Talismans

Quick note, when buying talismans from the AH for your Runepriest you can now search for magic ones which tend to be a lot cheaper and more readily available.

As there's a 100% conversion both ways from Rune of Breaking, there's absolutely no harm in mix-matching int, magic damage, magic crit with your will, heal crit and heal power! 

After watching +35 heal power talis going for 200g it's nice to be able to pick up the magic equivalent and get them for closer to 70g!

Some Zealots/Runepriests have also been taking advantage of the LOTD weapons to slot both +heal power and +magic power. With ridiculous numbers, above 350 magic DPS, some may wish to have a play at DPS for a while, I know I have!

Planned changes to Rune of Breaking/Harbinger Mechanic

We'll be making some changes in with next Tuesday's maintenance to RoB and HoD:

• We'll be reducing the cooldown on both abilities. Now 20s cooldown.
• Stats will now exchange on a 1:1 ratio.
• Fixing an issue where HoD and RoB wouldnt persist through death

We're still looking into the issue where the vfx is bugging out.

We're going to continue to observe how the mechanic plays out in a live envinronment and will continue adjusting as needed moving forward.

Andy Belford

Quite a drastic change, should make the mechanic much more interesting to play with now! It's a very brave thing to do on the live version, it's a shame they didn't play around and adjust it on the test servers when they had the chance.

This should also make Conqueror/Invader sets much more viable for those levelling up.

1.3.6 Final Patchnotes

The servers are down, the patch is being updated. It doesn't seem like they have listened to the massive amounts of negative feedback about the new mechanic. I think many people who don't play a Runepriest, or even Runepriests that haven't tried out the new changes will be suprised how disappointing the new mechanic is. You can read the full patchnotes here. Nothing seems to have changed from the previous versions. At least the sovereign sets are something to work towards!

Runepriest

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. On PTS this only worked when under Rune of Breaking (see below).

* Immolating Grasp: Fixed an issue in which this Tactic did not always function correctly in conjunction with the Tactic "Potent Runes".

* 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. 

Master Runes increased by 10AP to 35AP/cast.

* 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.

Other

* Hierophant's Grace: This proc buff will now hasten casting speed by 25%.

You can see screenshots of the new sovereign sets in my previous post.

My take? 

Whoever suggested these changes, didn't stick to Mythic's idea of the Runepriest, nor did they please any Runepriests. Zealots are positively fuming about these changes!

Lets have a look at NateL's understanding of our class:

One of our long-time concerns regarding the Runepriest and Zealot careers is that they ultimately become more limited than other Healer-archetype careers. This is because the other healing careers have their Mastery paths sorted by role - people who play those careers make a decision about the role they want to play, then specialize in the corresponding Mastery path and gear up appropriately. Runepriests and Zealot, however, have their Mastery paths sorted by delivery vehicle ("direct", "over time", and "area", essentially) and then have both offensive and defensive abilities together in each Mastery.  Since there's obviously no such thing as "gearing for direct", though, Runepriests and Zealots then have to decide again whether they want to be offensive or defensive and then gear appropriately - the net result being that even within their chosen Mastery, half of their abilities are ineffective.

 Now compare this to the patchnotes:

Efficient Runecarving gives our direct damage spells a lifetap component. IT IS IN OUR DOT/HOT TREE! Sorry for shouting, but the ignorance of this change is mindblowing.

Rune of balancing/breaking. This mechanic renders half of our abilities truly ineffective by negating all of our Int or Willpower. A Runepriest in the new full DPS sovereign gear is still behind par in DPS terms. Now HALF that power and we still wouldn't push out effective DPS. Go back and read Nate's last sentance. I don't believe this change has addressed this issue at all.

Now when we are geared for healing, we do less damage if we throw out a DOT than we did before. We also get a higher chance for our silence and stagger to be disrupted.

There are a few occasions when this new mechanic will allow you to push out more DPS without changing your armour set, but nearly all will be situations when there are no enemy players around. I can do more damage on TOVL Boss 5 urn. I can throw out more DPS on undefended keep doors or on objective guards. I can do more DPS to the NPCs in the city sieges. If there is a sole enemy player running away and not threating my group I can help kill him slightly faster with my inadequate damage, but only once every 30s.We don't even get to twist in and out of DPS stance using HOTs and DOTs because the value is calculated from our current stats every tick.

