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.
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:
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
"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...
I've been playing MMOs since Dark Age of Camelot, back on Prydwen. Initially starting out as an infiltrator I moved on to a cleric.
When World of Warhammer arrived, I signed up to the US servers and levelled up the first 60 priest on the server. With the EU release I moved over creating a warrior, but then fell back to being a priest. I've had 3 different max level priests in WoW over the years as I stopped playing for one reason or another and started over.
I've had server firsts in Naxxaramus and in the Burning Crusade sunwell, and have always enjoyed a healing role in PVE and PVP. I like to feel I play to the top of my game and have enjoyed all the theorycrafting websites available for WoW.
I recently moved to Warhammer Online to try something new, Runepriest seemed to be the most like my playstyle and I'm enjoying levelling up so far. Unfortunatly there just isn't the information out there to support play to the level I want. I've struggled to find the details I need to configure my UI and to prioritise my healing efficiently so I hope this blog will result in a guide/faq to other Runepriests out there.
