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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - Forums :
Career Discussions :
Dark Elves :
Disciples :
Guide to Sacrifice Disciples and Melee Heals
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grimdeath
Contributor
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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1.
Guide to Sacrifice Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-22-2009 11:34 AM
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Guide to Sacrifice Disciples and Melee Heals By Grimdeath Note: There may be some formatting issues from copying from MS Word to here, Sorry! Hello, this guide is geared for upcoming and existing rank 40 Disciple players that wish to specialize in melee heals using the Sacrifice tree. I see so many Dark Rites Disciples these days that I wanted to build this guide to help encourage more people to try melee heals which I personally love. I am personally not a “numbers” guy so if your hoping to crunch some numbers you will be disappointed. Instead I would rather this guide be used as reference and to help you get in the right state of mind when playing the class so you know what works and what does not so you can make choices on your own and become a better melee healer. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. -------------------------------------- Introduction To Sacrifice If you are familiar with the DoK class you will notice Dark Rites is our pure healing tree, Torture is our pure damage tree, and Sacrifice falls somewhere in between. Rather then being a mix of melee and damage our abilities are usually combined into one and could be described as life leeching or vampiric. We steal from our target at the benefit of ourselves and other friendly targets. Below I will explain how the class works as well as provide some recommendations from everything from abilities to gear to how to play the class. -------------------------------------- Soul Essence - The DoK Mechanic Disciples rely on the red orb on the bottom middle of their screen called Soul Essence (SE). This represents the blood of your enemies spilled on the battlefield. Many of our abilities rely on action points (AP) like other classes but some of our specialty moves such as Devour Essence and Rend Soul use SE instead. While SE can regenerate on its own we do have a core ability called Blood Offering that converts AP into SE. It causes us to stand still and become vulnerable to attacks and may be interrupted. We can also regenerate SE using certain attack abilities (see the consume essence tooltip fore xample). -------------------------------------- Sacrifice Core Abilities We have many core abilities but here are a few of the most important or highly used for a Sac build dok: - Consume Essence – a basic single strike attack that deals damage and heals friendly targets for a percentage of damage done (usable on self). Also does a small "splash" heals within 10 feet of your target but that is too small of a radius to depend on it as a group heal.
- Consume Strength – Basic attack and drains strength from your target. Your friendly target’s strength is increased by the same amount (usable on self).
- Transfer Essence – Works very similar to Consume but instead heals everyone in your party except you. It is limited to your 5 members of your party within 30 feet and only heals for 50% of damage dealt by default. It is the closest Sacrifice builds have to an area of effect group heal.
- Covenant of Vitality – This is the primary Sacrifice covenant and is always on when activated. Only one covenant can be used at any time. It effects all friendly players in your party within a set range and when anyone deals damage it has a 20% chance to cause additional damage and heal themselves for an equal amount. (Check latest patch notes for details on recent changes to this ability)
- Consume Thought – Quick attack that silences (disables castable magic) for 5 seconds, it is very useful against magical casters and healers.
- Consume Enchantment – Short range melee attack that removes an enchantment (most commonly used on tanks in my experience).
-------------------------------------- Sacrifice Mastery Tree Here is an example of a basic melee heal Sacrifice build: http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=23#0:0:0:0:13:10752:25:9584:585:9590 You will notice the chosen abilities are fairly high in the tree so it would be hard to obtain these until at least T4 around level 31. Below is a quick explanation for each ability from the build above: - Devour Essence – This is an area of effect (aoe) skill that hits up to 4 targets within 30 feet of you dealing spirit damage each second for five seconds. Even though the damage can be mitigated with resistance it still deals fairly moderate damage. It can be used while other attacks are being used.
- Empowered Transfer (tactic) – Required for a melee healer! Increases the amount of heals from consume and transfer essence. Consume and Transfer do minimal healing without this tactic.
- Pillage Essence – Absolutely required for a Sacrifice build in order to keep synergy in fights. This ability helps take the place of DR dok’s chalice by letting you regen soul essence while in combat as well as dealing good fairly good single target damage. Without this you would quickly find yourself running out of soul essence.
