Return of Reckoning

Hi Kok, going back a bit I'm trying to understand why you spec into wrath for the AOE detaunt if it's usually baseline on all 2H, is it for when you switch to 1H/book? If so do you switch the rest of your gear when you decide to change that?

I just reached 40/38 last night and I'm getting my gear in order to go out and try grace in RVR, still need talismans and get used to the playstyle again.
My armor is over 3k with prayer which was like 70% reduction, all my resists are over 30%, dogde and distrupt I think were all over 30% as well with parry over 40% when buffed. I put some extra RR into futile strikes rather than more parry. I figured 8% reduction to be crit was decent for the cost.

Here is the build I'm going to try:
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=wp; ... 0:;0:0:0:0:

I didn't go for absence of faith since I figured other mdps have better heal debuffs and it's one GCD that I don't produce healing or damage so I would rather use it for Sigmars radiance.
I took soulfire as it's spirit damage so bypass armor and it could scale depending on # of targets hit and it's cast-able on the move and generates RF. but it's going to be situational because I don't want to cancel my AOE detaunt.

I don't think I would run prayer of devotion unless I ran the tatic for it as well, but I would have to test it out a bit more to be sure.

On a related topic, one challange I have is targeting the correct target on offense, things move around so quickly and tab just cycles through targets I don't want to hit. Anyone have any susgestions? I think the N key will target the closes mob but if I want to target the squished in a clustered group it can be tricky.

Defensive targeting is another matter, easier but not as easy as I would prefer. it's one more thing to manage which is only good if you can spare the attention for it which I find in hectic battles I can't really.

kok wrote:

Dabbart wrote: I don't understand kok's play-theory. No one "ignores" melee WP. And attacking a Tank, the class that has the best defensive stats, is never a sound strategy. And from personal experience, no. A 2hander trying to cast to heal is not effective. You run out of RF far too easily. You don't have the survivability to rush AoE/melee trains. You will always have trouble keeping up with the crowd, and your group will cry as they HoT to death as you desperately try to supplicate.

There is a huge difference between a 2h WP and a book one.
May not seem different to you since you never run a book WP.
Tank has the best toughness and armor, they don't have much parry and block.
And you are wrong, you have the survivability to survive reasonable time against AoE/melee trains ,
YOU HAVE AOE detaunt.
Just don't spam AOE to disable them and you will do just fine.

The reason why MOST GRACE WP is hated is because they think themselves as mdps first, healer third.
They always try to get to the backline to get kills , waste their AP on snare, buff/debuff.
Often they die a lot and that is not even the MAIN reason ppl don't like them
The main reason is that they give up and AFK after they die like 2-3 times.(You know who I talking to).
IF you like to melee, melee to the end, or else take out your book and heal.

1. I do run a book WP. That was my main on live. I just find the style boring, so I tend not to main my WP. I almost never, ever, bring him into an SC in melee spec. Only times I will are when I am PLing/farming and a friend wants me too. And then I will argue against it. Since the spec is very subpar. Where the feck did you get "I don't play book wp" from?

2. Tanks DON'T have much parry/block?!?! Wtf are you smoking?! Parry/block is how tanks mitigate Gaurd damage. Any tank that has "almost no parry/block" is utterly useless. Also, no. My WP had higher Armor than my Knight until he got Ruin gear.(3300 on WP, 3100 on knight using Tali's obviously[knight closer to 4k now]). Also, no on Toughness. I have seen quite a few Magus with over 900 toughness. Defensive stats are not solely a Tank.

3. No. You do NOT have the survivability to survive AoE/melee without stacking defense. AoE detaunt is great. Unless you have a gaurd, then it does nothing(since they don't stack anymore).

4. No. Attempting to get PAST the front line is not a bad idea. Standing right where EVERY enemy can attack you is a bad idea.

5. And... I don't even know what to say to your insistence that people don't target HEALERS IN MELEE as a priority...

Honestly mate.. You are sounding like you have never actually tried a melee WP in T4... And your character list not including a WP makes me think that you might be working on what you thought worked way the hell back on Live...

I was specced into the 25% inc heal debuff but honestly its garbage and isnt worth the gcd like 90% of the time, and usually i am with someone who has a 50% heal debuff anyway, so the increased dmg and healing and extra wounds from capping the grace tree is worth it,

also i use hastened divinity because you must if you want to do any kind of "real dmg" at all, i can kill bad healers myself with silence and a nice string of crits, my autos are my hardest hitting move usually can hit soft targets for 1k+


edit: greave of sigmar is nice but a knight anywhere nearby nullifies using this tactic, so you will get more effeciency out of running something else, its nice for 1v1s , i liked it in t2, but thats it.

