Rune priests HAVE to get in there

[Axxar]

http://www.curse.com/videos/details/497/

In this video it's explained that while the runepriest is indeed very support-oriented compared to the other healers - he buffs and heals and doesn't really do that much damage, he will actually need to be in the thick of it to get the most out of his abilities. Some of his powerfull abilities include an AOE knockback centered on him, where he has to get into the melee and use it to knock the opponents away, giving his allies some breathing space. Some of his really powerful runes has to be placed right in the thick of it with him on top of it for his allies to receive the buffs - his allies have to bring the fight to the runepriest to gain his buffs.

The runepriest IS also wearing medium armor and has the ability to buff and heal himself to survive in melee - but he won't be effective just standing at range, throwing heals.

So, summing up the runepriest's duties as far as I can tell:

- Passive buffing (fire and forget)
- Active buffing (point-based, get in there and use it)
- Crowd control
- Healing

[Snorri]

This pleases me.

Thanks for sharing. :cool:

[Kydrin]

I had been hoping that the Runepriest worked something like that. I know I'd seen them use field buffs in the videos, but no one ever talked about them. Certainly is an interesting aspect if he has to be within it to keep it active. The class is sounding like a perfect match for me, assuming there's a good variety of powerful situational buffs (as opposed to uber, one size fits all buffs that eliminate having to think about what to use).

[Grimfell Gromgear]

I had been hoping that the Runepriest worked something like that. I know I'd seen them use field buffs in the videos, but no one ever talked about them. Certainly is an interesting aspect if he has to be within it to keep it active. The class is sounding like a perfect match for me, assuming there's a good variety of powerful situational buffs (as opposed to uber, one size fits all buffs that eliminate having to think about what to use).

Yeah, they need to have more than
'The Ironbreaker Buff' 'The Hammerer Buff' and 'The Engineer Buff'

Personally, I also think they need to avoid really basic buffing too. There's a lot cooler things that can be done with buffs than just +275 armor.

[vehemoth]

Some of the types of buffs you guys have been hoping for can be found under the Runepriest skills and abilities. I noticed that they spelled Dwarfs wrong in the video. Riot?

It seems to me that the Runepriest has advantage in supportive team play over the other careers, being that they are such excellent team mates. They have many practical offensive effect abilities (rune of sundering, Silencing runes, Rooting runes, etc.) That will be essential in team play situations. If you include these with all of thier different buffs, the possibilities for effectively mix and matching tactics and runes makes the runepriest a powerful and versatile career. They may not do as much damage as the other support careers, but they will have the capability of attacking. All in all, they seem to be a very involved career with alot to consider when playing and tons of fun to be had.

As far as calling Runepriest a heal bot goes, nonsense. Anyone who would consider the Runepriest a healbot has a very narrow deffinition of what a heal bot is. Some consider a healbot to be a heal centered character. This is fallacy. All Healers in WAR are heal centered, involved and versatile. Like said in the video "Careers are meant to be played by human beings". Just because the Runepriest does not have to drain his enemies or cause damage to heal doesn't mean that the career is limited.

In addition, many of the Runepriest's most powerful abilities come from gaining morale. Morale is best gained from doing the best you can in combat. This means the runepriest will have to do damage as well as heal to maximize thier potential and gain morale thier fastest.

I enjoyed the video, and I was glad to see this topic be covered. Now, I look forward to The Waaagh!

[Krulltak]

Sounds excellent.

[AlienOverlord]

This kind of reminds me of the Zealot who sounds like he'll be most effective in team-play when he can set up his Harbinger/Buff-Debuff networks.

I'm looking forward to seeing healers that have to get up in the front lines, though there is always the concern about how well can these characters do when they don't have a teammates?

In the case of squishy casters, you'll have hit from a distance while playing solo, but I wonder how these comabt support characters play solo? Is it still best to engage in melee combat or are hit-and-run tactics more effective solo techniques. Or some other method?