Since I know it would be asked…here is my personal character mastery build http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=23#6:32:0:0:15:43520:29:9600:9584:9590:585::::694:9606:696:9618 Since I am gearing this guide towards melee heals I do not feel the abilities in the lower Sacrifice tree are worth using. This means you will have a surplus of extra points that can be put into the one of the other trees such as Dark Rites or Torture. I think both have their advantages but personally I choose to focus on Dark Rites for two reason: - It helps counter the lowered cast healing brought on by extra damage tactics (covered in tactics section) for DR abilities ONLY (example: Khaines Embrace). As well as improving the base damage of Rend Soul.
- It gives you access to a very useful ability for use in groups called Soul Shielding. It was buffed in the previous patch and I have personally had it save the lives of myself and others in several situations.
There is no “right” answer when building your mastery tree,just personal preference and my build above is not the definative build...just my personal preference at the moment. I encourage other’s reading this guide to submit their own build and explain what advantages/disadvantages would be received from using it. When building your character I recommend testing out multiple specs to find what works best for you. If you are just not having fun then change something, the DoK is a flexible and customizable class that can play to very different extremes. -------------------------------------- Stats I do not think it is necessary to cover every stat in detail, there are plenty of other information for that alone. Instead I will cover what will be most important to a melee heal sacrifice build player: Again these are not the only important stat to worry about, and I do recommend you read about what other stats do and why they could be important. -------------------------------------- Tactics Tactics can be really fun to use, they offer some interesting choices that help separate your character from being a carbon copy of the next. Everyone has their opinion on the best and below are just a few of the ones I would recommend using. - Khaines’s Imbuement – Adds a (high) chance that enemies will suffer an additional dot. Helps when your goal may be killing instead of just healing (pvp).
- Divine Fury – increases your damage at the cost of healing power. This initially sounds counter-productive for a melee “healer" but healing in this case mainly has to do with DR casting abilities. Putting points in DR will help counter the effect on cast heals though from this tactic.
- Potent Covenants – Admittedly more useful in previous version of the game it can still be useful. This increases the chance for your covenant effects to proc.
- Empowered Transfer (required) – this is one of the only abilities required due to the fact you spent a point in your mastery tree on it. Its usefulness was already explained above.
- Subtlety – Seems like an odd choice for a melee based class but it’s a must for dungeons. I find myself occasionally pulling too much agro so this is a life saver. Our occasionally high damage and aoe mixed with heals results in us gaining a lot of bad agro. I usually replace KI with this since it is not a major loss when melee healing in groups.
- Murderous Intent (bugged) – Hold off on this! It does not give the addition crit chance as it says it should. You also receive a bonus to parry and a loss to healing. Once fixed I may use it instead of Divine Fury. (small update: ive heard this may only be a display bug, I will try and test and confirm this).
-------------------------------------- Morale Abilities Morale abilities, similar to tactics offer variety and individuality to your character but are also easily swapped out and can be changed when out of battle to give you many options. I try and avoid depending on them but rather consider them bonuses to use when the opportunity provides itself. I do not use only one ability per rank but instead swap them out based on the circumstance, similar to tactics there is no "best" answer...just finding a way to use each creatively based on your situation. Morale Rank 1 I prefer Divine Favor for this for the simple fact you can heal yourself AND others with it selectively. It can be a real life saver. Life's End is great as well but not being able to have that emergency big self heal can result in you spending too much time face down! Steal Life is just the opposite, healing only yourself...its selfish, not very effective (as a DoT), and DF heals for more so theres little reason to use it. Morale Rank 2 This group is a real toss up, all three are really great based on your situation. Universal Confusion is great for pvp, its one of our best crowd controls abilities and can save the life of you and your allies. It helps when being attacked by large numbers, stop runners, and basically allow you to paralyze your prey while you damage/heal (like a spider!). In PvE and dungeons Rampaging Siphon is useful, the more heals your pumping out to the group the better and Focused Mind is great against bosses that tend to disable you and teammates very often. Morale Rank 3 Divine Protection works well in pvp situations and Khaines Withdrawl is very well in pve such as dungeons. DP gives your group a temporary invulnerability and gives you and other heals to heal a wonded friend. KW is awesome in dungeons like Bileroot Burrow where you get a lot of ailments, its a good group cleanse. Morale Rank 4 Alter Fate in my opinion is nearly useless...it has recently been "fixed" but the chances of it rezzing a full party are slim at best because parties tend to spread out, which is best! The logic is just flawed on this one. If you do follow my advice and take Chant of Pain you will at least have some situations for using your M4. Try using it when raiding a keep/fort lord room, near the ram for a keep door you are defending, or really anywhere you have many targets in a small area. It deals massive damage and keeps you healed during the entire thing....its only a shame its not a group or target heal! Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-23-2009 04:22 PM Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-24-2009 05:23 PM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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grimdeath
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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2.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-22-2009 11:35 AM
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Itemization - Armor Ill be the first to admit, we really have a terrible selection when it comes to gear and armor sets. Many of our sets have stats that could easily be called "jack of all trades" where we have stats to cover all our different playstyles but no real focus for each mastery. Expect Willpower on your melee sets! There are however some gear that is worth using and your end game gear will mostly likely be a mix of two sets. When you are gearing make sure to consider the stats mentioned before as it can help you tell the good from the bad! Here are a few sets I would recommend in the order in which they can be obtained with a brief explanation of their pros and cons: Ruin Set - http://www.wardb.com/itemset.aspx?id=4190 This has a low level requirements and fairly easy to obtain(gold bags in T4 pqs). However it does not include wards which are required for end game dungeons in the Inevitable City. Consider swapping to Annihilator termporarily if you do not have enough of the next set to be fully warded. Bloodlord - http://www.wardb.com/itemset.aspx?id=4358 This is the pve alternative to Annihilator and much better geared towards melee users. You can get it from various bosses and publicquests inside Bastion Stair. If your server has rvr imbalance like mine this might seem easier to obtain then annihilator but personally I have had quite a hard time getting a team together to run the full dungeon. Most of the time youneed at least a partial warband which means you may have many people to roll against! Conqueror - http://www.wardb.com/itemset.aspx?id=4430 I love this set, very powerful and has nice stat bonuses. This is a great alterative to Sentinel if you wish to run Lost Vale. It has previously been very hard to obtain (gold bags in forts) but with the new Medallion system in the1.2.1 patch removes some of the “randomness” of getting the set. The boots and belt should be purchasable from the auction house though likely at a high price. Invader - http://www.wardb.com/itemset.aspx?id=4454 This is received from city raid from gold bags in the pqs. It is also now purchasable via the Medallion system. You will need to participate (and win!) city raid PQ’s to receive the tokens needed to purchasethis set. You will want to try and obtained several pieces of this. The invader tokens are also important for purchasing Conqueror because they can be broken down into a large amount of Officer tokens which can save you a lot of time.Obviously this will be the hardest gear to obtain. End Game Recommendation – There are higher end sets(warlords for example) but by the time you have reached those I doubt you will need my little reference guide to understand the value of each. Most Sac doks agree that the best combo of gear currently is 4 Invader / 2 Conqueror pieces.This nets you the two piece bonus of Conqueror of increased strength along withthe multiple bonuses from Invader (strength, wounds, melee crit respectively). Properly geared and with the use of talismans you can achieve some really great stats using these two sets. -------------------------------------- Itemization - Jewelry Same as before with the armor, stats matter. You should receive quite a few really helpful stat boosting jewels along the way so thereis little need for me to mention them specifically as long as you underst and what stats are important. Instead I would like to share a useful strategy thatI use myself. What I recommend is the getting two of the three Winds Impervious jewelry set pieces. Here’s a great step by step guide includes everything youneed to get the pieces: http://blamethehealer.blogwarhammer.net/2009/01/23/the-winds-impervious-set-guide/ “On being hit” this set lowers all of the targets resistances by 165 for 10 seconds. What is the advantage? Lowered spiritual resistance for one! Both Devour Essence and your CoV covenant now deal Sprit damage so you may find the abilities dealing less damage recently. This jewelry set helps bring some of that back will bring a notable difference in damage overall. The set seems to proc on EVERY hit and this can