- by Kelginkraz, Outstanding long time runepriest
Hi, I'm Kelginkraz, runepriest from Badlands server. My journey in
getting to where I am has given me quite a bit of insight into the role
of the runepriest. I've tried what seems like every combination of
stats/masteries, including the notorious dps runepriest! I've invested
many, many hours in PvE dungeons, as well as RvR, and touched
on pretty much every aspect of a runepriest's role.
When I began playing my runepriest, my main concern was end game.
I had no idea what role I had there. From my experience in tier 1 however,
I liked that I had an instacast direct heal. In conjunction with my hot
(heal over time), it made healing in tier 1 quite easy, being able to hot
targets not in immediate danger and really throw down some emergency
nuke healing to those getting hit hard. Your role in tier 4 will mostly stay
unchanged.
You'll eventually obtain several other tools, including a decent group heal,
as well as several dps options (not very good options, in my opinion).
Eventually you'll even get the famous runepriest self-rez which can make
a considerable difference in your teams ability to keep the healers up.
Some Healer Differences
An example of a misleading, highly simplified description of differences
is that runepriests can heal single targets though not quite as well as
the archmage, and group heal, but not as well as the warrior priest.
This is true but only to some degree and leaves out the many other
differences. I'll focus mostly on the directly heal related ones below
but there are many others.
A major difference between a runepriest and a warrior priest
would be that runepriests have the option of focusing our large burst
heals on a single target who's going down rather quickly, whether in
group or out of group. The equivalent single target out of group heals
for a WP are HoTs with no where near the burst healing we do. WP's
have a morale 2 direct burst heal that works out of group single target,
but as a morale it's not for frequent use and they often prefer to use
their morale 3 support options.
WP's also have a melee healing option that can do strong single
target healing, Divine Assault being most powerful, however, it requires
being in melee combat which risks partial or full interrupt, requires
destro to be right in front of them to hit at the right time, and is again
limited to those in your group. And it still doesn't have the umpf of our
Grugni's Gift's burst healing which we can toss in any time. WP's
group heal is more powerful, though limited to 100', well inside the
range of our powerful burst heal and more powerful HoT capabilities.
So, the runepriest is great for big burst saved-your-life healing capable
at great distances and having 3 basic solid hots, one being particularly
of immediate effect ("front loaded"). A warrior priest can't do this nearly
as well and instead have their own bag of tricks and support skills.
One major difference between a runepriest and an archmage
is that runepriests are able to stay in the fight longer and perhaps get
a little closer to downed teammates for the rez deeper in. I wouldn't say
runepriests have higher survivability. We do have much higher armor
(base armor + racial tactic Ancestral Inheritance) than an AM, but AM's
have shields and AoE snares that help them get away from a fight. The
thing with AM's, however, is if they're using abilities to keep themselves
alive, they're likely not benefiting the group at that point in time. Us
runepriests, however, can take quite a beating before we go down and
we can keep the healing and rezzing going better during this time.
That's not to say we should stand there and let things beat on us, we
still can benefit greatly by pre-kiting and detaunting, but we're able to
take a beating while we are casting our many quick cast heals.
For now I I am leaving out the many buff and support spell differences
among the healer classes here for simplicity.
The Mastery Lines
There are 3 mastery lines:
Grugni single target direct heals and single
target direct damage
Valaya single target hots (heal over time) and
single target DoT's (damage over time)
Grimnir group heals (and group dps)
Dwooid Note: Grungi path has this really nice
AP regen AoE and really nice crit
benefits, too.
Valaya has a nice AoE build up time
reduction for everyone, as well.
Of course, lots of nice spec benies,
those just really stood out to me as
unusual support skills like SM's
whispering winds.
I would suggest avoiding putting spec points into Valaya. Here's why:
(1) In my opinion, none of the abilities are worthwhile
(2) If you're casting your Blessing of Valaya (2.5 second group heal), you'll
heal for a high burst damage regardless of spec/willpower. Since you're the
first target of many destro, it's sometimes difficult to land this heal without
being interrupted. Overall, this heal will more likely take you 3.5-4 seconds
to cast. Even uninterrupted, your burst group heal will either save lives or it
won't. Either you were lucky and that group member being focus damaged
was pre-hotted by you or being healed by another healer. Sometimes,
however, one or two group members die instead. You have little choice in
the matter if spamming Valaya is all that you do. So don't spec into Valaya
to increase your heal numbers. It's pretty useless. You'll generate most of
your numbers from your other heals.
