Return of Reckoning

Im not sure about having a 4th stance. Theres 3 specs for a reason each healer having a heal, dps and lifetap role. Giving wp/sok access to the 4th role would make it even more versatile than the other healers. I think just pushing the cast healer wp/dok into the fight by reducing regen or heal range is the way to go. You have 2 backline healers already. One with its dps more dependant on frontline aoe anyway.
am/shaman ranged heal ranged dps
rp/zea ranged heal frontline aoe dps
So logically the 3rd healer should be frontline aoe heal frontline st dps.
Then you have all roles covered by the healers.

You have to have role gaps in careers for wars hybrid take on the trinity to work. Doing something to separate the roles of rp/zea and am/sha is as much an issue as wp/dok being mandatory. Except for the heal bless which makes rp/zea the obvious partner there really isnt enough that makes them different.

Read the OP. This isn't about the .ex mode! - Azarael

I would prefere as said in the other threads have just 3 stance toogle that swap effect

Currently armor buff

Give rec x sec but halv the armor if active

Currently snare proc and heal proc working instead as switch to swap the proportion between damage and heals from 75-25% to 25-75%.

With 1 mastery just made aoe so that that can be used as aoe dd as a slayer but part if the tooltip value a is converted in heals with 1 min cd between all toogle be it swap or de-active; you will have 3 stances and 3 mastery:
1- backliners/front liners caster
2- st melee oriented or heal oriented
3-aoe melee oriented / heal oriented.

So that you have 2 way to play each mastery, and 2 way both caster and melee fighter to heal. There is none value balance problem take 1 melee damages and give dol/wp only 75of the value thentake 1 healer heal and give it 25% to a melee heal : use toggle to swap proportion and thet are perfectly in line in damages vs all other mdps and in heal vs all other healers. Little nerf may happed but with similar value it's a lot easier to balance.
Make all affecter by heal debuff. You have the same heal over time under all condition than a backline healer.

I cant stress enough how important your attempt to break down the current FOTM is. So let’s get into it.

1)Pretty much what Zamoth said.
However, group cleanse and type of cleanse dok has access to surpasses the cleanse other healing classes have.
It can cleanse pretty much everything, while the other 2 healing classes get destroyed by shatter limbs(see zealot) or a BW/engi (see shaman), who, lets be honest, are kings in orvr environments. I remember back in t2 we would run a zealot in group for the sake of cleansing ib HD… Sooner or later, its not even worth it
I believe (and do correct me if im wrong) this isn’t so bad on order side, since WP cant cleanse SH, so in a way its viable to run 1 WP/ 1 AM in orvr. A lot of groups have done it successfully. Personally, I’ve played in groups with no wp involved and successfully pulled it through, while on des I have never seen anyone running grps with no dok (except maybe roleplaying orcs, cough cough racial groups). Perhaps shaman cleanse should get some love, especially vs engineers.
Sure, when someone starts the game doesn’t really think “oh look dok can cleanse BW so I better stick with this class”, but for me (and others I believe) the access to a ridiculously good cleanse, which also benefits my group even after the rework, really narrows down my preferences when it comes to picking a heal class.
-Aoe detaunt isn’t that much of an issue and is more or less offered in other healing classes. However, if you add to this the grp hot, the grp cleanse and the covenants, you understand why dok has been n1 in preference on destro side.
In large scale environment, access to fast group healing, group cleanse, no use of ap, and survivability again narrows down my options.

2) It will never be broken. Dok/wp is the alpha healer and unless completely nerfed aka destroyed, it will never stop being used in groups. What you wanna do is give some incentive to good players to choose shaman-AM/zealot-rp as 2nd healing option. Inability to cleanse certain debuffs and zealot’s ap issues are core issues imo.

3) As I said before, you cant have 2 types(melee/backline) of healing bc one will be far superior than the other and therefore, most people will choose it. If it’s less risky to sit in the back and spam gheal, ofc I’m gonna choose it and unfortunately, completely ignore the melee healing abilities I have => im not taking advantage of all the goodies my class has to offer.
Stance dance as a general idea was great, but it cant work, especially with a 5 min cd on celerity. Perhaps it can work on dd dok, when the FOTM breaks down and is no longer mandatory to have 1 or more heal speced doks in group.
What you can do though is reduce the range on heal abilities. Aoe detaunt, fast casting, high armor and melee abilities like silence/essense lash/devour essense would make more sense if u need to be closer to the frontline. Group synergy will remain intact, covenants will still buff the group, but you, as a player, will need to risk more in order to enjoy what the class can offer. In this way, you don’t break down the class in 2 different specs, melee and backline, but instead you make a new one, which takes advantage of all abilities available and is viable in both small and large scale environments. High risk will eventually lead to raise in individual’s skill cap, but also overall group skill, since this will require more teamwork from anyone involved in the group.