benefit your allies attacking your targets aswell! My personal tests have seen an increase in overall damage over regular strength jewelry so I highly recommend you test it for yourself. -------------------------------------- Itemization - Weapons Weapons are our tools of the trade and really are very important for our class. I will explain some of the difference between dual wielding vs chalice as well as recommending a few swords I particularly enjoy using. Dual Weilding vs Sword and Chalice: Anyone that has used a chalice will immediately realize how great it is to have high SE regen. Many of our abilities rely on SE,especially in the DR tree, so if your main goal is to be able to spam SE abilities then you should definitely consider using a purple chalice. BUT (and this is a bit but) our Sacrifice abilities are based primarily around AP, not SE, and many of our attacks help build SE automatically, which his not counting certain abilities like Pillage Essences that restore large chunks of SE. This means we have a way to maintain our SE levels while not only an increasing your baseline damage (aka white damage) but also gaining a bonus to parry which alot of people overlook. Again I am not a numbers guy so im not going to bore you to death with pie charts and things like that but your looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% increase in damage dual wielding oversword/chalice. To me that’s a substantial increase. Oh and I lied, here's one pie chart: http://finickypenguin.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/pac_man_pie_chart.jpg Some folks have suggested a crazy idea that has you could use a sword/chalice instead to be able to spam certain SE based abilities. In some (very rare) cases this can prove true. In reality it is just not worth it to hurt your baseline damage (meaning lowered heals too), parry, as well as some stats that are only present on swords, as well as weapon procs! The biggest problem is overlooking how few abilities actually gain from this setup. In my personal build I only have THREE abilities that rely on SE including: devour, rend and soul shielding and many Sacrifice builds don’t use soul shielding at all! I guess if you wanted to cast more casting heals this could be slightly beneficial but really I suggest trying to get more confortable with your melee heals so this is not needed. Instead of high SE regen what is important is to achieve state of balance where you jump between AP and SE abilities as needed.When your using one side the other can regen on its own (AP) or be manually regenerated in combat (SE). This, my friends, is the key to Sacrifice and is the primary skill you have to learn to control if you wish to master the class itself. This is where the “balance” comes into play for the tree. Swords: Following the recommended stats for the class you shouldalready have a good idea for what to look for when seeking out and rolling on loot, however here are a few of my personal favorites. There are better weapons out there in LV for example but I have not been personally lucky enough to get those!  Edge of Light – http://www.wardb.com/item.aspx?id=476607 This is a elite rewards for T4 rvr influence in elf lands. Innocence End - http://www.wardb.com/search.aspx?search_text=innocence's+end
This can be obtained via the epic chain quest starting in Dragonwake and endingin Eataine. Xiphoes of the Bloodmoon - http://www.wardb.com/item.aspx?id=656490 Obtained via the first pq in the middle wing of BastionStair from blue bag drops. Try using two for the 8% crit chance. These alonewill give you a noticeable gain in performance of damage and heals. ...More Coming Soon... -------------------------------------- Play Style Here it is, the culmination of everything you have read about and learned so far. Now that you have all the best abilities, tactics,items and so forth you are ready to learn how to wield this power. Below I am going to try and give some general tips that are applicable to multiple situations as well as explain how you may play in different areas such as PvE and PvP. There is too much to cover and a lot of situational tactics and strategies that I would love to go over, but for now I will just try and explain the basics. General Attack Method: This is geared towards pvp but also works great in pvesituations, especially champions and higher. - (optional) Soul Shielding – Helps thru that initial “burst” of damage when starting a fight. Most people have their abilities fully charged when they start to attack so this can be a lifesaver. Very effective during boss fights as well (think BWE’s final boss when he tries to one-hit people!)
- Start off with Consume Strength – lowers your targets strength and boosts your own to improve attacks/heals. Keep this applied constantly.
- (situational) Consume Essence – If you target and notice the bright pink icon then us it. Seems best against Swordmasters.
- (optional) Lacerate – This can be important for bosses or on a focused target by your party. The damage isn’t amazing but it lowers toughness which makes that target a bit squishier. Again re-apply as needed.
- Cast Devour Essence (best for groups) – Offers an advantage, even on single targets, that can be used in combination with other attack. So while its up it maximizing your damage output while doing some slight self heals from CoV.
