Changelog 19/11/16

[zak68]

Welcome to new procs mechanik xD
Kotbs+SM+DD WP+MeleeHealWP+BW+Any healer
Chosen+Borc+DD Dok+MeleeHealDok+Sorc+Any healer
Any one want kill all? Make it.

is it a joke?

[Toldavf]

Welcome to new procs mechanik xD
Kotbs+SM+DD WP+MeleeHealWP+BW+Any healer
Chosen+Borc+DD Dok+MeleeHealDok+Sorc+Any healer
Any one want kill all? Make it.

is it a joke?

Nope that could actually work it wouldn't be the greatest at kiting but its dps would be blisteringly powerful.

[Ninepaces]

Spoiler:

fine dont listen lol. the server pop plummets.

Constructive comments, or don't post. We do listen when people form coherent statements.

- wargrimnir

You don't actually. Az just tells everyone to **** off and deal with it. Why bother with coherent statements?

[katroulitsa]

First of all, apologies for the wall of text.
This is my experience on lets call it hybrid heal dok rr54. I wanna start with the 5min cd on celerity which is a joke in all honesty. I spent the entire afternoon playing my dok (pugged and grouped) with the new changes, and not even once dared to switch to celerity. In fact, the only dok i saw using it was in dps spec and had one more dok (heal spec) on his group.
I understand the logic behind setting such a high cd, but at the same time you restrict its use to only dps spec which doesnt really require stance dance (unless we are talking about some sort of suicide heal gamestyle).

The 50% armor reduction isn't that much of a problem if you are careful with your positioning, but that means you stay way in the back, out of range for the covenants to actually buff your grp. I died once while pugging and it was entirely because of bad positioning, not dok's overall weakness. So this can be labeled as a L2P issue.
However, that leads us to my biggest disappointment. Imho covenants are now simply useless when it comes to group synergy. Tenacity benefits just the dok, because its common logic that if you lack 50% of your armor you arent gonna go in the front with WHs, engis and WLs lurking around, you gonna sit in the back spamming mostly ST heals; aka your are out of range for the covenant to actually be beneficial for group members with no armor pots. Celerity is out of reach with its 5 min cd ( and we know damn well all grps had a preference for it), and vitality offers the aoe detaunt as its huge advantage, but the lack of SE regen is again a major issue when you wanna kite.

What i noticed is that the dok playstyle has become really egocentric, in a sense you have to prioritise either yourself as a dok, or your group. You sacrifice 50% of your armor in order to have SE regen and be beneficial for your group, you arent permitted to switch to celerity because of the 5min cd which will leave u exposed to inc damage but at the same time your grp cannot take advantage of its extra dmg/criple/procs, and to top it off, the aoe cleanse which again works either for you or your group.
But well, on the bright side, you can take advantage of the 3p armor bonus of merce and run 2 swords, instead of lame chalice. !!!

The logic behind melee healing is great, and perhaps its how the class should had functioned in the first place. But as tolda said, a dok or a healer in general cannot ask for guard every 2 min because some WH popped out of stealth. This leaves the dps in the group exposed to inc damage and is again part of the egocentric gamestyle dok is now offering.
There shouldnt be 2 options for dok, melee healing and/or backline healing, because undoubtedly one of them will be far superior. I think the class needs further changes in order to be viable as pure melee healer. You re trying to break down the FOTM in order to make other healing classes viable in 6vs6 and perhaps larger scale environment (which as a concept is great), but instead you created a new FOTM with dd dok as a 100% requirement. I dont believe that was your original intention.
I would totally support a fully melee heal dok, but not this hybrid abomination. =)

Spoiler:

Also some general comments from a reader's PoV after all this rubbish i read on the forum the past few days.
1) Everyone is whining about how easy it was to play a dok, yet the server has max 6 doks max which have actual knowledge of the class (and 3 of them aren't even playing these days). As i said before, yes dok/wp had so many goodies other healing classes lacked, but that doesnt mean you should strip them all off in 2 days. Switching covenants doesnt require a PhD in applied mathematics and can easily be done by anyone owning a 5$ mouse, so overall i dont think the class can be classified as hard to play, according to what some legendary ppl claim( UNLESS we are talking about the 98% of the server's doks, which would just spam group heal).
2) Aza, as a project leader you should really ask for help from more experienced ppl when it comes to testing new changes. Its not just the limited amount of ppl who actually tested these changes but also the lack of overall knowledge of how grps work. There are a lot of ppl theory crafting and actually having knowledge of class synergy and gameplay, dudes from Dark Omen for example since Gankbus is no longer around.

PS: under no circumstances, this is a whine/ #plsbringbackmyoparmorspecdok post, so please refrain from accusing me of doing so. Just my 2cents in the current situation.

[Tiggo]

Spoiler:

fine dont listen lol. the server pop plummets.