I don’t think blood offering should be removed, bc as the game advances and new gear becomes accessible, SE regen will be higher and thus the need to use blood offering will be minimized. In fact, if I need to be closer to the frontline and can cast essense lash, why waste 5 seconds on blood offering?
Spamming blood offering will make more sense in lower tiers, especially when chalices offer less SE regen. You have to take into consideration ppl in other tiers as well, because if a class isn’t viable at lvl 15 for example with no access to group heal, no one is gonna continue playing it.

My personal opinion though is, that whatever it is decided, shouldn’t be so drastic like latest patch. It should be a slow process with small steps at a time, so the community will not get overwhelmed by the amount of rework the class is going through. The more ppl willing to try the changes, the more feedback you will get, and therefore can adjust things accordingly.
#plskeep2swordsonhealspec

katroulitsa wrote:2) It will never be broken. Dok/wp is the alpha healer and unless completely nerfed aka destroyed, it will never stop being used in groups. What you wanna do is give some incentive to good players to choose shaman-AM/zealot-rp as 2nd healing option. Inability to cleanse certain debuffs and zealot’s ap issues are core issues imo.

In a balanced game there cannot be an alpha healer. If it's mandatory in groups, it's overpowered. That's a core point here. We cannot end up with a situation where prevalence is 50% DoK/WP, 25% RP/Ze and 25% AM/Shaman.

katroulitsa wrote:3) As I said before, you cant have 2 types(melee/backline) of healing bc one will be far superior than the other and therefore, most people will choose it. If it’s less risky to sit in the back and spam gheal, ofc I’m gonna choose it and unfortunately, completely ignore the melee healing abilities I have => im not taking advantage of all the goodies my class has to offer.

You could say that about every choice of spec on every class in the game, though.

katroulitsa wrote:Stance dance as a general idea was great, but it cant work, especially with a 5 min cd on celerity. Perhaps it can work on dd dok, when the FOTM breaks down and is no longer mandatory to have 1 or more heal speced doks in group.
What you can do though is reduce the range on heal abilities. Aoe detaunt, fast casting, high armor and melee abilities like silence/essense lash/devour essense would make more sense if u need to be closer to the frontline. Group synergy will remain intact, covenants will still buff the group, but you, as a player, will need to risk more in order to enjoy what the class can offer. In this way, you don’t break down the class in 2 different specs, melee and backline, but instead you make a new one, which takes advantage of all abilities available and is viable in both small and large scale environments. High risk will eventually lead to raise in individual’s skill cap, but also overall group skill, since this will require more teamwork from anyone involved in the group.

The thing is, you don't reconcile the class that way.

You're not the only one to suggest this, so I'll tell you what I told the others. Let's assume you drop the cast range and link the AoE detaunt to having a two hander out. How is the skillset reconciled by doing this? Yes, they will be forced to position more frontline, but you're still going to get the exact same skills in use you did before - casted heals and Smite/Essence Lash, because I still have no motive to melee. The only motive to melee comes when it is forced,, like on Devotion/Vitality on the .ex - if you don't melee, you don't have any Willpower and you have to Supplicate / Blood Offering for resource. The only reason Absolution/Tenacity mode was even supposed to exist on the .ex was for free casting situations and mass RvR - otherwise, you were supposed to play as Devotion/Vitality. That's why the armor penalty is disproportionate as well. I think a lot of people are having a hard time understanding that.

RvR is definitely the worst part of this, because the game breaks down and starts playing completely differently (and not in a good way) in zerg conditions. If zerg didn't exist or were no longer viable, there would be absolutely no problem forcing a melee/casted heals approach.

Azarael wrote:You're not the only one to suggest this, so I'll tell you what I told the others. Let's assume you drop the cast range and link the AoE detaunt to having a two hander out. How is the skillset reconciled by doing this? Yes, they will be forced to position more frontline, but you're still going to get the exact same skills in use you did before - casted heals and Smite/Essence Lash, because I still have no motive to melee. The only motive to melee comes when it is forced,, like on Devotion/Vitality on the .ex - if you don't melee, you don't have any Willpower and you have to Supplicate / Blood Offering for resource.

Why is this a problem though? Before we try to brainstorm anything, we need to know if you really are against it.
I think that even thematically it matches, that a guy using a small hammer or butter knife and holding a cup or a book is not meant to be beating on others, they look more like cheerleaders... perhaps make Blood Offering scale with enemies around them (as I suggested somewhere) to bring them more into the front line where their high armor makes sense.

dur3al wrote:

Azarael wrote:You're not the only one to suggest this, so I'll tell you what I told the others. Let's assume you drop the cast range and link the AoE detaunt to having a two hander out. How is the skillset reconciled by doing this? Yes, they will be forced to position more frontline, but you're still going to get the exact same skills in use you did before - casted heals and Smite/Essence Lash, because I still have no motive to melee. The only motive to melee comes when it is forced,, like on Devotion/Vitality on the .ex - if you don't melee, you don't have any Willpower and you have to Supplicate / Blood Offering for resource.