- Cast Essence Leash (groups) – it’s a directional cone but does decent damage, regens some SE, and works great in combonation with DE. When fighting multiple targets use DE plus this on the group then start focusing on single targets.
- Pillage Essence – Devour should have lowered your SE a bit and you want to keep it as full as possible for when you need it so cast this. Also does decent single target damage (consume strength + devour + pillage = dead squishies!)
- Cast Consume / Trasfer Essence as needed – Keep your health topped and help the healers top of those near you with Transfer.
- Watch AP, when your AP supply starts dwindling start throwing devour/rend if they are up. This helps keep your balance.
- When your health or other friendly target’s health is low try targeting them and casting Devour Soul (on them) + Rend Soul any close enemy targets. This typically will recover a LOT of health, even on a tank. Throw more consume/transfer to top things off and pillage to regen SE.
- (optional) Don’t be afraid to use cast heals to reach distant allies if you cannot melee heal and if a team member goes down, rez them. When rezzed make use of your melee heals to bring them back to full health. This provides the extra benefit of distracting your enemy away from the wounded friend.
- Use your CC and other abilities as the situation comes up to (knock that witch hunter off the shaman/zealots), and most importantly, keep your eye on your abilities and jump between AP/SE as needed. AP is usually harder to keep the synergy up for so don’t be afraid to collect AP gear and use AP pots!
- Rinse and Repeate.
General Tips: - Even though you are focusing on Sacrifice your rend soul is still a very important ability, you can heal yourself and ANY friendly target you select (regardless of party). Try keeping your main tank selected and feeding all your Rend heals to him while he holds agro in PvE.
- Selecting party members can be a chore but the the F1-F6 keys are binded by default to select various party members. Use them!
- Avoid trying to be the tank, your best to stand next to the tanks while they hold agro and look for pvp targets that are not focused on you (especially when your outnumbered). Positioning is very important, don’t expect to run guns blazing into a zerg and live. Pick the targets that are most vulnerable but safe to reach.
- Other abilities can be used while Devour Essence is active. Not only does this help you stack damage/heals but when combined with abilities like Essence Lash it helps bring down multiple target’s health quickly (ideal for pve mobs).
- As stated above, if your in a pinch try Devour + Rend at the same time…it’s a good way to heal quickly at the cost of a lot of SE. Follow with pillage essence, consume, etc. to regen lost SE.
- Do not be afraid to detaunt, we only have a single target detaunt (compared to aoe detaunt warrior priests) but keeping pve agro off you is very important. Detaunt also causes reduction in damage received so it helps when your trying to escape from a single player dealing damage to you.
Problems and Downfalls: Below are some of the problems you may face as a melee healer. - There is a real image problem with any melee DoK. We are expected to be backline group healers because currently that is a powerful way to keep a group healed right now. You will often encounter people that have no idea what melee heals are or how to utilize you in a party. I have had zealots tell me they would not give strength buffs to me because “the party needs more healing instead” even though that’s exactly what I was doing! Very annoying, trust me! This holds true for dungeons as well. Typical setup is 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 2 dps. In these situations I recommend trying to fill a dps spot because you are dealing good damage with the benefits of heals. It is very possible to run as one of the two healers in a group but I would never run as the main or only healer.
- In a similar vein, we are often targeted by order because they think we are the usual group heal spamming doks. You will have a big target on your forehead at times.
- Our SE and AP are not unlimited; there will be times when they just run out. In these cases try and duck out of the action for a moment and cast Blood Offering or letting AP regen on its own. A gun is worthless without the bullets.
- In dungeons you will encounter certain enemies (specifically Bileroot’s “dogs”) that are impossible to fight head on which can mean no melee heals possible. In these cases I recommend keeping a purple chalice in your bag that you can pull out as needed. This allows you to spam casting and group heals. Swap back when their done.
-------------------------------------- Conclusion Again I do recommend that if you have any questions aboutanything written above that you feel free to ask. I would also love to hear your input for improving this guide, a lot of this comes from my personal knowledge and I will admit there could be some discrepancies! Thanks for your time and I hope this helps you! Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-23-2009 02:04 PM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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grimdeath
Contributor
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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3.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-22-2009 11:38 AM
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See It In Action Chapter 1 Video: Video Breakdown: - Opens with me versus 12 NPCS. Devour and Essence Lash a bulk of the group damage while focusing on single targets to heal myself and maintain AP/SE.
