Doresain
11-09-2008, 06:19 PM
For the record, I play a level 40 Dark Rites DoK on Azazel.
First, opinions on the patch.
1) THANK YOU for fixing the range on Covenant of Tenacity. That is a great fix.
2) The increases to Consume Essence and Rend Soul (although I see that change didn't make it in) will be helpful.
3) While I understand that they were made across the board to all healers, the nerfs to our HoT abilities impact our healing potential significantly in a negative fashion.
Some general feedback on the DoK, much of which has been said before by others.
1) There are a couple of fundamental problems with the mastery trees. The big one is that Rend Soul and Persistent Rending fit much better in the Sacrifice tree both in terms of playstyle and the statistics that followers of those trees are likely to have. Both should be moved to Sacrifice.
2) DoKs at the moment have far too many stats that are important to them. Could our abilities that currently use Intelligence be moved to using strength or willpower? Speaking here of Essence Lash and Fist of Khaine, among others. This change was made for Chosen already, I believe.
3) DoK melee healing from the Sacrifice tree is currently sub-par for several reasons.
-Melee healing is just too unreliable. Our melee heals can be blocked, parried, AND mitigated.
-Our survivability is just not high enough to wade into melee combat, especially with the armor increase of Tenacity being in Dark Rites and not Sacrifice. In addition, once we run into combat we are constantly rooted, stunned, disabled, etc. This makes melee healing even more unreliable.
My suggestion is this: our melee heals (Consume Essence, Transfer Essence, Rend Soul, others?) should have their damage LOWERED, but should ignore armor and be undefendable. We need to be able to count on our heals, and it fits with the flavor of the class - we ARE rending their soul, not their armor.
In addition, the range on the beneficial aspects of our melee heals should be changed to 150 feet. This would allow us to stay in the back ranks where we can survive, picking off enemies that come to assassinate our healers and casters, and still heal our companions on the front lines.
4) Healing in the Dark Rites tree is not sufficient to allow us to be a primary healer, making us undesireable for both high end PvP and PvE encounters.
-Willpower stacking benefits our DR abilities much less than it does the other healers.
-We have NO single target direct heal without Rend Soul, which as already discussed is not reliable enough for primary healing.
-Chalices are currently not a terribly useful item. The ones with Willpower help a little, but due to the already mentioned poor willpower contribution help only slightly. The chalices with strength and toughness are completely worthless - if I wanted those stats I would use a sword, not a chalice.
-Fist of Khaine is essentially worthless in the Dark Rites tree, and is taking up a valuable mastery path slot. Fully specc'd at level 40 it does 75 damage. Perhaps it is using Intelligence? And why is it in the healing tree?
In my opinion, DoKs need a single target direct heal of some kind in the Dark Rites tree. This heal should not be as effective or efficient as that of the other healers - we already have a powerful group healing ability. We need, however, some way that is more reliable that melee healing (and some way in the Dark Rites tree especially) to keep a tank up. To get a heal when we need it. The initial application of Restore Essence ALMOST sufficed, but not anymore with this patch's change. Just throwing numbers out, something that costs 60 soul essence and heals 50-75% more than Khaine's Embrace on a single target with a 2-3 second cast and a 10 second recast sounds appropriate, but I haven't crunched the numbers. I'm sure you understand the intention.
In addition, Chalices need a bit of an overhaul. They needn't grant any statisitics that are not willpower or wounds, in most cases. In addition, perhaps they could grant a bonus to soul essence pool? I'm envisioning a mechanic where each chalice had a variable amount it raised the SE pool by. This extended Soul Essence would not fill naturally, but only through application of Blood Offering or melee abilities. This would make chalices a viable healing alternative to the extra damage potential of a second weapon.
Willpower contribution to our abilites might also use a look-see.
5) The positive effect of the restore motivation morale increasing tactic can currently be disrupted, which seems to be a bug.
6) I can't speak much to the torture tree, as I don't ever spec down that line, but removing the bloodlust snare increase ENTIRELY seems a bit drastic. And the change to the Curse of Khaine is quite drastic as well.
In closing it seems to me that the three mastery paths for the Disciple of Khaine have the potential to offer three quite different playstyles within the same character class; pure healing (Dark Rites), melee damage (Torture), or a mixture of the two (Sacrifice). I sincerely hope that the Disciple will get some additional tweaking to make all three of these paths a viable and worthwhile choice for their adherants. Thank you for the reading time!