I would suggest speccing enough into Grugni to get the stagger
and the AP rune. Here's why:
(1) Stagger has saved me more times than I can ever attempt to count
(2) AP is always an issue for the runepriest.
(3) Higher Grugni's Gift (big burst emergency heal)
I would suggest speccing into Grimnir enough to get higher Rune
of Mending. This is our HoT (heal over time) that immediately gets its first
heal off when fired ("front-loaded") and makes for some additional sort-of-burst
healing despite it being a HoT.
Kelginkraz's Korner (Advice!)
Dwooid Note: Yeh, I named this section :)
(1) Myth: Willpower will come easy for runepriests.
Truth: This is true post Warlord gear, but I struggled with willpower in
the beginning. In my opinion it is not a very important stat, though,
honestly! You get more heals from situational awareness so don't
stress too much.
(2) Everyone raves about the dungeon PVE gear on healers, however, I've
found them to be mostly useless. PvE gear gives toughness, though some
have argued is quite a mediocre stat when it comes to defense. Instead,
with 3 piece invader for the +wounds and 4 piece warlord for +wounds,
I find myself running 7640 hp without liniment. Invader is pretty easy to
get as armor goes, especially from city seiges.
(3) Surprise, armor is your best friend! Slot Ancestral Inheritance, use an
armor pot, consider putting armor talismans in EVERY single one of your
slots! I'll even slot it in my weapon, cloak, and accessory (you can get
a ring from Bastion Stairs with a slot!).
At rr70, I have 3700 armor (roughly 85% mitigation) and can kite a melee
train quite effectively. You want your armor to be higher than the 75%
cap because average weapon skill grants about 15% armor penetration.
Skills and stat leeching will sometimes reduce that value even more. Witch
elves find my base natural defense with all this defense augmentation a very
tough nut to crack compared to the usual healer take down.
Honestly, Armor is the stat that saved the game for me. Before I gave this
crazy idea a shot, as a healer all those destro come right after you, and this
made the difference for me. Obviously, if you choose this direction you might
consider mixing armor with other stats, this is just the way I chose to go.
(4) Everyone raves about the tactic Ancestor's Echo, but I find it sort of useless.
Here's why:
25% proc means ur group cast is proccing twice every 3 second at best,
assuming you don't have AP issues spamming 3 second group casts like
that. The unreliability of this proc makes it useless for this situation.
You'll find yourself putting up emergency hots and heals much more so
(i'd say 90% more so) than spamming your burst group heal. Since this
ability doesn't proc on your hots, you rely on Grugni's Gift (your direct
big instant heal) to proc it. The 25% chance as well as the 5 second limit
between procs, makes it so you hardly ever see it come up. And when
you finally do, the bubble may immediately dissipate since in WAR, shields
are calculated BEFORE mitigation. Therefore eating far through your shield
before it touches your buddy's toughness.
(5) Prehot with all of your HoTs before using Grugni's Gift (burst direct heal).
You need to be situationally aware of who will be the next target of damage
and this can be a lot of fun and make all the difference. You can usually
cover more bases if you keep more people hotted prior to the fight but keep in
mind your AP. Rune of Serenity and Rune of Regeneration are nice for
that. When the fight begins, you'll just need to hit Rune of Mending and
spam GG.
If destro is seriously focused on you and you know you don't have time to
place all the hots, consider instead applying Rune of Regeneration,
spamming Grugni's Gift (direct burst heal), and then hope to survive.
(6) Best tactics in my opinion:
- Ancestral Inheritance - armor
- Blessing of Grugni - makes your big burst wow-I-lived heal useful,
this tactic will retroactively adjust your prehots.
- Discipline - willpower (possibly the most optional)
- Restorative Burst - AP
Another tactic to look into:
- Runic Blasting
(7) Runepriests can dps, but we won't do it well, nor are we supposed to :).
In addition to the class descriptions, this guide offers a bunch of ideas, some
relatively obvious and some a bit outside-the-box :). It is based off of my own
experience from extensive playing and testing alternatives with my runepriest.
In no way is this the only way to play a Runepriest. There are many options,
this is what I have found to be most effective. Much of this guide is focused
on tier4, as that is the tier I've spent most of my time in, however, I hope it can
also help those in earlier tiers, as well as help understand our class and even
perhaps help with your own healer class decision.
Dwooid Note: If there are more runepriest subjects you'd like him
to cover, or comments you'd like me to pass on, obviously feel
free to contact them directly or send it to me through the "Contact
Dwooid" address on the sidebar and I'll send it on to them :).