- Next up is some pvp action with me versus an Engineer. Unfortunatly fraps did not record the first half of the fight where I took out his partner, a shadow warrior. In this video you will notice I have exhasted my SE late in the battle so I duck around a corner to heal and regen just enough SE to finish him off (blood offering). He runs but DE and Essence Lash are great tools for reaching fleeing opponents ahead of you.
- The following clip features me fighting a Warrior Priest of the exact same RR. We are very similar classes and so most fights like this end in a draw. In this clip however I am dealing the higher damage and typicallly keep my health full while his falls to around half at times. This is an excellent clip for showing SE regen so watch closely! My plan was to charge up for Morale 4 when I see another player enter (thinking it was a WH initially) I switch to him, I immediatly realize its not, its yet another WP! After later reviewing the clip I realize the second player was running past to allow our duel and attacking him provoked him to join our fight (bad move!). You can still see that even though he's a high RR level that alone I probably could have defeated him, however the two WP's healing each other was just too much to overcome. Two WP would be a difficult fight for any class though.
- The final clip shows two 1v1 battles back to back. I start off fighting an easy target, an IB that keeps running to a BO for safety. After finally defeating him with the use of Fist of Khaine (ranged DoK's ftw! ) I am jumped by a BW looking for a easy wounded target. Unfortunatly for him my use of Soul Shieldng and just enough cast heals to keep alive give me time to get my Morale 1 heal off and turn the tide. This clip shows that even in extended battles we can keep our synergy up in a fight.
-------------------------------------- Coming soon...Chapter 2 Focus on zergs, witch hunters, and most importantly group heals! Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-30-2009 10:21 AM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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grimdeath
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Grimmdeath
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Volkmar
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4.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-22-2009 11:56 AM
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*reserved for future use*
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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Slayn
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Slayn
Wolves of Mibu
Phoenix Throne
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5.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-22-2009 01:46 PM
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Cool guide, it'll help the new DoKs a lot that want to melee heal. What do you all think about initiative? With 0 in initiative, our chance to be crit by is around 28.5% and that's BEFORE you factor in enemies' crit. Message Edited by Slayn on 04-22-2009 01:47 PM
Phoenix Throne Server
Slayn - 5x DoK
Shiri - 55 WE (retired)
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grimdeath
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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6.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-22-2009 02:15 PM
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well as you put it the obvious advantage to stacking it is reducing the chance of being hit by crits but even if you decided to use it you would soon realize how much of a pain that is due to our usual foe: set stats. to stack a decent amount you would need ruin and bloodlord but they are not the sets I would recommend taking to end game...instead when you get to conqueror and invader your going to end up with about HALF the initiative. this means you will have to rely on mainly jewelry and the odd weapon or two that might have it. personally this seems like it could be useful to stack but the items are just not there to validate using up precious talisman slots, jewelry and the odd weapon or two for it to take a precedence. one of the items I did recommend above, the third jewelry peice in the Winds Impervious jewelry set do include an extra +12 initiative though and you will undoubtly end up with from your various peices of gear. I will take a wild guess and think that perhaps Mythic intended initiative to be more important when you have lesser gear, and as you gain better gear your improved skills(damage to kill faster and heals to heal thru big hits), armor, wounds/toughness take over to help make it less important....but that is just my guess at what they were trying to do will our silly set peice stats heh. As we move towards the next couple patches when the new stat/crit system is implemented then it may be more important to look at but for now, not so much and also pretty hard to stack in high amounts. Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-22-2009 02:53 PM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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elionbel
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Elionbel
Legendsx
Monolith
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7.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-22-2009 04:44 PM
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Pretty neat guide 
Would you want to consolidate it on The DoK Wiki? Message Edited by elionbel on 04-22-2009 04:45 PM
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grimdeath
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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8.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-22-2009 05:31 PM
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elionbel wrote:
Pretty neat guide
Would you want to consolidate it on The DoK Wiki? Message Edited by elionbel on 04-22-2009 04:45 PM
I wouldnt mind but I probably wouldnt post it myself. You or anyone else is welcome to Elionbel.