[vehemoth]

If you are asking about the runepriest's soloing capabilities, you must consider thier support abilities. They have medium armor, staffs with large hammers at the ends, a nest of supportive buffs and offensive abilities, and alot of survivability. Where it may be slower than some, say DPS careers, they will surely be capable soloers.

[Vikingfuneral]

I'm still a bit worried. What's going to stop an Ironbreaker from 2boxing in a runepriest on /af to lay down the AOE runes and PBAOE knockback and prebuff before fights? Of course in the heat of battle the /follow will be broken undoubtely from Destruction knockbacks/stuns but still...

I'm just paranoid after EQ2. That entire game was filled with 2/3 boxers becuase it had so many classes that were pure buffbots/healbots. Even more so than from WOW. I really hope the devs give Runepriests their own type of Waaagh/Righteous Fury to encourage us to participate more and to deter any would-be boxing.

[Ranti]

I'm still a bit worried. What's going to stop an Ironbreaker from 2boxing in a runepriest on /af to lay down the AOE runes and PBAOE knockback and prebuff before fights? Of course in the heat of battle the /follow will be broken undoubtely from Destruction knockbacks/stuns but still...

I'm just paranoid after EQ2. That entire game was filled with 2/3 boxers becuase it had so many classes that were pure buffbots/healbots. Even more so than from WOW. I really hope the devs give Runepriests their own type of Waaagh/Righteous Fury to encourage us to participate more and to deter any would-be boxing.

getting rid of any pre-battle runes would help a lot imho with this

furthermore, I agree, i think they should work a similiar system as zealots, something involving using buffing/healing power to damage, maybe make their damage increase the effect of oath runes and master runes

[vehemoth]

Human, All Too-Human:
[483] "Enemies of truth. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Fear not those who fear the runepriest will be a healbot/buffbot despite numerous attempts to calm your fears. As stated frequently there will be no buffbots or healbots. There are however Healers, who do heal. EA Mythic will no doubt be good to its word in providing healer classes that are meant to be played by human beings. Rhetoric may save you yet!

I am not worried about the Runepriest becoming a buffbot or a healbot. The fact is that the Runepriest needs access to all of his/her runes to be truelly effective in combat. The Runepriest also needs morale to gain access to powerful abilities. Being that Morale can only be gained through active play, this would make buff/heal botting quite inneficient and innefective compared to a fully participatory enemy. Heal/Buff Botters would only be wastin thier own time/resources.

The 3 classifications of runes:
1. Master Runes (1 at a time radial aura runes that are placed on the ground)
2. Oath Runes (Buffs placed on a player that can be activated causing an effect and later triggered to cause a triggered effect. Ex: Rune of Sanctuary- gives armor bonus, creates a damage absorbing barrier that absorbs some damage when triggered. Triggering an oath rune nullifies it.)
3. Runes (Runes that cause an immediate effect when cast.)

[B]The 3 Elements of Runepriest gameplay:
1. Rune/Morale generated Healing (All Types)
2. Combat Controll (Buffs/enablers/debuffs/disablers/crowd controll)
3. Rune/Runestaff/Morale generated Damage

The Mighty Trinity:
1. Morale Abilities (available when one excels in the thick of it and precisely why healbotting is not practical)
2. Runic Combinations (Properly mixing and matching your oath runes, and base runes with your master rune to generate the best combined effect possible for the situation)
3. Tactical Combinations (Filling tactics slots with tactics that best augment your Rune combinations.)

Consider all the fun things you can do with these sets of threes alone and then consider all of the tons of fun and exciting abilities involved. That is why I will be making a Runepriest.

[Grimfell Gromgear]

Don't forget that Buffs are party only too, the second they leave your party they take their nice buffs with them. So that eliminates buffbotting for scenarios, and in open objectives if you already had a full party that'd be done with to.

[vehemoth]

Don't forget that Buffs are party only too, the second they leave your party they take their nice buffs with them. So that eliminates buffbotting for scenarios, and in open objectives if you already had a full party that'd be done with to.