Why is this a problem though? Before we try to brainstorm anything, we need to know if you really are against it.
I think that even thematically it matches, that a guy using a small hammer or butter knife and holding a cup or a book is not meant to be beating on others, they look more like cheerleaders... perhaps make Blood Offering scale with enemies around them (as I suggested somewhere) to bring them more into the front line where their high armor makes sense.

This is a problem because one thing the .ex was meant to solve (and thus, I want to see solved) was the restricted skillset of the class, making it way too easy and boring, and I mean boring. Grace/Vitality will solve that in small scale given a few tweaks (i.e. AP cost on S'R/TE increased, Divine Strike and Consume Essence reintroduced, to stop the S'R/TE spam thing, and whatever tweaks to durability are needed after that). What I don't want is that there are two ways to play the class, one (melee/casted healing) representing the true vision of the class and being more interesting to play, and one (pure casted healing) being far easier to play and much more restricted in what it can do... but both having the same viability. I think this is part of what katroulitsa is warning about above - the real risk exists of this being the case if we hard lock and grandfather in the backline style.

We seem to be getting into the territory of playstyle protection more than anything - people looking for some way to retain the exact same restricted playstyle and assuming the changes were an attempt to balance backlining, instead of looking at the changes as a playstyle shifter, to the extent that we now have suggestions that revolve around pushing WP/DoK into the front, but not actually having them hit anything.

I hate to have to talk about the active mode when I've stated that this thread is not about that, but if asked for my opinion... you already know that the active mode represents it, and it's thus impossible for me not to reference it.

why that is even a problem, i tought that the problem was backline dok/wp not front line caster dok/wp , what change if i want to play full caster front line or if i wanna play hybrid melee-healer; is more a gameplay choice aka 100% heal or 75% damage and 25% heal or 25% heal and 75% damages.
Choice matter in that regard; if all 3 choice are balanced and all 3 need to play melee ppl will just choice what they like why spam heal in front line should then be punish? is very hard front line casting more than it is melee hit and heal everyone currently.

i mean what even am/shammy deos or zealot/rune does when they heal vs aoe?

spam g-heals + some hot+ absorb maybe some cleanse

what do you expect from a front line dok/wp? it also have to stay alive.... i think it's entertaining enough get the bomb in the face and survive to tell the story.

btw the chalice is still underperforming, compared to a 1h sword, i mean you can have sword with the exact same stats of the chalce/book but also with dps on it and 10% parry, rec working with 18 player around you as min is well.. impossible to use, since in rvr is a suicide go near the front line in this way 6 enemy near would be better would force the user to stay front line but can be used more; should scale towards 3-6, 6-12; 12-18; 18+ (maybe half value instead)

Azarael wrote:

dur3al wrote:

Azarael wrote:You're not the only one to suggest this, so I'll tell you what I told the others. Let's assume you drop the cast range and link the AoE detaunt to having a two hander out. How is the skillset reconciled by doing this? Yes, they will be forced to position more frontline, but you're still going to get the exact same skills in use you did before - casted heals and Smite/Essence Lash, because I still have no motive to melee. The only motive to melee comes when it is forced,, like on Devotion/Vitality on the .ex - if you don't melee, you don't have any Willpower and you have to Supplicate / Blood Offering for resource.

Why is this a problem though? Before we try to brainstorm anything, we need to know if you really are against it.
I think that even thematically it matches, that a guy using a small hammer or butter knife and holding a cup or a book is not meant to be beating on others, they look more like cheerleaders... perhaps make Blood Offering scale with enemies around them (as I suggested somewhere) to bring them more into the front line where their high armor makes sense.

This is a problem because one thing the .ex was meant to solve (and thus, I want to see solved) was the restricted skillset of the class, making it way too easy and boring, and I mean boring. Grace/Vitality will solve that in small scale given a few tweaks (i.e. AP cost on S'R/TE increased, Divine Strike and Consume Essence reintroduced, to stop the S'R/TE spam thing, and whatever tweaks to durability are needed after that). What I don't want is that there are two ways to play the class, one (melee/casted healing) representing the true vision of the class and being more interesting to play, and one (pure casted healing) being far easier to play and much more restricted in what it can do... but both having the same viability. I think this is part of what katroulitsa is warning about above - the real risk exists of this being the case if we hard lock and grandfather in the backline style.