Dabbart wrote:
2. Tanks DON'T have much parry/block?!?! Wtf are you smoking?! Parry/block is how tanks mitigate Gaurd damage. Any tank that has "almost no parry/block" is utterly useless. Also, no. My WP had higher Armor than my Knight until he got Ruin gear.(3300 on WP, 3100 on knight using Tali's obviously[knight closer to 4k now]). Also, no on Toughness. I have seen quite a few Magus with over 900 toughness. Defensive stats are not solely a Tank.

I play 4 tank, got all to lvl 40, 3 of them have more than 30rr rank.
TANK DO NOT HAVE HIGH AVOIDANCE ,at least with the present gear, only about 30% parry and less block.
Also you missing the point: Why should a heal WP care about armor of a tank or any of his target since he use them to build RF?

Dabbart wrote: Honestly mate.. You are sounding like you have never actually tried a melee WP in T4... And your character list not including a WP makes me think that you might be working on what you thought worked way the hell back on Live...

I do play Melee with 2h
Still getting top heal however since I lack the gear ,not very impress with dmg number.
http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy11 ... mo2blr.png
End up spending more time spamming heal than doing dmg .

I assume you never go pug since you think every WP has guard or even have a tank in your group.

Lancez wrote:Hi Kok, going back a bit I'm trying to understand why you spec into wrath for the AOE detaunt if it's usually baseline on all 2H, is it for when you switch to 1H/book? If so do you switch the rest of your gear when you decide to change that?

This is for Poor , lazy WP who pug in almost all SC who wanted to switch between heal and dmg on the fly.
I assume you pug a lot, wanted to win SC, wanted to heal if necessary, and yet wanted to melee whenever allowed.

End up doing healing for almost 80% of the SC. In all those I do dmg, i am not impress with the dmg.
You can see from the Armory , my RR isn't high , just reach 33. Gear is green.

Lancez wrote: On a related topic, one challange I have is targeting the correct target on offense, things move around so quickly and tab just cycles through targets I don't want to hit. Anyone have any susgestions? I think the N key will target the closes mob but if I want to target the squished in a clustered group it can be tricky.

Defensive targeting is another matter, easier but not as easy as I would prefer. it's one more thing to manage which is only good if you can spare the attention for it which I find in hectic battles I can't really.

The difference is between if you wants KB/kills or you don't give a crap about it.
If you can't give a crap, there is many many many targets.
If you wanted KB, you choose the wrong class.
In melee you often get snare/root, you have no way to break them (beside cleaning)
You have zero way beside lucky proc to chase a target even a sorcerer .

Note:
You can hit target 10~15 feet away by using the "rubber band bug" from server. If you get a hit(including range attack), you can attack a target 10feet away with melee.
That why you can see melee DOK spamming attack on target 10~15 feet away.
Maybe you can make use of that.

Hi kok

you are correct I pug all my SC, it's hard to find a SC group and more so if I want to go 2H
I tried your build that only relies on switching tactics and gear.
http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=wp; ... 4:;0:0:0:0:

I did some pug SC's in willpower gear with 1h/book and they went very well. with intimidating repent I was able to be much more forward without fear of getting steamrolled, I focused on putting hots on dps and spaming TotD. I used Smite inbetween to regen RF or Sigmars Radiance on whatever target was close by.

I liked it, it was engaging, I was able to manage both resources and split between range casting and melee. I was even top healing in one SC.

I suppose I could play this way regardless of specing salv or grace, I think though I could do without the salv tree abilities but dpsing without the grace spec I think would really hamper things.

I like that I can adapt a little to the needs of the group, god forbid we have too much healing I can put on my str gear and go grace.

my expectation is never to be top dps, all I really want is to play something I enjoy and have it be meaningful and helpful to the group. I think that full grace with 2h is more susceptible to downtime than the same playstyle with a 1h/book. Maybe what they need to do is give all 2h'ers passive RF regen, maybe half of what a book gets of equal rarity. I think that would go a long way in broadening the role.


sweet: nice running with you last night. I'm not 100% up to speed on kotbs buffs, I know there is a str one but is there a toughness one as well? this would only cover buffs there would still be some value in debuffing the target right?

I wish I could include hastened divinity, but my focus is more on healing output. my old rule of thumb in SC was as long as my damage/healing numbers combined were high up on the scoreboard then I was happy with the results. I can always swap it in if I need to, thank god it's baseline. It's when I need a tactic that I don't have that bothers me.
Would you suggest running with the 2h with the +crit proc?

no the 2h with the crit proc is very fast its like 2.4 speed or something like that, far too quick and your autos will do significantly less dmg, the other 2 hammers are both excellent though in that they have 4.2 speed, so each auto is a nice heavy hit.

and knights typically will run either their crit auras, or str/toughness/resists, and yes the knight debuffs do infact also debuff the enemy , so playing with a knight while using greave is quite useless.


edit : also you should not be using the armor prayer at all EVER, unless you are heavily invested into the salvation tree, as with no pts in the salv tree it is something like 400 armor, which is garbage and does not stack with an armor pot,

so if you put an armor pot on there is literally no point to this prayer and the other 2 are infinitely more useful

"edit: greave of sigmar is nice but a knight anywhere nearby nullifies using this tactic, so you will get more effeciency out of running something else, its nice for 1v1s , i liked it in t2, but thats it."