As they have made the change, it is unlikely we will ever get a more interesting mechanic. I have seen so many interesting ideas around our Runes that will never come to light. The best we can probably hope for are changes to this mechanic:

1) There is no need for a 30s cooldown. We are so far from being effective in both areas that we don't need to be restricted in this way. If the values were increased, as discussed below, some restriction of the sort may be applicable
2) Our stats shouldn't be negated.You are taking stats away from us and replacing them with 50% of their value. Isn't that just called a nerf?
3) The 50% conversion isn't enough. It needs to be upwards of 70% for our spells to come close to being effective. Even at 100% we wouldn't have true parity because of the next point.
4) We need the right tactics to be effective in either mode, and these can't currently be changed in combat. Many of our tactics are bugged or worthless. No tactics are balanced around the delivery methods of direct, over time or area - they don't improve both our heals and our damage at the same time. Dual faced tactics that perform differently under each rune could go a long way to addressing some of our issues.

5) The glowing hands of doom. Does it really need to be made so obvious to the enemy that we are unable to self heal or the role we are performing in our groups?

Gearing up your Runepriest

 As of the maintenance patch 31/8/10 Rune of Burning now transfers 100% of intelligence, magic power and magic crit to willpower, heal power and heal crit. This includes talismans and set bonuses. This makes the conqueror and invader sets viable as the stats become useful. We don't know if this change is going to be permanent yet as it seems like it is 'live' testing...

I can't speak for below tier 4, as these ranks flew by for me and I really can't remember but this guide should give you an idea of how to gear up for tier 4 as quickly as possible.

The goal of gearing up your runepriest, is to maximise your heal crit as soon as possible. When you get to around 25-30% heal crit, from gear, your proc rate for Restorative Burst becomes quite reliable and you will be proccing Blessing of Grungni regularly. Secondly you will want as much wounds as possible initially to keep you alive, and survive dungeon bosses (more on this later). From there you can work towards a high willpower/healpower build or high wounds, toughness, initiative or armour build for survival.

As soon as you get to T4, start joining in with organised guild oRvR warbands. This will allow you to quickly gain your Lesser and Greater wards without equipping the armour pieces. Don't forget to pick up the quests in the zone as they award you medallions which you will need. With the medallion/crest conversion rate being reduced in 1.3.5 it can see some large challenges for players starting T4 obtaining the Annihilator and Conquerer sets.

Buy the Annihilator Gloves/Boots (and Conq/Invader/Warlord gloves & boots and stick in your bank) from the AH. They usually go pretty cheaply: 1-2g each. You want to get to the 4 piece bonus for Annihilator ASAP for the 5% heal crit bonus. Ask guild leader for gold bags from zone locks. Ask in alliance if there are any gold bags for sale. If you are taking a keep ask politely for higher ranks to opt out. When you get the shoulder piece gem it with a +3% heal crit gem. Talisman for wounds until you have at least 6000 HP. 

Go to any City Sieges you can. Try and get your Invader Chestpiece (as this will give you the Greater Ward later on if you can't get your Conq), or the nice heal crit gem from Stage 1. Stage 2 will drop your Warlord and you might get a nice purple staff. In Stage 3 it is polite to opt out to allow the higher realm ranks their Sovereign gear. The purple weapon is rubbish for a runepriest in Stage 3 anyway. You may be able to get the purple gear, from stage 3, to flesh out your set, from guildies/alliance/AH as it is bind on equip. This is called Overlord's. Also check guild bank for Primeval gear to fill out gaps in your armour.

Keep working on your wards in oRvR. You should be able to complete your lesser ward quickly, and soon you will be able to get 4/5 Greater. The final greater ward needs you to obtain your Conqueror or Sentinel chestpiece. Don't spend crests/medallions on Conqueror or Invader gear, as the set bonuses and itemisation are poor for a healing runepriest.

When you are fully lesser warded, it's time to get a decent weapon. Get a group together for Bastion Stairs centre PQ. If you can get some guildlies who don't require the weapons it can take 15 minutes to complete the PQ and get the gold bag master looted to you. This will earn you Runestaff of the Bloodmoon (34 will, 27 tough, 25 wounds and +7% heal crit). You probably want to equip this with a willpower and a wounds talisman. This weapon could last you until you get your royal weapon from scenarios.

Check the AH for Darkpromise Runesash and also pick up the Warlord or Sovereign accessory if it's going cheap.

You can now do the city instances, Sigmar's Crypts and Warpblade Tunnels, to work on your Sentinel gear. Unfortunatly this set requires 5 pieces to get to the heal crit bonus, which makes it time consuming to grind. If you are lucky you might compliment your Annilator gear. I skipped this step and went straight to Lost Vale for my Darkpromise Gear.

Lost Vale is doable with 4/5 Greater Wards. The key thing to remember is to keep bosses detaunted throughout the fight so you don't get fragged by their abilities. The same is true for Tomb of the Vulture Lord, I did up to boss 6 with only 4/5, but it was with a strong group and required some strong play from myself. You should aim to get 3 pieces of Darkpromise gear, the belt from the AH counts, to get the heal crit bonus. Ideally you will pick up the clogs, as they have a 3% heal crit bonus. If you are lucky and get the whole set quickly it is a good one to wear, and allow you to mix it with Warlord when you get that. Otherwise 4 piece Darkpromise with 2 piece Annhilator nets you decent bonuses. At this point you should be quite competitive in T4. You may also be lucky and get the Runestaff of the Greatbeard from LV.

