Healing in the name of Khaine: Disciple of Khaine guide

[Ayetalam]

First, I would like to say that there is a lot of opinion here when it comes to abilities, tactics, and masteries. They are by no means definitive or the only way to play. This is just how I see the class, and how I plan to play it based on my experiences.

The Mechanic: Soul Essence (SE)
I will first begin with the mechanic, a quick overview of how it works, and what affects it and what does not. When you are out of combat, it regenerates at 50 Soul Essence a second till it reaches 250. Our Soul Essence has a cap of 250. Now in combat, it does not regenerate, it requires you to Melee or use your Blood Offering spell to convert AP into SE. Do note, supplication does NOT allow you to stand back and heal. Its for oh moments, or if you are doing a long push with no out of combat moments to let it regenerate. All your damage abilities with the exception of a few unique ones, generate Soul Essence. All your heal abilities and beneficial effects, with hte exception of Covenants, use Soul Essence. You need to keep a good balance between your Damage spells and your healing. The mechanic is not effected by damage output or the speed of your attacks. The only thing that generates SE are your abilities that state they generate SE. It is a simple and straight to the point mechanic, but it also allows of to have some of the best damage and healing combo in the game because our two different aspects drain from different pools of power.

Basic Information:
The disciple wears Medium Robe armor. This is an armor inbetween melee dps and tank. But its not enough to tank a Hero level mob alone, or even with healing. You can only use Swords and Chalices as your weapons and you do Dual Wield. In my opinion Dual Wielding two swords is more beneficial than Sword/Chalice. Being that because a chalice gives very little healing over a sword and you lose DPS. As a Disciple your job is to maximize both Damage and Healing at the same time. In scenerios you damage should be roughly around where your healing is. If you do nothing but heal, you are wasting your class and are not using it to its full potential. Roll and Shaman or a Zealot if you want to just heal and do minimal DPS, this is not the class for you. Your job as a Disciple is to do as much damage and healing as you can. It is why we get abilities that allow us ot heal from our damage abilities, or to transfer stats while doing damage, and so on. I have played on order and faught Disciples that did minimal damage and just healed, they were killed left and right, and did not benefit the fight because they were just getting killed. Our biggest healing ability acutally based on your damage that you do with the ability. Please play the class properly, or you will surely have a very uneventful time playing your disciple.

Abilities:
I will put the abilities in order of receiving them from the trainer. I will have a masteries section after this explaining the masteries, the abilities you get from them and my thoughts on them. Here is the breakdown of your spells: You have damage abilities that generate SE. You have heal abilities and beneficial spells which use AP. Then you have Covenants which are like auras that affect your whole group. No cast time, no mana cost, stays up till you turn it off. You also have your stat transfer and dots and fight control abilities. I will be only going to level 20. Firsts thats as far I have gotten so far, and I don't want to give speculative information on abilities I have no used yet.

Starting Abilities (Level 1):
Fist of KhaineThis is your ranged attack that all melee users get, but ours is different from others, its a spell, because it is modified ot generate Soul Essence for us, while other melee classes just get a damage bonus if they hit from behind or the side. Very useful when chasing.

Restore EssenceThis is your first heal, it does a small heal, then puts a HoT on the target. You will be using this a lot, since we dont get a direct heal until our level 20 AoE heal or our level 8 Rank 1 Morale ability.

Cleave SoulYour main damage ability for a while. Does direct damage and generates soul essence. Will be used a LOT.

Blood OfferingConverts 30 AP to 30 Soul essence every second for 5 seconds. (total of 150 AP to 150 SE) This is very inefficient and is used only in long pushes where you run low on SE, or you need emergency SE for a heal. Its not meant for standing back and healing.

FleeAn ability all classes get, drains all your AP and SE, and makes you sprint for a while. It does drain your SE to 0.

Trained Abilities
Consume StrengthTransfers an amount of strength from your enemy target to your defensive target (which can also be you). Useful early on, but I seem to have less use for it in higher level battles. Its helpful, but in the mix of battle, its kind of hard to throw one in when you are trying to stay alive and 48 strength is less beneficial than your other abilities.

Soul InfusionYour second heal. This one is a pure HoT. Its quite powerful too, so you will be using it a lot in combination with Restore Essence.

Covenant of TenacityGives your entire group an armor buff. This helps early on int the game, and in PVE situations, but once you get your other covenents, they are better for RVR. I rarely use Tenacity after I get my second Covenant.

