Here is the Runepriest section of the patch notes. Public test servers are up so get on and try them out. Don't forget to customize your appearance!
Balance Changes:
Due to the nature of the changes in this update, all Runepriests have had their Mastery and Renown training refunded. Please visit a trainer to relearn these abilities.
* Efficient Runecarving: This Tactic will now heal your defensive target for 50% of all direct damage dealt. This should say it only works when under the effects of Rune of Breaking.
* Master Rune of Adamant: Increased the Action Point cost of this ability and removed the build time.
* Master Rune of Fury: Increased the Action Point cost of this ability and removed the build time.
* Master Rune of Speed: Increased the Action Point cost of this ability and removed the build time.
The AP increase is to 35 on the PTS. An increase of 10.
* Rune of Breaking: This new toggled ability is available at Rank 1. While toggled off, this ability converts several damage-oriented stats on items (Intelligence, Magic Power, and Magic Crit Chance) into their healing-oriented counterparts (Willpower, Healing Power, and Healing Crit Chance) at 50% of the original values. When toggled on, it will do the opposite, and convert the same healing-oriented stats on gear into their damage-oriented counterparts at 50% of the original values.
Bug Fixes:
* Grimnir's Shield: Fixed an issue in which this ability did not correctly reduce all incoming damage types.
Well, what can I say, couple of unexpected changes...
The Efficient Runecarving came out of nowhere but could be a decent change to a mediocre tactic. Unfortunatly it doesn't work with Rune of Burning, which makes it a bit of a weird tactic, especially in the DOT/HOT line. It does stack fully with Rune of Fortune - but you have to be in Rune of Breaking to use it. I don't know why they added this restriction to the ability..?
Instacast master runes makes them easier to use, but with a 10AP increase.
Fixing Grimnir's Shield is a good thing, although I don't know what was wrong with it in the first place!
Rune of Breaking gives a nice glow effect on our hands! I'm not sure if I really want this change to be implemented at the moment, I'm not really happy with it.
Sovereign DPS set bonus been reduced to 7% (from 10) increased crit for the 7piece set.
Other things of note: Sovereign Set Changes Hierophant's Grace: This proc buff will now hasten casting speed by 25%.
Change of armour appearance and weapons as well as customization.
Increased Renown for being outnumbered in the lakes.
LOTD for 32+ only.
No more auto assist on addons.
23/7/10 - Updated with changes to DPS set from PTS. 18/7/10 - Updated with a changes to DPS set.
We've been discussing your feedback and thoughts internally, and we now have a few adjustments ready to show you. Just as with all things which are still in development, please remember that these are still subject to change!
Wil - 232
Tou - 134
Wou - 116
Ini - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% heal crit chance
40 heal power
4 AP/s
4% reduced chance to be crit
2% reduced armor penetration
3 piece - 85 Wil
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% Heal Crit
6 piece - On Heal: 10% chance to increase heal power by 130 for 10s. 7 piece - On Heal: 10% chance to gain 60 Action Points over 3 seconds.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - For the next 10 seconds, your group can not be critically hit.
(Secondary) Offensive Set
Int - 232
Tou - 134
Wou - 116
Ini - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% magic crit chance
40 magic power
4 AP/s
4% disrupt strikethrough
2% reduced armor penetration
3 piece - 85 Int
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% Magic Crit
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase magic power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase target's chance to be critically hit by 7% 10% for 10s. (Updated PTS 23-7-10)
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Your group's abilities cost no Action Points for 10 seconds.
They've brought back the AP regen albeit in a slightly revised form which should keep most people happy and they are obviously keen to put some kind of crit reduction on our sets. I think I prefer the new 8 piece ability over the previous version as we can fire and forget about it. Be interesting to see if it's on or off the GCD.
As for the offensive stats, reduction in build up times offensivly isn't all that great for a Runepriest. The Grimnir's line is all instacast except Rune of Battle (which has a 2m cooldown). Not sure how it would work with Rune of Burning. So that just leaves Rune of Fortune and Striking... Maybe if they worked it into a group reduction of build up times similar to the tanks' abilities and our healing set?
Group action points reduced will be a nice little bonus, especially if you co-ordinate it with DPS casters using focussed mind!
Compared to old Sovereign we lose 29 Toughness overall, 3 morale per second but gain in most stats, especially initiative and wounds. Lose Martyr (10% chance on hit to heal group for 192/9s affected by willpower so heals for more), Vivacious (10% on heal to regain 50AP), and Empowered Runes (+25% Heal Crit for 10s, 2min cooldown).
Lowering Int will mean that Stagger/Silence etc will be even harder to stick on enemies.
The big hit for some will be the loss of Vivacious, some Sovereign Runepriests reported that they were able to play without slotting in Restorative Burst freeing up a tactic slot. With Restorative Burst it allows for some great sustained casting. There are already some, on the forums, calling for Vivacious to be returned to the 7 piece bonus slot .
The other set bonuses seem like nice passive abilities, +130 heal power for 10s, and -10% chance for target to be crit for 10s should all help out.