Thank you :)

[Orock]

Sorry to be the glass is half empty guy, but the latest video we have of runepreist gameplay is the graveyard battle where he pretty much exclusively runs around healing, and occasionally casting damage spells. When he gets attacked he runs till his pursuer loses interest or is killed, heals and comes back to start again. He rarely died, and gained a TON of points just for healing. Not dying often he also gained alot more xp than if he had been in the middle the whole time. I would love to believe what they are telling us, that not only is the runepriest able to fight in close combat and not be forced to be a healbot, but he actually excells at it. The videos and feedback we are recieveing from people actually playing it so far contradict this tho :(. They really need to change him around and give him a waaagh type mechanic.

[Dawi]

well i would hope we had to get in there, because right now we look like the only class that has true solo-capabilities. We have the 2nd best armor for casters (under WP)... we will even out armor the Choppas because of the runes we have on our gear.
I wonder if we'll get to choose the runes or if our armor will come preruned lol

[Warhost]

I was hoping that you could tailor the Runepriest to do more damage.:sad:

[harkan]

While runepriest will most likely be one of the least played if not the least played class i think it fitts the concept of most people who where drawn to it. A more traditional healer style play without being only heal spamming. Not everyone enjoys nuking.

The fire and forgett mechanics also leaves alot of room for just cc or that extra damage, it is one thing that will give rp's an edge over most other healing types.

Also ponder the fact that the only other healer on order we know of the wp is extremly offensive melee healer and thus suffers from the weakness of being melee. I belive they looked on the healers as a total for the aliance and tried to balance them, we have 1 extremly offensive and one defensive healer now, destruction only has offensive healers and unless their de healer is defensive they will have issues i belive.

[wizened]

If the runepriest is indeed the most support orrientated career I am worried about how they will cope in a 1v1 situation. Would be rather sucky if they have to rely on others at all times.

[Jest]

Yeah I am a bit worried the Runepriest will turn out to be a healbot. In every RvR demo I saw, whenever they get targeted they have to kite, or hope someone kills their pursuer. Graneted, the people playing are picking up the game for the first time, but still, it was evident they can't stand in a group of Black Orcs for long.

[Axxar]

I don't think anyone would want to stand in a group of black orcs unless they had green skin. Anyway, in WoW when I play my Discipline PvP healer priest I can beat other people, but it takes so long it simply isn't worth the effort. Or it's another healer which means an infinity battle. So instead I simply kite whomever wants to fight me to the nearest allies so he dies quickly rather than me having to spend 5 minutes fighting him while not being able to assist my team with healing. Just trying to say that maybe the runepriest in the video decided it wasn't worth his time trying to kill a tank.

[Grimfell Gromgear]

Yeah I am a bit worried the Runepriest will turn out to be a healbot. In every RvR demo I saw, whenever they get targeted they have to kite, or hope someone kills their pursuer. Graneted, the people playing are picking up the game for the first time, but still, it was evident they can't stand in a group of Black Orcs for long.

I'm not suprised the class with the lowest DPS would have trouble with the class that has the highest health and defenses.

That being said, rune priests are certainly looking to be very 'Healy' so far... obviously enough, we'll have to wait for the final build to see if that's going to change. I'd prefer it to, I'd like to see RunePriests actually being in the fights.

[Jest]

Yea my Black Orc example was a bit extreme, please don't take it literally. Honestly, the RP videos I've seen involve most of the RPs running from anyone who targets them. Even a solitary Squig. When they aren't being targetted I see them predominantly casting runes or the -occassional- AOE.
My point is, it would be hard for this kind of playstyle not to turn into a "healbot" or "sit back and heal" character. If it's very bad to get targetted by people, RPs just won't risk running into the fray. They will sit at max range and throw out runes.

Would be nice if RPs got a self Armor buff rune. For when they happen to get assist-trained by some Greenskins. Most of the runes listed under Scrub's post involve either other target damage/heal/HoT/snare, or self heal. Lore-wise, RPs have runes chiseled into their armor, no reason why they wouldn't have protection runes.

The skill list is far from complete (still missing tactics, for example) but it would be nice to get some defensive runes to make up for our lack of damage and the huge target on our backs from our massive healing output.