LacerateThis is your bleed ability. It puts a Cripple effect on your target that opens up a few possibilities later on with other abilities.

Consume EssenceDoes a hit that heals your group. I haven't used this much because it doesn't heal for much, and does not do good damage, its more of a PVE hit, where its just to keep people topped off. After getting rend soul, this feels even more useless to me.

Terrifying VisionThis is you detaunt, Amazing in PVP because it lowers the damage the target does to you by 50% for 15 seconds. Only 1 target can be detaunted, but it helps if you ahve multiple people on you.

Divine FavorThis is your first Morale ability, its a direct heal for a good amount. This is a good Oh button, or if you got a lot of health to catch up on. Used quite a bit.

Rend SoulThis is your most powerful ability. Its a damage ability that uses up you Soul essence. Its channeled and usees 25 SE per second for 3 seconds. With every hit, it heals for 250% of the damage done to your defensive target. It is a very powerful ability, but it has a chance to be interupted because its channeled. Its different from a normal channeled ability. A hit doesn't always interupt it, and you can move while channeling it, so you can be chasing someone and using it. This ability allows you to tank mobs much much powerful than you and stay above 50% health, and lets you take on 3-5 people at a time in PVP for small range of levels (it doesn't scale very well at higher levels because it depends on damage). This ability is also depnedant on armor. So if you use it on a tank, it actually heals for less because you do less damage. It is one of your main abilities. It is buffed by your Healing tree (Dark Rites) instead of Torture or Sacrifice. Very unique ability and one of your most powerful.

FlayThe first ability that takes advantage of Crippling. It does a small amount of damage, but if your target is crippled, to does a 40% snare on them. So this is comboed with Lacerate. Snares are snares, always useful.

Stand, Coward!Your rez ability, rezes someone with 20% health. This actually builds Essence. So its good to resurrect people when you can, but you can not ressurect while being hit.

Dark BlessingsYour first tactic, but its not that great, its useful for a little while till your next good one. Increases all heals to you by 10%. Which always helps.

Essence LashDoes a damage in a cone 45 ft infront of you. Useful when you have a lot of people on you to use while you wait for other abilities to go off cooldown. Situational Use.

Rampaging SiphonThis is a rank 2 morale that does Damage and then heals everyone in an AoE for the amount of damage done. But it takes a while to build up rank 2 morale, so its not that spamable, but it does help when doing group fights.
Divine FuryI personally dont like this one. It increases your damage by 25% but decreases your healing by 20%. I don't like this tactic, it kind of diminishes your healing powers. Even though it increases damage, your healing goes down, and as a Healing archetype and someone that needs to keep a close balance between damage and healing. I don't agree with this tactic and on my testing disciple, I didn't even purchase the ability.

Covenant of VitalityYour next covenant, and a far better one for PVP and overall use. What it does is every hit has a 20% chance to do spirit damage and then heal you for the amount of damage done. Really helpful in tight situations cause it lets some people give them a tiny bit of self heal. It procs quite often.

Khaine's BlessingThe next big tactic. It granst you the proc that anytime you have a critical hit, you get a 20% attackspeed increase. This helps a LOT and is a great tactic in battle.

Patch WoundsJust a Hex removal ability, Uses soul essence.
Steal LifeA rank one morale, that puts a dot on the target, andheals the defensive target for 50% of the ticks. It gos in the same slot as Divine Favor, and I personally prefer Divine Favor because its a direct heal. I already got plenty of bleeds and hots, a direct heal is more beneficial to play.

Alignment of NaggarothIncreases Spiritual resistance. I am a bit hesitant of it. All it odes is increase resist against damage spells from healers. Its really not beneficial to me. I prefer Khaine's Blessing over this.

Covenant of CelerityYour best PVP covenant there is. It Gives everyone a 20% chance to apply a DoT on the target and snare them by 20%. There is a 3 point tactic in Torture (3 Points to get to it, 4th point to get it.) That increases the damage of the bleed, and 60% snare. Whichwill be a very good tactic for RVR.

DisciplineIncreases your willpower. For now I dont see a use for it, but maybe at higher levels when we have more tactic slots, it can be helpful.

Khaine's EmbraceAoe Heal, your first normal direct heal, and your first AoE normal heal. Will be used a lot, thats for sure.

Focused MindThis is really a good Morale. It removes all Status effects, snares, charms, disarms, and roots, and all your abilities will build faster and not get setback. This is Rank 2 but really its well worth having on your bar for PVP.

