But the environment where a huge part of the population actually plays cannot be ignored either.
A spec can be viable in organized play and still be inefficient in normal scenarios.
That is not a contradiction.
About guard
Saying “just guard the Shield Priest” actually reinforces one of my concerns.
Yes, tanks can swap guard.
Yes, good tanks can do it.
Yes, good DPS and healers can position better.
I agree.
But guard is still a limited resource.
If Shield WP needs much more protection received than other healers, then it is consuming defensive resources that could go to DPS or other key targets.
That can be fine if the performance compensates for it.
But the pattern in the data suggests that often it does not.
The problem is not that Shield WP “needs teamplay”. Every class needs teamplay in RoR.
The problem is whether it needs a disproportionate amount of defensive support while returning less useful healing, less protection to teammates, and not enough kill damage to compensate.
Conclusion
After adding more data, my position is not that Shield WP is currently unplayable.
I also do not deny that it has a high ceiling.
The data from Rxxxxx shows that it can perform well under certain conditions.
But the general pattern of the expanded level 40+ sample still shows an efficiency problem:
- Healing/min below other healers.
- Useful healing to others clearly lower.
- Protection to teammates lower.
- Total protection inflated by self-protection.
- Protection received much higher.
- More deaths.
- Kill damage insufficient to compensate for the loss of support.
- High dependency on guard and external support.
That is why I think Shield WP deserves a review.
Not because no player can make it work.
Not because it is useless in organized Cities.
But because, in the real environment of scenarios and pug/casual play, its practical efficiency seems very low compared to the investment and defensive resources it requires.
Really, awesome efforts, kudos but such a bad luck it has fundamental flows right on start