Working on your jewellry I would advise getting the Land of the Dead accessory sets which require Silver Ankhs and Golden Scarabs. You can do the Airship PQ to try and get your Conqueror chest (for the last Greater ward) and also get a  Silver Ankh. Another way of gathering ankhs is from the LOTD kill quest or by completing the LOTD quest line. If you are fully lesser warded you can do Tombs to obtain them whilst also obtaining some nice pocket items which absorb magic or melee damage. Alternatively, if you join a TOVL group, you can get the 14 or so ankhs you require from a few bosses. If no-one else needs the ankhs have the bags from bosses masterlooted to you. Gaining these accessories is a strong boost to your healing power.

From Darkpromise, the next upgrade is your Warlord gear, keep going to city sieges and try to win stage 2. Save up your medallions by not buying Conqueror/Invader (except chest if you need it for the greater ward). Mixing this with Darkpromise 4:3 will get you 5% heal crit, 150 willpower, and 78 wounds from bonuses. Try and keep the Darkpromise Clogs and the Warlord Runecuffs as they both have nice heal crit. You might wish to stay will a full Darkpromise set as the Warlord set doesn't feature a heal crit bonus and the 6 piece bonus is poor.

From here on it's end game gear you are looking at. Try to get your Glyph set and Tyrant gear from Tomb of the Vulture Lord. Start working on your Sovereign set. Grind scenarios to get your RvR weapon. I did not buy any of the lower weapons, and went straight for the Royal Weapon by buying the trophys as soon as possible. I did not get my weapon untill RR77 and I did mostly scenarios during this time. That said I did a lot of levelling during the 100% renown bonus from the EU merger. Without this I would have gotten the crests just before 76. I would suggest sacrificing the warlord weapon as although it's very nice, its a lot of extra scenarios to grind. If you do get your weapon early you will have something nice to look forward to when you hit RR75.

To sum up your progression should probably go along these lines:

1. Annhilator and Runestaff of the Bloodmoon, with Overlord/Primeval or Sentinel mix.
2. Annhilator and Darkpromise mix with LOTD accessories.
3. Darkpromise and Warlord mix with TOVL Glyphs.
4. DP/Tyrant/Warlord/Sovereign mix (depending on what you can get your hands on). Royal scenario weapon. TOVL Glyphs.

You can see a summary of all the Runepriest sets at WarDB here.

With the changes in 1.3.6 using some Invader/Conqueror gear may be beneficial due to the conversion of int and magic crit. With only a 50% conversion you will have to look individually at any changes you make to your set as they are likely to be only marginal improvements.

Satisfaction

1.3.6 Patchnotes - Runepriest Changes

 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.

Source.

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.

Sovereign Healing Set:

 
Sovereign DPS Set:

Armour Appearance Changing:

UPDATE - Sovereign Changes - Healers 1.3.6

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!

Magic Healer (Rune Priest, Shaman, Archmage, Zealot)

(Primary) Healing Set

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.

NateL.

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!

Howling for Blood - Amazing Rewards!

Gaarawarr always give such nice Weekend Warfront rundowns, this weeks Howling for Blood is no different.

Below you can see the amazing 'Celebratory Horn' you get for completing 20 runs of the scenario and /howling away at your friends and enemies.




Did you catch it? You may want to play it again!

Sovereign Changes - Healers 1.3.6

18/7/10 - Updated with current changes.

Stick up a big post, and another important piece of news will follow soon after, it's always the way!

Without further ado, the proposed set, annotated with the changes from current and tyrant (without glyphs).

(Primary) Healing Set

Wil - 232             (+25, +96)

Tou - 134            (+56, +74)

Wou - 116          (+20, +61)

Ini - 106              (+98, +96)

Spi - 294             (0, +235)

Cor - 289            (0, +68)

Ele - 289             (0, +242)

6% heal crit chance      (+2, +3)

40 heal power                (+17, +40)

4 AP/s                            (+1, +4)

4% reduced chance to be crit    (0, +1)

2% reduced armor penetration  (0, +2)

Hit points/4s - 0                (0, -12)
Magic Power - 0               (0, -27)
Morale per Sec - 0            (-3, 0)
Reduced change to be disrupted 0 (-2, 0)
Int - 0                                           (-157, -80)

3 piece - 85 Wil             (0, +9)

4 piece - 85 Wou           (+85, +9)

5 piece - 5% Heal Crit   (0, 0)

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.