The change from Empowered Runes, +25% Heal Crit ability to +75% Crit Heal Amount is hard to compare. We lose the additional Blessing of Grungni and Restorative Bursts from the proc. However I think the increased crit heal amount, on average, increase our healing more than +Heal Crit. Unfortunatly with only a 10s duration (or 8.5s if it's on GCD) you might be unlucky and not crit at all during that period. I will try and do some numerical analysis and post it up later. Also I hope it doesn't cause a global cooldown, 10s abilities seem so short when you have to wait to cast that first spell.
Group uncrittable for 10s is a very nice little ability, and also good to save yourself from Witch Elves and Sorcs! Whilst the 60AP over 3s isn't as good as an instant 50AP regen, most Runepriests shouldn't have many AP issues at all wearing this set.
Compared to Tyrant, large stat increases, but lose additional 50 AP pool and Heirophants Grace. There are however hints that Hierophants Grace might be nerfed, "I mentioned in the Tank Archetype thread that we're looking at the "Undefendable" effects for 1.3.6 - likewise, we're looking at Heirophant's Grace as well." NateL
And for those that are interested, the DPS spec!
(Secondary) Offensive Set
Int - 232
Tou - 134
Wou - 116
Ini - 106
Spi - 294
Cor - 289
Ele - 289
6% magic crit chance
40 magic power
4 AP/s
4% disrupt strikethrough
2% reduced armor penetration
3 piece - 85 Int
4 piece - 85 Wou
5 piece - 5% Magic Crit
6 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase magic power by 130 for 10s.
7 piece - On Hit: 10% chance to increase target's chance to be critically hit by 10% for 10s.
8 piece - 2m cooldown - Your group's abilities cost no Action Points for 10 seconds.
One of the most fundamental improvements to my healing was when I moved over to click casting with my mouse instead of my keyboard.
The advantages are the reduction of just a button click, but with the amount of healing going out those button clicks soon add up. That first heal lands fractionally quicker allowing you to save more lives.
When I first started in Warhammer I went straight to Squared. You can set it up to take all your spells with different combinations of CTRL, ALT, SHIFT and your left mouse button. Unfortunatly there's not the same functionality as in WoW where you can also use keybinds when your mouse is hovering over your unitframes. I've added a few extra addons to enhance Squared:
SquaredHDIndicator shows you when your target has a heal debuff. Purple 25%, Black 50% and Orange is an outgoing debuff.
SquaredHOTIndicators allows you to view what length of HOT you have on your target. This allows you to see when you have Rune of Regeneration up (default green) and Rune of Serenity (default yellow).
LibRange & RangeFadingSquared featured in my previous post. This improves the fading functionality of Squared when your group members are out of range. Remember to untick 'Enable range/LOS fade' under Misc Options when installing this.
I've also changed the style of Squared from the default as seen on the right to the one below. Choose and adjust to suit yourself, there are other examples on the Squared website here.You can easily adjust to this functionality by opening the Squared configuration, going to Import/Export and pasting in this code:
You may wish to read the whole article before you set the keybinds in this section:
Click - Grungni's Gift
CTRL + Click - Rune of Regeneration (if you use a lot of RoR you may wish to move this to an ALT click to work your thumb instead of your little finger).
SHIFT + Click - Rune of Cleansing
ALT + Click - Rune of Shielding
ALT + SHIFT + Click - Rune of Serenity
CTRL + ALT + Click - Protection of the Ancestor's
Z - Rune of Restoration
SHIFT + CTRL - Rune of Mending (again I never cast this and thus it is on an awkward key combination)
Blessing of Valaya, for those of you are interested, is bound to a nice spammable C key
The main issue I had with using a vanilla Squared is whenever someone was out of LOS or out of range it would self-cast the spell. Often in the heat of battle I would have fired off two Grungni's Gifts on myself before I realised they weren't landing on their intended target. Back then, at 30AP a pop it wasn't doing much for my AP pool! The only way I found to get round this was to install NerfedButtons and bind all my heals through NBSquared. Instead of the first cast instantly landing on click, that first click selects my target. I lose a bit of efficiency as I have to double tap my target for the first heal but I thought this a small price to pay for not crippling my AP. If anyone knows another way to prevent War self-casting in these situations please let me know.
You can load up the NerfedButtons ui with /nb ui. Drag your spells from your abilities menu (shortcut key V) and save. Make sure you have choose addon 'NBSquared' and type in n for a normal mouse click; s for shift click; sa for shift alt; sac for shift alt control; etc.
Now there's no need to do any fancy-pants checking using NerfedButtons, you can if you want to but it's beyond the scope of this guide. One little addition I have enjoyed is to add Rune Of Life to the cast list with Rune of Cleansing on shift click. This just gives you the ability to shift-click on a dead player in battle to rez them.
I'd like to go on to bind Divine Favour to a cast but I've run out of key combinations. Maybe I should replace Rune of Mending...
I hope this helps anyone who hasn't yet moved over to this way of casting, although I'm sure the majority already have. There are a couple of other mods that allow you to do this: Enemy and HealGrid. If you can't get Squared how you like it, try out either of these two mods! Finally if you're not convinced, here's a short example video showing you how you can stay mobile and heal at the same time:
Be warned they are up and running, but not 'officially' so you could lose progress if they have problems and need to revert the data back. It will take a few minutes to re-check your files, it's not downloading the 9Gb again don't worry!
Remember to add _eur to the end of your login after you've changed the patcher.