This is as far as I'm going since this is as far as I've gotten at the time of writing this guide. I will hopefully update it as I got up.

Combat Masteries:
Now before I go into this, want to say again that this is all based on my style of play and my plan for doing my masteries. This is not hte only effective way by any means, and I don't want this to stop others from trying their own specs. This is purely my own speculation. I wil explain all the trees and how I view them. Then you can decide.

[INDTENT]Torture Spec Analysis:
[Work in Progress]

Dark Rites Spec Analysis:
[Work in Progress]

Sacrifice Spec Analysis:
[Work in Progress]

Builds:
[Gathering in Progress...:P][INDENT]

...[Will add this a little bit later. So much information to analyze and enter, so many specs that are very viable and lots of editing]...

Strategies:
One strategy I use is constantly alternating between Cleave Soul and Lacerate whenever they are up and Im not using other abilies. Use Rend Soul as much as you can (even if it gets set stopped, it is a channeling ability but has a 50% resist to canceling it), it heals you and does damage, and then use your snare to keep them from running. We keep lacerate going so we can snare anytime. Use you Divine Favor and Rampaging Soul whenever you can, until you get the other morales.

The above strategy is for Torture speced DoKs. Once you get the Bloodthirst tactic, put it on your bars and use Covenant of Celerity. It will give everyone a dot and a snare on a 20% chance on every hit. Its really nice and procs a lot, including from your Fist of Khaine long range "throw" ability.

This strategy and spec allows you to heal while damaging, but also allows you to do some solo fights against multiple people. Early levels I have been able to take on 3-4 people at a time and come out with more than 50% health. No longer true at higher levels, but it lets you survive a lot longer. And if you are with a tank or someone else thats taking damage. Target them and rend soul, it will heal them very well.

Make sure you know who your defensive target it is. In a fray of battle you sometimes forget youhave someone else targetd and try to heal yourself, failing to do so. Usually you pop you HoTs on you in big battles to keep yourself alive a bit longer.Right now I can't get into a deep strategy because its beta, things change, and we are low level, we still have many new abilities to come, and nothing is final.

There are cons to this spec. If you are being constantly damaged or spiked, you will not survive and you cant heal very well. So you have to be careful on how much attention you get for yourself. Try to let the tanks get some of the attention first, then rush in helping him. Then if you start taking damage, target yourself and help yourself out. Torture is very powerful but can lose if you get targeted by a few ranged classes or melee classes.

Donated Strategies (Thanks to all those that provided them):
The first is a strategy for Sacrifice spec disciples provided by disquette.

Alrighty, I'll help out on the sacrifice spec DoK.

The sac DoK has some tremendous differences from the one you listed (torture spec I'm guessing?).

The keystone of the sacrifice DoK is a tactic callend "Empowered Transfer" (I think). This ability makes your Consume Essence heal your defensive target for 150% of the damage you do with each Consume Essence hit.

As a result, you can now use melee hits as your primary healing technique, rarely if ever using Rend Soul (I took it off my hotbar for the past couple weeks). The idea in combat is to hit your enemy with Consume Strength and Lacerate first, because the first increases your strength (if you're the defensive target), and the second decreases your opponent's toughness. Both of these crank up the damage of your Consume Essence, which means cranked up healing amounts. The other thing this does is put two cripples on your target. Some of your other abilities are only usefull when your target is crippled, so even if one of those attacks is blocked/parried, the target is still crippled and therefore ready to be snared, etc..

Also, it's important to note that because heals from consume essence are based on damage, willpower doesn't help you. For this reason, you'll want to use the tactic which adds 25% to all damage done and reduces all heals by 20%. Since your consume essence attacks aren't classified as heals, your health returned goes way up with this tactic.

This is also going to be, in my opinion, the premier PvE solo'ing spec for DoK's, and perhaps for the PvE solo game as a whole. To give an idea of the power of this style of play, fully sacrifice spec'd, I was able to solo higher-level champion mobs without casting a heal spell a single time - without a problem. The health returned from your super-charged Consume Essence, when you're stacking strength and buffing/debuffing as necessary, is incredible. As another indication, I was able to solo-tank a hero mob indefinitely with this spec (but I did need heals for this). I didn't kill it because hero mobs have a disgusting amount of health, so after 5 minutes of combat to verify that I could stay alive as long as I wanted, while outputting good dps, I simply let it kill me.