Darasain Darkway
Disciple of Khaine, Azazel
First, opinions on the patch.
1) THANK YOU for fixing the range on Covenant of Tenacity. That is a great fix.
2) The increases to Consume Essence and Rend Soul (although I see that change didn't make it in) will be helpful.
3) While I understand that they were made across the board to all healers, the nerfs to our HoT abilities impact our healing potential significantly in a negative fashion.
Some general feedback on the DoK, much of which has been said before by others.
1) There are a couple of fundamental problems with the mastery trees. The big one is that Rend Soul and Persistent Rending fit much better in the Sacrifice tree both in terms of playstyle and the statistics that followers of those trees are likely to have. Both should be moved to Sacrifice.
2) DoKs at the moment have far too many stats that are important to them. Could our abilities that currently use Intelligence be moved to using strength or willpower? Speaking here of Essence Lash and Fist of Khaine, among others. This change was made for Chosen already, I believe.
3) DoK melee healing from the Sacrifice tree is currently sub-par for several reasons.
-Melee healing is just too unreliable. Our melee heals can be blocked, parried, AND mitigated.
-Our survivability is just not high enough to wade into melee combat, especially with the armor increase of Tenacity being in Dark Rites and not Sacrifice. In addition, once we run into combat we are constantly rooted, stunned, disabled, etc. This makes melee healing even more unreliable.
My suggestion is this: our melee heals (Consume Essence, Transfer Essence, Rend Soul, others?) should have their damage LOWERED, but should ignore armor and be undefendable. We need to be able to count on our heals, and it fits with the flavor of the class - we ARE rending their soul, not their armor.
In addition, the range on the beneficial aspects of our melee heals should be changed to 150 feet. This would allow us to stay in the back ranks where we can survive, picking off enemies that come to assassinate our healers and casters, and still heal our companions on the front lines.
4) Healing in the Dark Rites tree is not sufficient to allow us to be a primary healer, making us undesireable for both high end PvP and PvE encounters.
-Willpower stacking benefits our DR abilities much less than it does the other healers.
-We have NO single target direct heal without Rend Soul, which as already discussed is not reliable enough for primary healing.
-Chalices are currently not a terribly useful item. The ones with Willpower help a little, but due to the already mentioned poor willpower contribution help only slightly. The chalices with strength and toughness are completely worthless - if I wanted those stats I would use a sword, not a chalice.
-Fist of Khaine is essentially worthless in the Dark Rites tree, and is taking up a valuable mastery path slot. Fully specc'd at level 40 it does 75 damage. Perhaps it is using Intelligence? And why is it in the healing tree?
In my opinion, DoKs need a single target direct heal of some kind in the Dark Rites tree. This heal should not be as effective or efficient as that of the other healers - we already have a powerful group healing ability. We need, however, some way that is more reliable that melee healing (and some way in the Dark Rites tree especially) to keep a tank up. To get a heal when we need it. The initial application of Restore Essence ALMOST sufficed, but not anymore with this patch's change. Just throwing numbers out, something that costs 60 soul essence and heals 50-75% more than Khaine's Embrace on a single target with a 2-3 second cast and a 10 second recast sounds appropriate, but I haven't crunched the numbers. I'm sure you understand the intention.
In addition, Chalices need a bit of an overhaul. They needn't grant any statisitics that are not willpower or wounds, in most cases. In addition, perhaps they could grant a bonus to soul essence pool? I'm envisioning a mechanic where each chalice had a variable amount it raised the SE pool by. This extended Soul Essence would not fill naturally, but only through application of Blood Offering or melee abilities. This would make chalices a viable healing alternative to the extra damage potential of a second weapon.
Willpower contribution to our abilites might also use a look-see.
5) The positive effect of the restore motivation morale increasing tactic can currently be disrupted, which seems to be a bug.
6) I can't speak much to the torture tree, as I don't ever spec down that line, but removing the bloodlust snare increase ENTIRELY seems a bit drastic. And the change to the Curse of Khaine is quite drastic as well.
In closing it seems to me that the three mastery paths for the Disciple of Khaine have the potential to offer three quite different playstyles within the same character class; pure healing (Dark Rites), melee damage (Torture), or a mixture of the two (Sacrifice). I sincerely hope that the Disciple will get some additional tweaking to make all three of these paths a viable and worthwhile choice for their adherants. Thank you for the reading time!
Darasain Darkway
Disciple of Khaine, Azazel