Source.
Image courtsey of Gaarawaar Gabs.

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.

Setting up your UI to heal with click casting

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:

icon-offset-x:n:-19|color-hpbars:b:true|direction-member:s:down|leaderbordercolor:t:156,156,189|hot-color2:t:255,0,0|color-hpnames:b:true|boxheight:n:30|colorgroup-msupp:t:110,255,178|bordersize:n:3|hot-color1:t:0,255,0|groupbordercolor:t:100,100,150|spacing-member:n:6|icon-alpha:n:1|texture-border:s:squared_border_1|boxwidth:n:85|colorgroup-hpdead:t:40,0,0|hd-color1:t:190,0,128|colorgroup-rmdps:t:251,227,60|testmode:b:true|hd-color2:t:0,0,0|text-position-level:s:top|hd-color3:t:255,128,64|texture-background:s:squared_bar_3|hot-color4:t:255,255,255|colorgroup-tank:t:218,218,255|bordercolor:t:0,0,0|hp-low:n:20|meep:n:2|update-freq:n:0.3|rangefading:b:false|icon-position:s:left|fgcolor:t:0,188,0|color-classbars:b:true|colorgroup-rsupp:t:189,255,0|text-position-hp:s:bottom|hot-color3:t:255,255,0|direction-group:s:right|text-align-top:s:bottomleft|status-buff:s:none|spacing-column:n:160|color-hpborders:b:true|texture-offline:s:tint_square|icon-scale:n:0.8|text-align-bottom:s:rightcenter|namelength:n:10|colorgroup-rpdps:t:233,194,0|text-align-center:s:bottom|status-hot:s:topright|columnsize:n:4|spacing-group:n:25|text-font-top:s:font_clear_tiny|texture-foreground:s:squared_bar_6|status-debuff:s:bottomleft|direction-fill:s:right

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:

Mythic EU Servers UP!

Servers are now up officialy!


The Mythic EU servers are up and running, you will need to replace your patcher with the US ones to access them early, see the link below.


http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=329657


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.

GOA -> Mythic Servers Happening Tomorrow! (Tuesday 28 June)

Not Runepriest related but important enough to get the word out there:

Tomorrow (Tuesday) GOA will be sending our server data to Mythic. No more progress on your character will be saved after that although they are allowing you to 'play for free' until July 6th. Aren't they generous?

It looks like Mailbox and Auction data won't transfer so it is recommended that you empty these slots before then.

GOA in their eternal incompetance haven't bothered to email these details out to subscribers yet so expect some unhappy and shocked fans. Especially if they continue to play oblivious...

Why they couldn't have planned for a higher uptime is beyond me, I'm sure someone could drive the servers to the datacentre in Germany and turn them on in less than a day! Bah I know it's more complicated than that but to me it'st taking the cheap, rushed way out.

You can find naff all information on the war-europe.com website here.

You can find far more useful information on the mythic website here.

AEZELBETH ANGRY.

At least we get two weeks free subscription afterwards. 

UI Add-on Developments - Unitframes and Range

Recently I've been noticing some devent improvements in UI add-ons being released for Warhammer. Two of note to the Runepriest are more accurate range finding mods: GroupRange and libRange.

GroupRange is an add-on which will display the distance of your groupmates from you, apparently accurate to +-10 every 100 feet. Whilst this may not at first sound that useful you have to recall the power of Blessing of Valaya. Without requiring LOS you can find a nice hidden corner to heal your group from. Often I have been running through the steamtank to see my group member's icon through the wall. I had no idea how far they were but now I know as soon as I'm in range to start group healing them.

You can see a group list with ranges in Red/Green to the left of my Healthbar. Also if you look to the White Lion in the top right he has a green 75 indicating his range. There are about four different options for displaying the range - these are just two.

libRange is another parallel line of development, creating the same underlying functionality as GroupRange but without a frontend. Fortunatly the mod developer has created features for Squared that allow it to take advantage of the more accurate range finding. It will now fade more accurately when members are out of LOS and out of range. You will need to disable Squared's own LOS/Fade under Misc Options.

Finally, Enemy, this has been around for a while now, has excellent Group Icons, Assists, UnitFrames, KillStats and more. Recently the author has added mouse click functionality to the UnitFrames to allow click casting of abilities like Squared. The effects indicators on Enemy are really good, better than Squared for the most part so it is definitly worth considering switching over.

Finally I've started creating pages leading towards a Runepriest guide on the righthand side. I've started off with a rundown of the Mastery Paths and will add more as time goes on. Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions!