We seem to be getting into the territory of playstyle protection more than anything - people looking for some way to retain the exact same restricted playstyle and assuming the changes were an attempt to balance backlining, instead of looking at the changes as a playstyle shifter, to the extent that we now have suggestions that revolve around pushing WP/DoK into the front, but not actually having them hit anything.

I hate to have to talk about the active mode when I've stated that this thread is not about that, but if asked for my opinion... you already know that the active mode represents it, and it's thus impossible for me not to reference it.

I see, but isn't that the case of all backline healers playstyle though?

I'm afraid I'm walking into unknown territory since I haven't played RP/AM/Shaman at all in this game, and only zealot until T2 or T3, but I've had my fair share of playing with good ones, both in live and here... and as a backline healer you're basically using the same 2-3 skills while trying to keep hots up all the time no?

Even now looking into Zealot's tree, it almost appears to me that they mostly have dps or debuff skills in their mastery trees, then why are they mostly played as full-time backline healers? Would you consider this also not fitting their "role"? Would you also consider changing them to be more engaged in dpsing instead of just sitting backline using their core skills (hot, flash heal, group heal)?

I'm bringing these points because, while I agree with you generally - that the class is far to easy to play - you can see many of these types of inconsistencies within the classes of this game... are you truly going to try and address all of them? If so, you do realize it will be a far different game from what we had or what we have now, are you positive most people will be engaging in trying different things from what they've done for years?

In order to try and balance this game out, in my opinion, you have to take the arguments above into consideration... and that is why most of my suggestions into this topic goes more into the direction of not necessarily change their playstyle. And please don't mistake my concerns with me being afraid of losing my OP class, because quite frankly I can play whatever in this game, OP or not - and I haven't even touched my Mara or DoK for a while now.

Now following my example in comparison of playstyles between Zealot and Dok, both feel boring if you're not required to do anything else but heal. Except Zealots will be targeted much more often then DoKs, hence it requires better positioning/pre-kiting - and when they're focused they have to perform such kiting skills in order to survive which equals active playing, which is why everyone think they're fine "playstyle-wise", while the DoK not really since you'll most likely not be target to often due obvious survival skills. If you reduce DoK's survivability, they'll fall into the same category as the other healers, which in my book... is ok. Unless you plan to address all healer's playstyle as I explained above.

I think whats not really being considered here is that even tho it seems Az hate playing like a healbot there are many people who like it and is their prefereble playstyle (i'm one of those and thats one of the reasons i couldn't get into GW2) Why should their viable choise be restricted to 1 class per realm when the people who like dpsbotting have many more viable choises they can do?
And i'm not sure why every changes is internally based on and tested for 6man groups when the orginal design of the game and skillsets are based upon a ORVR campain Wich moastly revolves of groups of 12's and 24's. As dur3al point out aswell it seems somehow there's some missconception that Zealots/Runepriest are somehow the only class the slips trough this crack of having to be played as hybrid playstyle to heal even tho when you look at the skillset of those classes they probpbly have more dps skills then healing ones. The game stats of heals/mitigration/dps was tweaked for 3 years of live playing and i dunno how long internal testing before released by having DoK/WP as backline healers in the game. At 1.4.8 wich this game currently is based on, thats means all dps numbers are also based on having to kill those WP/DoK's and dps trough their healing. So what happens when you drasticly changes this is that moast dps classes gonna get a massive boost. And we allready see the effect of this as rdps groups in scenario is getting a massive preformance boost. And Resolute Defence/Cleansing Winds havn't even been removed from the game yet. I do agree that WP/DoK slightly overpeforms in their role of backline casters. And i did offer some chanegs that can be made to adress this in a previus post.

When it comes to making melee healing viable for small scale without using stance mechanic I have some ideas. I'll use Warrior Priest in this example.

Using a Path of Grace abillity grants you Graceful buff for 3 minutes. 100% of damage done will be converted to heals for groupmembers within 100feet but your damage is reduced by 50%. Can't be Graceful if allready Wrathful

Using a Path of Wrath abillity grants you Wrathful buff for 3 minutes: Increase your damage done by 0.16% for every Rightous Fury. Can't be Wrathful if allready Graceful

And remove Radiant Strike/Transfer Essence from the game (As you no longer need it) The dmg to heal from Grace needs to tested properly. I'm using a thoeretical numbers here of of 100% heals from 50% reduced dmg. When this number is correct it should have around 75% hps potential of unhealdebuffed Salvation spec.(as it shouldn't be affected by healdebuffs)

Combine this with the other purposed changes i made and I think you have 3 different viable roles the class can take without restricting you into a stance were a bunch of tactics becomes powerleess. (For example potent covenants in Dark Rites spec or Leading the Prayer in Salvation Spec)