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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elionbel
Contributor
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Elionbel
Legendsx
Monolith
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9.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-22-2009 10:31 PM
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grimdeath wrote:
I wouldnt mind but I probably wouldnt post it myself. You or anyone else is welcome to Elionbel.
Sure thing. I can start it out, then if you wanted, you could update it over there (just sign up and most of the pages are open for editing, with a fallback history in case something gets messed up, i love wikis) 
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MysticTheurge
Forum Regular
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Tarosani
Kindred of Hate
Phoenix Throne
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10.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-23-2009 08:39 AM
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I'm pretty sure that, like the other "lifetap" heals, Rend Soul is improved, rather than reduced, by Divine Power.
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grimdeath
Contributor
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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11.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-23-2009 09:20 AM
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I think you mean Divine Fury? You know I assumed it was lessened because it is the in DR tree, now you make me wonder so I will need to test that! It makes sense that the increased damage would aid just like consume/transfer. If someone has already tested by all means please let me know and I will adjust my guide above, otherwise I will test this evening when I am home from work. The main advantage given from the DR points though will still be to counter act the drop in usefullness to your cast abilities which I do still use while my tactics are set for melee heals, just not as often. There are times where I get away from a zerg, am low health, and cannot attack anything to self heal so I cast a couple DR based heals and then Blood Offering to bring my SE back up and get back in the game quicker. Just because you dont specialize in it doesnt mean it cannot be useful. Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-23-2009 09:24 AM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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Rivenspeak
Member
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Drys
Blitzkrieg
Badlands
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12.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-23-2009 09:28 AM
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Your description of Consume Essence is wrong. It is also a splash heal (small radius, but enough for the MDPS train that should be following you around)
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grimdeath
Contributor
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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13.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-23-2009 10:04 AM
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haha yea I know I left that off, but honestly 30 feet feels like rubbing elbows in this game...10 feet is a joke! Instead I primarily try and think of consume as a self heal or use it similar to rend (target and heal a single target). I could not recommend trying to use consume to keep an area of people alive because they move too much typically. Instead let Transfer do that...its much better at it! Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-23-2009 10:12 AM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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Frostdflakes
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Frostdflakes
Dominus Nocturnus
Praag
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14.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-23-2009 11:00 AM
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*golf clap* Very nice guide!
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elionbel
Contributor
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Elionbel
Legendsx
Monolith
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15.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-23-2009 11:58 AM
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grimdeath wrote:
I think you mean Divine Fury? You know I assumed it was lessened because it is the in DR tree, now you make me wonder so I will need to test that! It makes sense that the increased damage would aid just like consume/transfer. If someone has already tested by all means please let me know and I will adjust my guide above, otherwise I will test this evening when I am home from work.
CS, DE, and RS are all lifeleeches and affected by melee stats. -+% healing tactics do not effect these skills. -+% damage tactics do. So does Str and (in the next patch) weaponskill.
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Ansumana
Contributor
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Ansumana
The Cult of Skaro
Iron Rock
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16.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-23-2009 12:19 PM
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Very interesting guide. Presents the SaC/DR build/playstyle really well. I was curious about the Winds jewelry set you mentioned. I have heard sorcs and the like going on about it, but never really considered the resist debuff to be worth the stat/effect loss. I tend to use my jewerly slots to add survivabilty. Which is why the last part of the paragraph grabbed my attention. "My personal tests have seen an increase in overall damage so I highly recommend you test it for yourself. It is not mentioned but I have a feeling this MAY effect wounds/toughness which would explain what I have seen. But that still needs to be confirmed." Did you mean it affects the wounds/toughness of the wearer, or the person being debuffed? Or something else entirely? Once again, nice guide.