More detail on 1.3.6 DPS changes for the Runepriest

Runepriests & Zealots:
One of our long-time concerns regarding the Runepriest and Zealot careers is that they ultimately become more limited than other Healer-archetype careers. This is because the other healing careers have their Mastery paths sorted by role - people who play those careers make a decision about the role they want to play, then specialize in the corresponding Mastery path and gear up appropriately. Runepriests and Zealot, however, have their Mastery paths sorted by delivery vehicle ("direct", "over time", and "area", essentially) and then have both offensive and defensive abilities together in each Mastery.  Since there's obviously no such thing as "gearing for direct", though, Runepriests and Zealots then have to decide again whether they want to be offensive or defensive and then gear appropriately - the net result being that even within their chosen Mastery, half of their abilities are ineffective.

We want to maintain the general setup of the Runepriest and Zealot Mastery paths, but we also want to address this issue.  In order to do both of these, we will be adding a new ability to the Runepriest, and changing the functionality of Harbinger of Doom for the Zealot.  All Runepriests will now start with an ability named Rune of Breaking, which can be toggled on and off:

• While toggled off, the Runepriest is affected by the Rune of Balance.  This causes all Intelligence, Magic Power, and Magic Crit stats on items to be negated, and instead converted into Willpower, Healing Power, and Healing Crit bonuses.  We're currently planning on these stats converting at a 2:1 ratio - in other words, a total of +100 Intelligence from gear would instead be turned into +50 Willpower while this ability is toggled off.

• While toggled on, the Runepriest is affected by the Rune of Breaking.  This works the same way but in the opposite direction:  Willpower, Healing Power, and Healing Crit stats on gear are negated and instead converted into Intelligence, Magic Power, and Magic Crit, also at a 2:1 ratio.

• Rune of Breaking may be toggled on and then back off at any time; doing so is instant and costs no Action Points.  However, once it is toggled off, there is a 30 second cooldown before it may be toggled back on again.

For Zealots, Harbinger of Doom will be changed to provide this same functionality.  It will become a starting abilities, and can be toggled on or off.  While toggled off, the Zealot is the Harbinger of Change (and has the same offensive gear stats converted into the same healing stats), and while toggled on, the Zealot is the Harbinger of Doom (and likewise, has healing gear stats converted into offensive stats).  Additionally, all of the Zealot's tactics which currently affect Harbinger of Doom will be redesigned to be appropriate for this new system, and the Runepriest will also gain some tactics which affect Rune of Breaking as well. 

Nate Levy
Lead Designer
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

WarhammerOnline Forums.

"The new effect will probably just be called 'Rune of Anger' and give a character glow effect... Hope they at least remember to flip heal crit to magic crit as well!"

Not a huge suprise in functionality of the ability, you can see my original estimate wasn't too far off the mark.

One suprising development is the improvements to our healing that it will bring. Any int, magic crit, magic power will convert into the heal equivalent. We all have some base int, and most sets also add a certain amount of int so it should be a boost to our willpower. It should be a lot easier to hit the willpower cap with the changes and be able to spend points in more survivability, some old items may need to be re-evaluated in light of this change. Conqueror and Invader have magic crit and int set bonuses making them slightly more viable,

I'm not sure that the ratio will stay at 2:1, I think I would prefer magic/heal crit to be a 1:1 ratio as that doesn't develop naturally with our character. Intelligence could then be slightly lower preventing everyone from having capping willpower too easily.

I have a number of concerns with these changes though:

• In healing mode, we will be able to contribute little or no damage due to negating our base int, and vice-versa for DPS mode and healing. I don't think it should negate (all) willpower/int. For example one could convert willpower to intelligence in the ratio of 2:1. Then half effectiveness of willpower in Rune of Breaking mode.
• DOT/HOTs are calculated each tick, so if you DOT/HOT someone and then change stance the damage/healing will drop. This really reduces effectivenesss of stance dancing, something that could be a fun and advanced way to play the class.
• Can't change tactics in combat to meet your DPS/Healing needs.
• Still have broken/worthless tactics. 
• Could trigger the Global Cooldown.
• Still don't have a mechanism to reduce enemy resists to our damage.
• Balance issues if weapon DPS does affect our magic/heal power and comes in on the same patch. Could we really become flavour of the month?! 

One way to overcome 2-3 of these issues is to have tactics with 2 features - a balance and a breaking side. e.g. Blessing of Grungni - Under Rune of Breaking critical hits will reduce resistance to elemental damage by 150. Under Rune of Balance critical heals increase incoming healing by 25%. Another way would to be able to choose a tactic set to go with each Rune.

Interesting anyway and should give us more options. Time will tell...

Discipline versus Ancestor's Echo

Just thought I'd post some quick numerical analysis and thoughts on two talents: Discipline and Ancestor's Echo.

