[1.3] Warrior Priest patch note preview

[AdamG_EAMythic]

Greetings,
As many of you are aware, WAR's 1.3 patch is rapidly approaching! Before we open up the Public Test Server and release the patch notes, we wanted to sit down with each career's community and give them a rough idea of what to expect from 1.3.

Patch 1.3's major balance changes focus on the balancing of direct damage vs. area-of-effect abilities. All careers should expect to see AoE effectiveness reduced across the board. This reduction can come in a change to damage/healing, AP cost, or effect radius, and will vary from ability to ability.

In 1.3, healers will get an additional focus revolving around the bonus healing granted by Willpower. We have significantly increased the amount of bonus granted to healing spells from Willpower; however, to offset this, we have reduced the base damage of many heals. The net result of this change is that healers with average or better-than-average Willpower will see an increase in their overall healing. Healers with subpar Willpower will see a decrease to their healing.It is important to note that Life taps are not affected by this change since they do not get a bonus from willpower.

Warrior Priests will see adjustments to the following items in order to bring them more in-line with other healers. The Warrior Priest will still excel as front-line healers, but will require the full use of all of their AoE healing abilities to do so.

• Offhand Books will have their RF regeneration reduced.
• Touch of The Divine will have its cast time increased, and cooldown removed, to match the standard AoE heals that other healing careers receive.
• Mastery -line AoE heals (Pious Restoration, Martyr's Blessing, etc.) have had their healing values improved.

Warrior Priests will also see a number of AoE fixes including, but not limited to, the following:

• Many AoE abilities have had their effective radius reduced, returning their radius to pre-1.2.1 patch values.

• Group healing abilities have had their effective radius reduced. Healers will still be able to cast group heals from a far greater distance then AoE damage, but not from the same distance as their direct healing spells.

Finally, we are investigating the following items that will potentially be added into 1.3 during the PTS phase, or in a follow up patch after 1.3.

• Improvements to the DPS of the Wrath tree melee attacks

Edited by AdamG on 05-14-2009 01:11 PM


Adam Gershowitz
Producer - Character Systems
Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning

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