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grimdeath
Contributor
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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17.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-23-2009 01:00 PM
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@ elionbel: ok great, good to know. I will go ahead and make that more clear in the guide above. I mentioned this on Warhammer Alliance but I am going to try and start recording videos of some of the tips and things mentioned above so you can see my play style in action. I dont want this to be a "look what I can do!" video but instead just show how everything works together. If you guys have any suggestions for things you would like me to showcase please let me know and I will try and make it happen! @ Ansumana: I wrote this guide over a period of several days and I think I have figured out the answer wether it affects those stats and that answer would most likely be NO. I think in order for it to effect wounds/toughness it would have to read "reduces all STATS" instead. Resistances are just your spirital, elemental, etc so only those type of attacks will see an improvement. With that said I did see an improvment of overall damage using these even with the loss of strength jewelry which really surprised me and is the reason I thought I would suggest trying it. I was replacing a couple green/blue jewelry peices though but if you have 4 really awesome purples this may not be to your advantage! Ill demonstrate the damage difference in my video tonight! *edit* ive updated the guide to reflect these couple of changes as well as adding a section I missed earlier talking about morale abilities. Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-23-2009 02:39 PM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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grimdeath
Contributor
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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20.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
[ Edited ]
04-23-2009 04:10 PM
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Thanks for the suggestions Mystic. I have updated the guide concerning DR points on my spec and the effect on Rend Soul. Your right, it also improves the base damage which is great. I have no idea why they put Rend in DR instead of Sac, I guess DR guys need to do some damage too. If I was going to use another set of Jewelry I would probably opt to swap instead of use both at the same time, set peices tend to have blah stats imo and I still want some strength and wounds stacked! I will look into that set though, sounds interesting. Losing some stats was a major concern when I started trying the set but personally I felt it had a positve impact overall. Message Edited by grimdeath on 04-23-2009 04:20 PM
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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grimdeath
Contributor
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45
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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22.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-24-2009 02:07 AM
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No problem, glad to help. A few updates based on feedback between here and WHA's forums: - Divine Favor DOES increase damage of Rend Soul...still need to test effect on healing but I expect a positive increase.
- Murderous Intent seems to be working even though the stats do not show in the player window. The problem is Divine Favor seems to just help kill faster by raising your damage consistantly. Still testing though.
- I have discovered a bug with the Winds Impervious set which may carry over to other set jewelry. Basically when you unequip jewelry the bonus goes away but if you try and equip it again the bonus does not work again until you have zoned. It did this to me more then once! This makes testing the damage with and without a bit more tedious but I will get back with results tomorrow.
I have also spent most of tonight recording videos of some things applicable to the guide above. I did not get everything I wanted but should have a video showing some of the following tomorrow: - 1vs1 of me vs a 40/42 Warrior Priest and later adding a 40/64 WP! Its just too funny!
- 1vs1 defeating a IB and BW back-to-back (though they were lower RR so I might cut that)
- Clip showing the difference CoV can make in 1v1
- Devour and Essence Lash pve mob fight (me vs 12)
- Some General SE/AP balancing
I would still like to get video showing: - Group and single target heals (the most important!)
- RvR placement
- 1vs1 Witch Hunter (if your a WH on Volkmar I would love to setup a duel!)
- Morale abilities (specifically Chant)
- Using CC
- Showing some of the results from the tests liste above.
I did have some other videos to show for 1vs1 but unfortunatly fraps was giving me a hard time starting/stopping the recording process! I am really mad because I missed recording what would have been two of my best videos! Grrr! More tomorrow though!
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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Lion
Contributor
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40
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Tahssa
Washed Up
Volkmar
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23.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-24-2009 03:08 AM
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i like the guide, I have a 30 something dok and I am not enjoying the back line healer with him. I will let you know what it does for me.
Tahssa
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grimdeath
Contributor
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Grimmdeath
Immortal
Volkmar
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24.
Re: Guide to Sanctuary Disciples and Melee Heals
04-24-2009 09:47 AM
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Just remember that stats and gear matter, you will want to make sure you have some decent Sac gear otherwise your probably not going to be too impressed with the results. Its like me swapping to cast heals with my oh...300 willpower...its not going to be very good! Just remember its not an easy button like cast heals can be I find the backline to be so much easier with my Shaman but I like the challenge of the melee heal dok and when its at it's best its really fun
Grimmdeath ♦ r40/rr4x ♦ Disciple of Khaine ♦ Sac/DRGrimga ♦ r40/rr3x ♦ Shaman ♦ Mork/Da GreenGrimchop♦ r3x ♦ Choppa
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