At 30% crit, 13 Grugni/11 Grimnir, Average Heals (including crit):

Ability	1050 Willpower	890 Willpower (-Discipline)	Diff	25% Ancestor's Echo
Rune of Regeneration	2812	2646	-166	+0
Grungni's Gift	707	652	-55	+162
Blessing of Valaya	7734	7071	-663	+972
Rune of Serenity	6333	6002	-331	+0

Benefits to Ancestor's Echo:
Doesn't overheal - more useful when casting Blessing of Valaya for non-damaged party members.
Ignores heal debuffs.
Worthwhile when you reach willpower cap without Discipline.

Disadvantages:
Actual value is less powerful than a raw heal because shields ignore resists and armour. 100 HP lasts a lot longer on a tank than a 100 point shield.
Doesn't affect Rune of Regeneration, Rune of Serenity, Rune of Shielding.
Unaffected by Blessing of Grungni.
Less reliable, but still a good proc rate.
Could spend 1 mastery point elsewhere.

I believe the disadvantages indicated in italics probably don't initially occur to people when thinking about the tactic. Do people think it is more viable than Discipline when you aren't willpower capped? Comments please!

1.3.5 Runepriest Heal Change Analysis

13/6/10 - It seems the spreadsheet wasn't multiplying the base heal value by the group multiplier. This skewed the results for Blessing of Valaya and Rune of Serenity somewhat showing them as less efficient and less powerful than they really are. Fortunatly as the review mostly focuses on GG I only have to correct a few sections annotated in red. BoV values still seem a little low compared to casts on my character but it shouldn't make too much difference to the overall analysis.

Right I've finally got round to updating Stormblazer's Healing Charts to take into account the Runepriest changes in patch 1.3.5. You can see my efforts here. Take note that I have only tested this for my mastery build of 13 Grungni and 11 Grimnir, but should give most people a vague idea. Onto the analysis.

The big change in 1.3.5 was the changes to Grungni's Gift. The base heal amount increased roughly 35%  from 200 - 270HP. The AP cost was massively reduced from 30 to 15.

GG is useful for 3 things: Spam healing on a target to keep them alive, spam healing on yourself when being attacked and healing on the run. Pre 1.3.5 the AP cost to spam heal GG would quickly leave you out of AP, especially if you didn't yet have a high crit pool to regain AP through our tactic Restorative Burst. Post 1.3.5 with the reduction in cost of AP an almost constant spam of GG is possible even with a relatively low heal crit of 25%.

The increase to the base heal makes it more effective in actually outhealing incoming damage. However with any focused damage on a target you will need backup. The benefits of GG is that you can get that first heal in instantly allowing time for group heals or other healers to swop targets.

Here are some statistics (based on my char) of the changes to GG.

Healing per Second (including Crits) increased from 384.4 to 465.4 HP/s. 
Healing per AP increased from 19.2 to 46.5 HP/AP.
Healing per Second per AP increased from 12.8 to 31 HP/s/AP.
Efficiency Scaling (hp/ap/100wp) doubled from 1 to 2 - for each 100 Willpower your HP/AP increases twice as much.

Now to compare this to the other effective single target heal - Rune of Restoration (Rune of Mending doesn't come close):

HPS is 465.4 compared to RoR's 774. A big difference of ~300HPS.
HP/AP is 46.5 compared to  42.4. Grungni's has become more efficient - slightly.
The big change comes in when we compare HPS/AP - GG has 31 compared to RoR's 17.

But lets look at the other benefits:

More likely to proc Blessing of Grungni (+25% healing) due to more casts.
More  likely to proc Restorative Burst (+40AP/3s) due to more casts.
No knockbacks.
Castable on the move.
You get your first two heal (~1300HP)s in the 2.5s before RoR can land. This keeps that character up for the all important group heals or other healers to switch targets.

RoR only useful if you are precasting on someone who is going to take large amounts of damage and you know you aren't going to be hit. It's less efficient now (a lot more so with the tactic proccing regularly). I can hardly think of a reason to use it even in PVE. I don't think I will ever use it again in RvR - and I didn't use it much beforehand.

One of our abilities has stayed quiet up till now - Blessing of Valaya. It has 415HPS not that far below Grungni. Yes it's HP/AP is only 19.2 and it's HPS/AP is a terrible 6.4 but that is only for a single target. These numbers grow huge if your whole group is taking damage, and even if they are not you have a very large chance to proc Restorative Burst (on any of the 6 people you heal) making the HP/AP and HPS/AP much more efficient. You also don't need Line of Sight which has loads of tactical advantages, from hiding behind rocks or standing at a different floor in a keep.

The downsides? Knockback on casting, slightly shorter 100yards range, unable to cast it on other members of the warband, and if casting reactively it might not land in time to save a player due to the 2.5s cast time. The majority of the time this should still be your bread and butter heal - as dull as it is to find a bush and spam cast.