On the flip side, RvR isn't always fun as a sacrifice spec'd DoK. If your side is winning, you are a terror on the battlefield and the scoreboard afterwards will show it. If you have a tank to guard you, you will wreck lives. If you are running solo in a PUG, and the other group is better, you're toast. It's completely unfun in these situations as a melee healer (DoK/WarriorPriest), and especially so as a sacrifice spec'd one (Grace spec for the Warrior Priest mirror mastery).

To recap how to play a sacrifice-spec'd DoK:
- Use Empored Transfer and the 25% additional damage tactic.
- Stack up your Str gear, and make PvE your biznatch
- Always keep your Toughness up as well - with a few exceptions all classes get a lot of utility from this
- Love PvP when things are going well, hate it when they're not. DoK's are affected by bad pvp and ranged stand offs a lot more than other classes. Witch elves get stealth and marauders get tentacle-pull to help with distance standoffs. DoK's get.... the shaft.

Class combos:
I think the best synergy class for a DoK is a Witch Elf. A Witch Elf has abilities that benefit from cripple, do their own cripples, and has a lot of similarities to abilities the DoK has, minus hte healing. Another combo is with any tank, because they can keep you protected by taking half the damage you take, and you can heal them with your heals and Rend Soul. Most combos with ranged classes do not fare well, so I don't think they will work at as well.

A helpful note from Duty:

Originally Posted by Duty

Just a short comment I'd like to add:


In my MDPS Guide I say healers are your best friend. For a DoK, TANKS are your best friend.

Your AoE heals combined with the majesty and greatness of:
Guard and even on top of that Covenant of Tenacity and even further...stacking plenty of toughness...makes DoKs VERY difficult to kill. The covenant adds about 20% physical damage reduction, and Guard is basically 50% damage reduction when you're AoE healing as much as you do.


I played a Black Orc for a while with my DoK friend, Sindal (who, you watch, will become known as the best DoK in Warhammer!), and we would go into 7v2s and easily win. You just have to watch getting hit with knockback out of Guard range, and morale abilities that pierce through Guard like it's not there.

For now this is what I can provide. I will include more soon, especially the Masteries.

[Ayetalam]

Changelog:

• 0.2 - Added a bit more strategy and donated strategies. Did a bit of visual work and setup stuff for future additions.
• 0.1 - Initial Release.

To Do:

• Mastery analysis of multiple specs (will get other people playing the other specs to hopefully give me the data)
• Reorganize everything and redo the layout.
• Strategies for all specs.
• Ideal Morale and Tactic setups.
• Whatever is asked for.

[Ayetalam]

Reserved incase I need more space.

[disquette]

Alrighty, I'll help out on the sacrifice spec DoK.

The sac DoK has some tremendous differences from the one you listed (torture spec I'm guessing?).

The keystone of the sacrifice DoK is a tactic callend "Empowered Transfer" (I think). This ability makes your Consume Essence heal your defensive target for 150% of the damage you do with each Consume Essence hit.

As a result, you can now use melee hits as your primary healing technique, rarely if ever using Rend Soul (I took it off my hotbar for the past couple weeks). The idea in combat is to hit your enemy with Consume Strength and Lacerate first, because the first increases your strength (if you're the defensive target), and the second decreases your opponent's toughness. Both of these crank up the damage of your Consume Essence, which means cranked up healing amounts. The other thing this does is put two cripples on your target. Some of your other abilities are only usefull when your target is crippled, so even if one of those attacks is blocked/parried, the target is still crippled and therefore ready to be snared, etc..

Also, it's important to note that because heals from consume essence are based on damage, willpower doesn't help you. For this reason, you'll want to use the tactic which adds 25% to all damage done and reduces all heals by 20%. Since your consume essence attacks aren't classified as heals, your health returned goes way up with this tactic.

This is also going to be, in my opinion, the premier PvE solo'ing spec for DoK's, and perhaps for the PvE solo game as a whole. To give an idea of the power of this style of play, fully sacrifice spec'd, I was able to solo higher-level champion mobs without casting a heal spell a single time - without a problem. The health returned from your super-charged Consume Essence, when you're stacking strength and buffing/debuffing as necessary, is incredible. As another indication, I was able to solo-tank a hero mob indefinitely with this spec (but I did need heals for this). I didn't kill it because hero mobs have a disgusting amount of health, so after 5 minutes of combat to verify that I could stay alive as long as I wanted, while outputting good dps, I simply let it kill me.