They won't have the same value if run by a single KoTBS. You have to spec Conquest for high numbers on Press the Attack (Str), and Vigilance for Stand Strong (tough). You aren't able to reasonably spec high enough in either in order to gain the 120 from each aura that would rival Greave. This also hinges on the presence of a KoTBS (which certainly aren't in short supply, but they aren't guaranteed) and them being within 30 feet of the target you are on, which isn't necessarily the case (I personally prefer to follow around IBs if they are present).

That said, I see your point, but one of the things that I strongly dislike about Grace is it's near reliance on a tank, let alone having a reliance on a very specific tank.

what about the 3 other point that we gain when we hit renown rank 70 ? does it work on this server ?

Lol. 4 tanks at 40 and rr30+? Gj. Sounds like you know everything there is to know about tanks right? My knight has 32% parry/24% block before Shield Rush(+10% block +15% parry w/ tactic). That's 2 checks to avoid, which means I have a higher % chance to evade than if I had 60% parry or block, and I have seen a bunch of 2hs with over 50% parry(there's another thread where all the potential %s got broken down. Any tank can get their evasion freakishly high). Your particular build doesn't seem to utilize high avoidance. Good for you. That is not ALL tanks... Lol. Besides the point, my initial point on tanks was that they are NOT a good target since they by and large have the highest evasion stats. I never said they where 99% unhittable. 20-30% parry and block is far better than the vast, vast majority of players/classes will have. Simply because the tank gets to roll twice for full evasion. Everyone else just gets a parry chance(talking melee here)

Honestly? What in the hell are those SC's supposed to show? That you can cherry pick 3-4 SCs that you did well in? Congrats. Considering your lvl difference in some of those SCs(38-40) looks like you are saving the ones you did well in. I don't care about cherry picking. You and I both know that in general you aren't getting top heals, nor are you surviving well. Also, 2/4 SCs are order losses, and 2/4 are order blow out victories, and one of those SCs you are the only healer! And I dunno how you are unaware of this, but SC end numbers mean NOTHING. I could have very little heals compared to you, cause I am in a bubble build, and my group isn't getting hit that much. Doesn't mean you are a better healer. Magus' can get 500k+ damage. Doesn't mean they are the best DPS. Tell you what/ stream up a few hours of SCs, and then we can "judge" how you do. Posting the BEST SCs from lvl 38-40 shows nothing at all.

Last point on those SCs... KOK BUY SOME POTIONS. You have ZERO points into Salv. Why the hell are you running Prayer of Absolution... Lol, 412 armor from your Aura is an outright waste.

Your build is weak imo. If you are spending all your time casting heals, why the 2h? If you don't care about damage, why the 2h? If you are only attacking for RF, why the 2h? You can accomplish what you are talking about with a hammer/book far more effectively, even in melee. If this is about having fun, then why are you trying to say you are a great healer? Standing in melee to build RF is not an effective usage of your time if you are "spamming heals". 1.5 Divine Strikes per grp heal is no efficient. And you're supposedly not spamming Smite since you are relying on your AoE detaunt...

No. I PUG a lot. Group when I feel like it, or get asked by a buddy. How I know that 2h WPs are subpar is because I tried mine in every set-up I could, in and out of premades, once the free AoE detaunt on 2h came in. I had SCs where I was top heal and near top damage. But I could FEEL that the build was weak, the numbers meant nothing. Everytime I poked my head up I get gang-assisted to a fine red mist. Gaurd or no gaurd, I got melted(in pure off spec, pure def spec, I even tried a cast-heal with 2h for RF). Puging a melee WP is just brutal. I see them in SCs all day getting smoked.

You are supposed to build/plan as if you are going to have a gaurd. Have a back-up if you don't, but Tanks and gaurd is a MAJOR part of this game... That's like saying you shouldn't plan or build to have a healer, since so many PUG SCs don;t have healers. So just assume you will never ever have one.

Whatever. Anyone that wants to follow Kok's build/tactics go for it. You'll figure out first hand why people don't run it.

Edit: There are ways to make this build/style work. I have a write up for it, with a few tweaks that I believe could make it actually work, but no balance forums yet... I also happen to know that there are at least 3 other people that have plans/idea's for melee WP, just awaiting the balance forums...