Rune of Serenity

The changes to Rune of Serenity aren't as noticable. The base percentage to healing has roughly doubled from 300 to 600. However the effect of willpower seems to be reduced from 0.4 HPW to 0.3. This is unconfirmed as I admit my testing hasn't been conclusive.

Despite this if landing on 6 players this becomes our most efficient heal (156HP/AP) after Rune of Regeneration (93HP/AP) and Blessing of Valaya (6man -75HP/AP).  Unfortunatly it isn't a very noticable heal because it doesn't always land on those in need. I like to cast it in keep raids and in scenarios as it doesn't cost much and should net some renown leech from other group it bounces to. I try and cast it when another group has taken damage but can't really tell how effective it is. It is now quite an effective heal to use in PvE as you can be sure it is acting on people when the group is taking AOE damage.

City Siege Stage 3 - RP Weapon and Armor

 Longstaff of the Incorruptible
Missing anything obvious? Answers on a postcard...

Overlord's Vestments
Not terribly exciting.

1.3.6. Runepriest DPS Changes?

In patch 1.3.6, we want to make further improvements upon the Zealot and Runepriest careers. We wanted to give options to the healers that train a mastery path for a delivery method rather than a playstyle.

When thinking of changes, we kept coming back to one thing: “HARBINGER OF DOOM” (BIG FOR EFFECT). I can already tell the Zealots are cringing and thinking, “What is that crazy person doing to my Harbinger?” The meat of the change is that Harbinger of Doom becomes an active toggle. You start in “healing mode” by default and by activating the toggle you switch to “damage mode”. This will allow Zealots to pick a Mastery path for the type of abilities that they want, without being forced to then pick again between damage and healing. While the actual effect of the toggle is still being discussed, we are leaning towards flipping magic to healing and vice versa to achieve this goal. Some of you are probably saying, “What about Runepriests? I didn’t hear him say anything about Runepriest!” The plan is to mirror this ability on the Runepriest career as well."

Source: May 2010 Producers Letter

Hmmm, the jury is out, any increase to our DPS has to be a good thing but the fix lacks originality. The Runepriest is in need of a decent mechanic either new or building upon master runes or oath runes. Our mastery lines could also use a bit of life. The new effect will probably just be called 'Rune of Anger' and give a character glow effect... Hope they at least remember to flip heal crit to magic crit as well!

Instacast Master Runes.

 1.3.6 Update - Master runes are losing their 2s cast times and actually becoming really insta-cast. No reason to stop using the keybind though as it still reduces mouseclicking. Should be able to have even higher uptime on your master runes now.

Just a quick tip of the day, as I don't see Runepriests taking advantage of their Master Runes very often:

Bind your Master Rune to the keyboard!

 

  I found these spells to be extremely irritating when I started my RP: having to recast every 30s; TARGET IS OUT OF RANGE; and the amount of mousemovement required. Now that it is bound to X I can double tap the button to cast it and I aim it with my second hand. This is a lot more time efficient than moving your cursor to the bar, clicking, moving it to where you want, and clicking again. When you get a dreaded out of range you will be glad you don't have to repeat that process again.

Combat Log Timestamp is Client Based

Aha! This explains those dodgy looking combat logs I've seen where I've been hit 6x by the same player and died. Maybe everyone isn't exploiting the GCD afterall:

 The bug is with our timestamps and how they are reporting to your client and not the abilities actually ignoring the GCD.  The issue at hand is that with client side lag (e.g. high graphic situations like in RvR, memory hitches, etc.) and the client talking to the server.  Because the timestamps are set on the client they can only report what they hear.  So sometimes, when you hit even a small amount of lag, the client does not update with the server right away and on the next update every packet is sent your way at once.  Simplest way to repro is to start fighting and pull the network cable out of the PC for a second and then pop it right back in.  If you have timestamps turned on you will see all the damage that was done during that period of time you were unplugged being reported at the exact same second.  The abilities are not ignoring the GCD, they are just being reported wrong in the combat log.

BryantC - WarhammerOnline Forums 06/04/09

Silly idea though, much better for the server to send timestamps in the packets... Would save the CSRs some work and people would be able to better analyse their effectiveness when parsing through the log.

1.3.5 Weapon DPS Changes will not be going live.

Bummer:

Thank you all for your feedback, comments, and for being a part of the development process.  We've been gathering your thoughts, as well as continuing our discussions internally.  As a result, we've decided that this change will not go Live in 1.3.5.  Before we move on this feature, we will need to examine the system further, and address the concerns which you have brought up.