On the flip side, RvR isn't always fun as a sacrifice spec'd DoK. If your side is winning, you are a terror on the battlefield and the scoreboard afterwards will show it. If you have a tank to guard you, you will wreck lives. If you are running solo in a PUG, and the other group is better, you're toast. It's completely unfun in these situations as a melee healer (DoK/WarriorPriest), and especially so as a sacrifice spec'd one (Grace spec for the Warrior Priest mirror mastery).

To recap how to play a sacrifice-spec'd DoK:
- Use Empored Transfer and the 25% additional damage tactic.
- Stack up your Str gear, and make PvE your biznatch
- Always keep your Toughness up as well - with a few exceptions all classes get a lot of utility from this
- Love PvP when things are going well, hate it when they're not. DoK's are affected by bad pvp and ranged stand offs a lot more than other classes. Witch elves get stealth and marauders get tentacle-pull to help with distance standoffs. DoK's get.... the shaft.

[Gob_Drifter]

Cool, thanks to both the OP and to Disquette. I was wondering how well a sacrifice DoK would work out, that last post helped a lot to verify some things I was thinking about.

[Duty]

Just a short comment I'd like to add:


In my MDPS Guide I say healers are your best friend. For a DoK, TANKS are your best friend.

Your AoE heals combined with the majesty and greatness of:
Guard and even on top of that Covenant of Tenacity and even further...stacking plenty of toughness...makes DoKs VERY difficult to kill. The covenant adds about 20% physical damage reduction, and Guard is basically 50% damage reduction when you're AoE healing as much as you do.


I played a Black Orc for a while with my DoK friend, Sindal (who, you watch, will become known as the best DoK in Warhammer!), and we would go into 7v2s and easily win. You just have to watch getting hit with knockback out of Guard range, and morale abilities that pierce through Guard like it's not there.

[Farao51]

sounds like they got the defense of a tank and around the same dps as an mdps, and can heal perfectly.

cool enough since I'm rolling a DoK as my main alt, but they sounds a little OP

[Sindal]

Dark Rites Revealed

I've read a lot of propaganda that is coming out that a DOK is a second rate healer. That we have no place in the zerg vs zerg combat that highly sought after objectives can sometimes lead into. That we only can play the role of secondary or backup RVR healer.

This is all wrong. 100% wrong.

I've been in beta for about six months now, I've played every mastery. I know the DOK inside and out. Some of you probably remember me from before the dok was even released. I have played a healer in every MMO dating back to EQ1 and haven't left the archetype since, the DOK is the hardest, most intense class I've played to date. I've also never played a class so deadly and rewarding when played well and geared for this task through stacking willpower from Renown, and gear. I am going to go over the basics as well as some of the more advanced strats for playing a Dark Rites DOK.

Dark Rites? huh?
Dark Rites is the healing spec for the DOK, it increases your base heals as you spec up the path as well as unlocking some pretty crucial abilities for the healing dok. The DOK is by far the best group healer in the game, and when in a group with a lot of front line fighters can put out the highest raw healing numbers of any healer in the game by far. At rank 31 I put out 260,000 healing surpassing the second highest healer in the 15 min who had only managed a meager 60,000. The amount of healing a DOK can do when the group plays well and stays close is staggering.

What! no way, How did you do that?

Lets take a look at the tools of the trade for a Dark Rites specialist...(presented in order they are obtained from the trainer)


Basic Abilities
Restore Essence- Great when used in conjunction with the pure hot and group hot, very lackluster when used alone. Doesn't really produce staggering amounts of healing until around 600 willpower when you can finally start to feel its difference in battle. Sadly this will be your bread an butter and most reliable heal pre-20

Blood Offering- A Dark Rites specialists best friend, convert your AP-SE you will be using this a lot so bind it somewhere convenient =p

Soul Infusion- Your basic single target hot, heals for a moderate amount, once again is very useful when stacked with Restore Essence and Khan's Vigor

Rend Soul- Rend Soul is received at rank 8 and life as a dok is never the same after it. Its an attack that uses SE instead of AP as well as healing for a large amount if you are somehow not taking dmg... which doesn't happen to often in RVR. This ability is amazing in Pave but I find it just to unreliable to really rely upon in RVR. It does become amazing again when you receive your group shield and your first tactic out of the Dark Rites tree, both give you a Mg shield and while shielded your Rend Soul cannot be interrupted and if you can get all 4 hits off on a low armor target there are few classes it won't take to full.