Constructive comments, or don't post. We do listen when people form coherent statements.

- wargrimnir

You don't actually. Az just tells everyone to **** off and deal with it. Why bother with coherent statements?

thats why we have dozens of changes over the last days because az doesnt listen... ok buddy...

[Ninepaces]

oh cannons are removed?

[wargrimnir]

Spoiler:

fine dont listen lol. the server pop plummets.

Constructive comments, or don't post. We do listen when people form coherent statements.

- wargrimnir

You don't actually. Az just tells everyone to **** off and deal with it. Why bother with coherent statements?

We deal with people much the same. You already crossed the line in-game and earned yourself a 7d ban. This will now apply to the forums as well. Come back in a week with a better attitude. We value feedback and constructive criticism, but we're not very tolerant of abuse towards staff.

[Luuca]

Off Topic but worth mentioning: If you go back and re-read all of Azrael's replies to the whiners in the voice of Tyrion Lannister, it's hilarious.

[Arbich]

[Reverts from Last Patch]

• Divine Fury, Fanaticism and Murderous Intent no longer affect lifestealing skills.

maybe revert this change. My first impression is, that healing is enough without these tactics. With tactics, heal is still somewhat op, even with the lower cast-heals.

[Azarael]

First of all, apologies for the wall of text.
This is my experience on lets call it hybrid heal dok rr54. I wanna start with the 5min cd on celerity which is a joke in all honesty. I spent the entire afternoon playing my dok (pugged and grouped) with the new changes, and not even once dared to switch to celerity. In fact, the only dok i saw using it was in dps spec and had one more dok (heal spec) on his group.
I understand the logic behind setting such a high cd, but at the same time you restrict its use to only dps spec which doesnt really require stance dance (unless we are talking about some sort of suicide heal gamestyle).

Prayers and Covenants were the easiest way (and in fact the only way) to implement any concept of a stance lock with what we have.

The 50% armor reduction isn't that much of a problem if you are careful with your positioning, but that means you stay way in the back, out of range for the covenants to actually buff your grp. I died once while pugging and it was entirely because of bad positioning, not dok's overall weakness. So this can be labeled as a L2P issue.
However, that leads us to my biggest disappointment. Imho covenants are now simply useless when it comes to group synergy. Tenacity benefits just the dok, because its common logic that if you lack 50% of your armor you arent gonna go in the front with WHs, engis and WLs lurking around, you gonna sit in the back spamming mostly ST heals; aka your are out of range for the covenant to actually be beneficial for group members with no armor pots. Celerity is out of reach with its 5 min cd ( and we know damn well all grps had a preference for it), and vitality offers the aoe detaunt as its huge advantage, but the lack of SE regen is again a major issue when you wanna kite.

If there were a way to decouple the modes from the prayers and covenants, I would have done it. I can't think of one at the moment. Also, other healers have 100ft group heals too.

What i noticed is that the dok playstyle has become really egocentric, in a sense you have to prioritise either yourself as a dok, or your group. You sacrifice 50% of your armor in order to have SE regen and be beneficial for your group, you arent permitted to switch to celerity because of the 5min cd which will leave u exposed to inc damage but at the same time your grp cannot take advantage of its extra dmg/criple/procs, and to top it off, the aoe cleanse which again works either for you or your group.
But well, on the bright side, you can take advantage of the 3p armor bonus of merce and run 2 swords, instead of lame chalice. !!!

As you know, the armor reduction is there to force switches, not to make the class egocentric. Much is being made of Celerity, and if Celerity is considered an effect that is so good that groups MUST have it (see your later comments about DPS DoK being mandatory now), then I would suggest that Celerity's effect itself is the problem. This is ESPECIALLY true if DPS WP is not mandatory, as for balance reasons, DPS WP's version of the Covenant only affects itself. Please clarify.

The logic behind melee healing is great, and perhaps its how the class should had functioned in the first place. But as tolda said, a dok or a healer in general cannot ask for guard every 2 min because some WH popped out of stealth. This leaves the dps in the group exposed to inc damage and is again part of the egocentric gamestyle dok is now offering.

I am curious as to how this is a valid example.

Reason 1: If referring to backline DoK/WP, WH and WE have armor ignore attacks. If a WH is popping on you you're getting knocked down or FP is going up very soon, in which case that armor debuff is irrelevant.

Reason 2: The other healers have light armor and have to contend with the same issue.

Reason 3: If referring to melee heal DoK/WP, they shouldn't be having any issue with this because of TE, SR, DA and RS.

Reason 4: If this is happening in RvR, what is everyone else doing? How did that WH/WE get there without a spot?

Reason 5: If this is happening in small scale, why did you let it happen? Vitality and Devotion are intended to be dominant in small scale, and for those not willing to use them as such, they are intended as a direct switch when pressured.