________
Nate Levy
Production Lead
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=dev_discussions&view=by_date_ascending&message.id=7210#M7210

Curable Debuffs for the Runepriest

I've been working on a list of curable debuffs for Rune of Cleansing. The purpose of this is to customize my UI so it displays when someone has a heal debuff on them, it's also lead to the discovery of some quite nasty debuffs that I'm going to have to look out for in future!

You can find the list on WarhammerAlliance on the thread Destruction Curable Debuff List. This is to take advantage of the links to WarDB when listing abilities.

To show alerts for certain effects I have been using Aura which features an import/export feature to configure it. Below is my aura to show when your target has a healing debuff that you can cure. An important distinction is that they may have a debuff you cannot cure and then it will not display. You will need to adjust the layout of the icon and size for your UI, mine currently brings up a massive red skull beneath my Squared bars.

{{'activation-alerttext':"Heal Debuff",'texture-alpha':0.50999999046326,'general-version':20507,'texture-tintg':0,'general-enabled':t,'texture-id':22718,'timer-scale':1.5,'effect-exactmatch':t,'timer-enabled':t,'effect-name':"Rotten Arrer/No More Helpin/Tainted Claw/Gork\'s Barbs\'/Black Lotus Blade/Curse of Khaine",'timer-offsetx':-170,'effect-self':f,'texture-offsety':0,'activation-alerttexttype':14,'effect-friendly':t,'general-name':"HealDebuffs - Friendly Target",'texture-scale':2.5,'activation-animation':7,'texture-offsetx':-250,'effect-stackoperator':3,'texture-circledimage':t,'texture-tintb':0}}P1

War Mechanics and the Runepriest

 I struggled to find a good breakdown of the mechanics in Warhammer here is what I have found so far relating to the Runepriest.

Action Points:
Characters regenerate 25 AP per second in game when not in global cooldown from using an ability.  Items that give +AP regeneration increase this value. So +5 AP regen is a 20% boost to action point regeneration.

You do not regenerate AP when casting a spell even if you are outside of your GCD. The GCD as far as I can tell is 1.5s, possibly a little less.

To make the most of AP regen you have to pause casting, or instead of spam casting, wait a second between casts to allow for an AP tick.

Morale:
Builds in combat.
Lowers outside of combat.
Using any morale ability will eat your whole morale bar even if it is just the first tier morale ability and you have all abilities available.

Player Attributes:
The cap for players at level 40 is currently 1,050. Source.
After this it takes 2 points to effectively increase that stat by 1 point.

Willpower
Willpower / 5 = Increases Healing Per Second.
Willpower / [(Level * 7.5 + 50) * 13.5] = +% Disrupt spells

Healpower
Healpower / 5 = Increases Healing Per Second
This stacks over the soft willpower cap at 1050 for no penalty. You are also likely to get more healpower than willpower because it is a cheaper stat due to not contributing to +%Disrupt. 

Intelligence
Intelligence / 5 = Increases ability damage DPS
Reduces chance for spells to be disrupted. Unable to find a formula.
*Doesn't seem to increase chance to crit as described.*

Toughness
Toughness / 5 = Reduces damage by X DPS

Wounds
 Wounds * 10 = Extra Health over default increase per level.
Wounds renown talents cost twice as much as other points so avoid buying those. However wounds is one of the strongest survivability attributes for RvR and you may wish to stack lots of it, including talismans.

Initiative
[(Level * 7.5 + 50) / 10] / Initiative = base % to be critically hit.
Initiative / [(Level * 7.5 + 50) * 13.5] = +% to evade.

Weapon Skill
Weapon skill / [(Level * 7.5 + 50) * 13.5] = +% to parry.

Armor
75% * (Armor / (Level * 110))

The cap at Rank 40 is 4400 - the character sheet tooltip shows 100% physical damage reduced, meaning the maximum 75% physical damage mitigation from armor. Armor works after Toughness mitigation.

Magical Resistances
Resistance Value / (level * 42) = % Resistance
Soft cap at 40% or 672 (Lvl40). After this it looks like it drops in effectiveness by a third. Source.
Hard cap at 75% but if you go over this value resistance debuffs will affect you less or not at all. Not confirmed.

Parry
Chance to parry melee attacks

Dodge
 Chance to dodge ranged attacks

Disrupt
Chance to disrupt magical attacks

Crit
Healing Crits - Base healing crit is thought to be 10%. Crit heals land for 150% of the base.

Damage Crits
There is no base chance to crit, but there is a base chance to be crit. This is determined by your initiative (see above). Your +crit% items are then added to that players chance to be crit to work out the final value.

See this thread on WarhammerAlliance.com for details.

Absorb Shields
Shields like Rune of Shielding and Ancestor's Echo absorb their stated amount of damage. They work after toughness is deducted from the damage but before armour/resists are calculated.