Stand Coward- your basic Rez, we're going to be great Healers so you can leave this one in your spell book right? You will actually be using this more then you wish because of those silly Orc Gits who like to overextend into the midst of 40 order then want to know where their heals were... It is a good Rez and Rezing can sometimes be even more important then healing.

Essence Lash- Wait... thats not a heal.... Essence Lash is currently building SE based on each Order member it hits, its a great way to get that last bit of SE for a last heal before you have to channel Blood Offering again

Patch Wounds- This ability makes poor Bright Wizards cry as it allows you to dispel most of their Mg dots, their root, and any other magical attack thrown on you or your allies. Liberal use of this ability separates ok Dark Rites specialists from Amazing players, careful though, it can get expensive clearing all those dots and the ability currently fires off even if your defensive target has no debuffs on him. KNOW THY ENEMY!

Khaine's Embrace- Your best healing spell, This will account for 75% of your healing. Heals for a Mod-High amount, very fast cast, relatively cheap. Put a DOK in a group with two tanks and two MDPS with guard on them and watch the zerg fall before them. At rank 20 when you get this you will never play your DOK the same again

Uncaring Dismissal your cone shaped knock back, great for when that pesky assist train decides you should be their next victim. Pairs up nicely with the rank two morale received at rank 32 Universal Confusion stun them for 5 seconds and send them on their way with the knock back, when they land they will still be stunned giving you even more time to get away.

Dark Rites Abilities
Soul Shielding- Basic group shield, 60 sec cool down is a fairly long time but its great to use on yourself to get a full rend soul off. Also nice to throw on someone to allow for your stacked hots to get a few tics in to get him closer to the top

Khaine's Vigor- Your group hot, Keep it on always, its cheap, and does good healing.

Khaine's Refreshment Channeled heal that heals all Allies around you for a respectable amount, great to use on the front lines to counter the aoe that your tanks/MDPS are eating. All in all a pretty good spell and very useful in Pave especially PQS

Tactics for the healing DOK
There are no right or wrong Tactics to go with really. Personally I play a very defensive, heal oriented set up so my tactics tend to reflect that. At rank 40 I used this set 90% of the time.

Discipline- pretty self explanatory, you are a healer, you want willpower, this tactic gives bunches of it, never take it off unless you're soloing.

Dark Blessings- All of your heals heal yourself for 10% more, You will almost always be taking Mg from somewhere, I find the 10% to be very noticeable and the difference in me having to actually cast heals on myself, or just live off of my group hots/group heal

Khaine's Bounty- This Spell is a godsend for DOK survivability. Anytime you critically heal an ally.... between the group hot and the group heals your pumping out you're crit healing an ally almost every 5 seconds. There is some form of max number of procs per second it seems built in but its not so high as to detract from the usefulness of this tactic

Restorative Burst- Anytime you critically heal an ally you gain AP... AP becomes SE, which means more healing. More healing is good!


Morale... won't be any mutiny here!

Divine Favor Your Life Saver. Your Witch Elf eats a 1500 crit from a Bright Wizard? thats when having Divine Favor makes you smile, its you "Oh Crap" heal for when something just isn't quite going your way. I find it gets used a lot on that same Orc who ran out into the sea of order

Universal Confusion- a godsend for DOK survivability. Aoe 5 second stun would be good enough for me, but this morale also does respectable Mg to them at the same time. Great to stun the people who don't get the picture after you blow your knock back

You will find that no matter what, what ever you slot beyond here never gets used, these two are just so amazingly good that you will never want to use your rank 4 or rank 3 morale.


Stat Selection

Ok so we have our abilities, tactics, and morale ready to rip... bu wait how do we gear ourselves to be most effective while using all of these great moves?

1. Willpower- Always Willpower first. Willpower increases your healing, and we are healers, so we want willpower! You can def feel the difference when healing in your willpower set or when healing in your str soloing set. Highest I've reached was on a template at rank 40 when I broke 1000 willpower (was also RR70 for the test) The amount my heals were healing for would cause a Witch hunter to run back into stealth thats for sure.

2. Toughness- Toughness reduces all incoming Mg by a %. It applies to Melee Mg as well as magic Mg. Some like to select wounds, but we're healers who have a constant stream of heals on ourselves, we are better off reducing the amount of Mg taken every time we do take Mg over increasing the amount of HP we have to heal imo

3. Resists- You will always want your elem resists maxed at whatever the hard cap ends up being when the game goes live. Bright Wizards are no ones friends despite what they tell you. They also do a healthy amount of Corp Mg as well as Shadow Warriors so thats a good idea to keep high as well. Spiritual, while not as important as the other two, is not a bad one to make sure you have a good bit on hand as well.