There shouldnt be 2 options for dok, melee healing and/or backline healing, because undoubtedly one of them will be far superior. I think the class needs further changes in order to be viable as pure melee healer. You re trying to break down the FOTM in order to make other healing classes viable in 6vs6 and perhaps larger scale environment (which as a concept is great), but instead you created a new FOTM with dd dok as a 100% requirement. I dont believe that was your original intention.
I would totally support a fully melee heal dok, but not this hybrid abomination. =)

Forcing DoK/WP to build in melee, while in keeping with the class's design, will not work, and I did not attempt it for a good reason. It won't work in RvR (zerg) and I don't believe it would be tolerated by backline casting WP/DoK. I can play as Devotion / Vitality most of the time in small scale, switching only for convenience, but then you're forcing the class to play along spec lines.

The one advantage of doing that is that it would mean that there are two modes instead of one, with backline mode being removed. Then you can link moding to having two swords (DPS) or one sword (heal). That means that visual recognition is restored, the 50% damage debuff on melee healing makes sense, the Soul Willpower buff has to be used to maintain casted heals and that any prayer or covenant can be used in any spec.

This design was always meant to switch between backline and melee, to cover the weaknesses introduced in each. If you believe it to be a hybrid abomination, well... take a look at the skillset. It's not pure, and if you make it pure in EITHER direction (melee or casted healing), you make the class really, really easy to play. See: KotBS/Chosen.

Also some general comments from a reader's PoV after all this rubbish i read on the forum the past few days.
1) Everyone is whining about how easy it was to play a dok, yet the server has max 6 doks max which have actual knowledge of the class (and 3 of them aren't even playing these days). As i said before, yes dok/wp had so many goodies other healing classes lacked, but that doesnt mean you should strip them all off in 2 days. Switching covenants doesnt require a PhD in applied mathematics and can easily be done by anyone owning a 5$ mouse, so overall i dont think the class can be classified as hard to play, according to what some legendary ppl claim( UNLESS we are talking about the 98% of the server's doks, which would just spam group heal).

Sure. This is still a MMO. None of the classes here are going to be rocket science, that's not how MMOs work - but there are distinct differences in the effort required between, say, .ex AM/Shaman and standard WP/DoK. That's also an argument against yourself, as if something's not very difficult to play, there's not much depth to it, which brings me to the next point...

2) Aza, as a project leader you should really ask for help from more experienced ppl when it comes to testing new changes. Its not just the limited amount of ppl who actually tested these changes but also the lack of overall knowledge of how grps work. There are a lot of ppl theory crafting and actually having knowledge of class synergy and gameplay, dudes from Dark Omen for example since Gankbus is no longer around.

This assumes that I didn't outright say that there would be broken interim states. I never once came out and said "As a result of my experimental changes, there will be no problems." I said repeatedly there would be imbalance states, as larger problems get focused on first, and I used the analogy of breaking up one side of Rubik's Cube to illustrate it. Yes, there are revealed problems - proc meta, Covenant of Celerity clearly being mandatory, etc. But what happens if you install highly conservative players (the ones who tend to be more knowledgeable?) They protect their own interests. To avoid any kind of short-term disruption, they veto everything you do, and move in the direction of tiny tweaks (if they move at all) to one spec which they will consider dominant, which preserves the general meta without allowing underlying problems to be fixed, because they won't create any kind of disruption that threatens themselves and they are absolutely terrified of entering any kind of transition state.

If we had balance changes dictated by top players, Engi/Magus range would never have happened, WP/DoK would never be anything other than a backline healbot, Skavenslayer would be allowed to do everything because Shatter Limbs was a meta attack and KotBS/Chosen auras would be allowed to exist in their current form for eternity. Anyone who wanted to play any kind of spec without an established viability in AoR 1.4.8 would be left to twist in the wind, because trying to make new concepts and off-specs work is not what they're about.

I think the Celerity comments are a good example. The implication of your comments is "Celerity is mandatory, therefore heal DoK MUST be able to run it (and be present in group) or DPS DoK will be run instead". My thoughts are the complete opposite direction: "Celerity is mandatory, therefore Celerity is the problem", and it seems to me that the problem has simply shifted from one heal DoK being mandatory to one dps DoK being mandatory. If that's the case, reverting is of no benefit.

So, yeah. I'm not looking for people to tell me "Oh you can't do X, or Y, or Z, or A, or B, or C, because all of them will cause transitional issues", and that's exactly why I don't solicit theorycraft feedback - I use the .ex to get the actual results, with a view to doing coarse balance, then finer balance, then iterate from there. Balance is an iterative process and if you hold back on something for fear of breaking something else... if you refuse, in short, to break the nice shiny side of the Cube when all the other sides are showing the wrong colors... you won't win.