4. Armor- MDPS love coming after you, and you will love them coming if you keep your armor high enough and pay enough attention to put Cov of Tenacity on before they get to you. I have reached 90% physical mitigation on the rank 40 templates with cov of tenacity on. Yes between your hots and that kind of armor the MDPS would be better off attempting to solo Capture a city.

5. Initiative- Reduces your chance to be crit, which anyone can tell is good

6. The rest- All the other stats fall in down here. Yes, str is left off my list, for this build and play style its just not a focus.


Your Early Life

Pre-20 its a fight, you might as well slot for full str and the Mg tactic and hang on for your life. Your heals are enough to keep people from dropping like rocks but don't expect many staggering life saving heals. Rend Soul is to unreliable currently to really be counted on, though its a great ability for soloing and Pave. You will find you spend most of your time playing more like a Tank who heals himself instead of the high mitigation to come to similar survivability.

Soul Infusion (hot) and Restore Essence(heal+hot) are great to stack along with your group hot (when you receive it) for focus targets, especially tanks. The passive healing is enough to keep them even or even begin the process of topping them off while you restore your SE pool.

The Teenage Years

At 20 the Dark Rites DOK finally comes into his own, Khan's Embrace is what makes this class truly stand out. At rank 31 with 560 willpower my group heal was healing all 6 targets for 900-1000. When tanks only have 5-6k health thats quite a nice amount, especially when you're chaining 3 or 4 of them together per essence pool. This is your bread and butter spell, your go to if you will. This is what we use instead of other healers single target 3 second cast, it heals for a respectable amount, heals everyone, and has a large radius.

At 26 you get Khan's Vigor, your group hot. Anytime this is off cool down it goes back up, its cheap, heals for a good amount, and can basically negate aoe all by itself. A very powerful spell that nets a lot of the Dark Rites Passive healing. Its very nice to have, and sorcs will love you for countering their backlash Mg all with this one spell.

Your Golden Days

Finally Khan's refreshment comes to play. A few phases ago this spell was borderline to strong, it was a 13 s cool down, castable on the run, channel heal that hit all allies. It was amazing to follow behind the tank wall as they charged the order zerg to counter all the aoe being tossed around. The new form requires the caster to be standing still so its taken a hit to its usefulness though I would argue any aoe heal that heals all nearby allies has its uses.

Soul Essence Generation

Finally Blood offering is your friend, this should be used almost every time its off cool down if you're not in direct confrontation with an enemy to keep the SE flowing. You can time it right so that you are only out of heal mode for about 3 or 4 seconds of every ten, and most of the time you leave your allies topped off and return them to full soon after filling up. Another great tool for SE management is Essence lash, currently every enemy it hits rewards SE. So if you hit 4 enemies you get a very large amount of SE in return. Makes for a great way to get off that last heal you need before channeling Blood Offering.

BASIC RvR playstyles

My play style is VERY different from a lot of other DOKs out there. Neither is right, nor wrong, but the DOK is very versatile and can fulfill both of these rolls very well. Some have come on these boards and said that a DOK who stands in the back can't be as effective a healer as others which is 100% wrong. I don't stand in the back, I stand in the middle. I play a hybrid role of peeler/protector/ and group healer. I would argue my impact of the game is much higher then if I tried to fulfill either only a healer or only a Mg dealer. I like to play the space between the Ranged classes and the melee classes. I snare any MDPS/TAnks that come my was protecting my squishier counterparts and if one of them is silly enough to stay on me then I heal tank them while wearing them down. All the while healing my group as well as myself with my group hot/group heal. The concept is great, and personally I love the class when played this way. Few classes are better suited to protect others then theDOK.

Now get out there and crush the Asur Scum!

So in closing, if you have interest to play the DOK and concentrate on the healing aspect never feel discouraged that its not possible, its very efficient and is very much a viable spec, I promise you your group won't be complaining when those 1k group heals start flowing =p I'm not the best Torture DOK, Nor the Sacrifice guru, but few have reached the raw healing numbers I have averaged over the past few phases and I'm just getting started

[Narfolr]

Great post and thanks.

I'm currently at Rank 15 in CB right now. Last night I did exactly as you have suggested in a scenario, and I was #1 healer, #4 overall (decent damage, but honestly I never see a DoK ever winning in this area). I can't wait for the AoE heals, it's crazy right now trying to target allies in a fight with the HoTs, juggle AP/SE, and getting Rend Soul to channel fully without being disrupted.

Channeling for soul essence has been the #1 thing I've started to do to improve my longevity/healing. At first doing PvE I thought that skill was going to be weak, but it's really a healing DoK's bread & butter in RvR/PvP. Even with our damage mitigation from armor, the game seems to break down always into zerg vs. zerg in PvP, and a DoK just can't survive being up front in the zerg.

Glad to learn that Willpower is the way to go, I was wondering how that would work out at higher levels. This class is a great class to play if you want a challenge. I'm constantly monitoring all aspects of the battle and watching that soul essence gage like nobody's business.

Two things I'm hoping for:

1. That I can somehow customize the UI to display soul essence somewhere above my toon's head. In a heavy fight it's distracting to focus down to that part of my screen.
2. Is there a way to lock your friendly target? Sometimes I know that I will be healing a MDPS/Tank for a while when a fight first breaks out and that would be handy. I don't know what I do to cause focus to be lost, but it has been a problem for me.

Sort of sad to see that our Rank 3/Rank 4 morale abilities are not the greatest, but having that huge heal at Rank 1 is key, I use that all the time to prevent my friends from biting the big one.

Also interesting was your point that the tanks will be throwing guard up on the MDPS to break the Zerg. I was hoping that we'd be guarded to go in there with them and get the battle/healing aspect going on, but I could see how a guard on MDPS would be a huge boost when we could just stay back and deal with anyone who counters the push, or the lone MDPS who goes after our squishies.

Once again thanks for the great post. It's really helpful to a CE CB player to know how stuff pans out at higher levels. I'll probably never get my toon there before OB/release.

Narf

P.S. What are you doing for your action bars/key bindings? I tend to be a 1 - 6 masher and was hoping that I could somehow bind 4 of my mouse buttons to be the selection for the action bar - and that way I could just do mouse button + number to cast my spells. With 4 stacked bars that would be 24 spells bound to my mouse + 1 - 6. I don't like sending my pinky down to ctrl/alt, just isn't as fast for me, and sometimes I lose my hand placement.

[Mandrax]

Really useful info folks. Before I read this thread I was pretty sure on which mastery I would be taking, now I have absolutely no idea. I guess it will be a case of trial and error until I find one that suits my play-style.

Thanks again.

[disquette]

Originally Posted by Mandrax

Really useful info folks. Before I read this thread I was pretty sure on which mastery I would be taking, now I have absolutely no idea. I guess it will be a case of trial and error until I find one that suits my play-style.

I'll be adding more on the topic of "the solo'ers guide to the DoK" later on, too Not all sacrifice builds are equal!

P.S. What are you doing for your action bars/key bindings? I tend to be a 1 - 6 masher and was hoping that I could somehow bind 4 of my mouse buttons to be the selection for the action bar - and that way I could just do mouse button + number to cast my spells. With 4 stacked bars that would be 24 spells bound to my mouse + 1 - 6. I don't like sending my pinky down to ctrl/alt, just isn't as fast for me, and sometimes I lose my hand placement.

Using your pinky is a lot faster if you use things like shift+f, control+r, etc. Number keys are pretty inefficient key binds in my opinion, but if you've gamed like that for years, I can see how it would be hard to change.

[Duty]

What you were saying about 1000 willpower makes me giddy to have you in my guild Sindal. Good work.

[Delillo]

did the DoK ever have the 3 second "big heal"?

That said, in the middle of combat, he might never get it off anyway.

[Obioma]

Originally Posted by Farao51

sounds like they got the defense of a tank and around the same dps as an mdps, and can heal perfectly.

cool enough since I'm rolling a DoK as my main alt, but they sounds a little OP

Nah, they're not OP, and as a matter of fact, no class is really OP at this point. Mythic did a good job of making everyone pretty weak 1v1, so in large group battles, Disciples/WP are as balanced as the other classes.

[Duty]

Originally Posted by Delillo

did the DoK ever have the 3 second "big heal"?

That said, in the middle of combat, he might never get it off anyway.

Yes they did, although it was a 1s cast with a 2s cooldown as the melee healers have reduced cast times. It was changed to Rend Soul to make them more combat oriented.