Continuing the overview – Warrior Priest / Disciple of Khaine
And the caveats from the previous posts still apply.
The WPDK is, like the AMSH, another opportunity for controversy. Just like that pairing, this pair has a dual opportunity because of it’s hybrid capability, and if it chooses to emphasize the DPS, the player should be prepared to /ignore liberally. Again like the AMSH, this isn’t helped by the fact that for at least the first ten levels they’re pretty much as good at DPS as pure DPS. Keeping that in mind, let’s dig into this pairing.
The WPDK has a rather different sort of mechanism. It’s described as being a melee healer. What this means is that the heals are short-ranged – even the longest is half of what the other two classes can manage. And while it has a mechanism for generating what it needs to heal from a distance, it’s mainly designed to generate magic energy (no, not mana, I’ll get there) from melee attacks. ummm, not the autostrike, but the special button attacks. I hit my target, and somebody gets healed on the damage I did. The more damage I do, the better the heal.
As it happens, the choice of armor (think mail) and the localized healing gives this class the opportunity to be another DPS class – a fairly heavy melee DPS that can tie up large numbers of non-tanks for quite a while. This is the cockroach of the game. Dedicated DPS can – especially after the first few levels – outdo this pairing. But they do enough they cannot be ignored. An equally useful role is the DPS linebacker – the player who intercepts enemy DPS players who’ve slipped past the tanks, catching them before they eat your clothies in the rear. Tie them up till your heavy casters see them and turn them to ash. Unfortunately, there’ll always be that demand for “heal me…”
The three trees, much as those of the AMSH, lend to this dichotomy of role. There’s a slight twist here, however. Both WP and DK have a HEAL tree, where the extra talents improve the ability to heal others. The WP gets to choose as alternates a MELEE and SHIELD (self and friendly), or a MELEE and DEBUFF tree. For the DK, the second tree is more powerful MELEE with pretty much no SHIELD.
One peculiarity I need to mention here. The races from which the WPDK come have no tank career at this time. Since it’s uncommon for the other races’ tanks to come to their starting zone, at least at lower levels, this forces the WPDK to act as a tank. This is especially true as both the DPS classes – the melee and the ranged – have lighter armor than the WPDK. This further encourages the WPDK to think in terms of melee more than healing – even though they’re the only healer for the empire as well. When the (allegedly free) expansion comes out that adds the empire and dark elf tanks, I expect a change to this mentality.
Races here are Human (Empire) and Dark Elf.
Personally, if I choose a healer as my main, this will be the most likely choice. The difference is refreshing. The ability to effectively fulfill multiple roles is intriguing. All to me, of course. Unto each their own – or we’d all play one class of one race, and wouldn’t that be boring.
Have fun.
Priestly Endeavors - a gaming blog 
I hit my target, and somebody gets healed on the damage I did. The more damage I do, the better the heal.
This is not quite correct. A WP’s special attacks generate a resource called Righteous Fury (fixed amount per attack). You then spend Righteous Fury on your healing spells. WAR allows you to have an offensive target and a defensive target at the same time.
There’s no direct link between the damage you do and the healing you put out. Indeed, so far the game seems to be set up that if you want to be a good healer you gear for healing, and use a special attack that does little damage and some healing while generating RF, instead of using a high-damage attack.
However, you still need to attack in order to heal, even if you aren’t hitting for very much. It’s pretty fun, and I’m still working out how to best play it.
Yeah, I meant to mention the RF (that offhand note of ‘mana’ in there), thanks for that. But as for the damage:healing relationship I’ll point out the “Holy Duo” – Divine Strike and Divine Assault (consume essense and Rend Soul for the other side), both of which heal a percentage of the damage you did. Yes, it’s not ‘all’ spells, and in fact it’s not the majority. But it’s common enough, especially in the Grace tree of the Warrior Priest, that it works as a general mechanism for the outsider looking in to understand the career pair.
Yeah, but that does half the damage of Bludgeon, which is the other 30 RF generator. But I don’t know. I haven’t gotten very far with it, I just got Divine Assault.
Tried it out a bit more, and you are correct. I was undervaluing Divine Assault in particular. It’s very strong. It’s sort of interesting that they give it to you so late. Usually you get bread and butter spells early in your career.
” I hit my target, and somebody gets healed on the damage I did. The more damage I do, the better the heal.
This is not quite correct. A WP’s special attacks generate a resource called Righteous Fury (fixed amount per attack). You then spend Righteous Fury on your healing spells. WAR allows you to have an offensive target and a defensive target at the same time.
There’s no direct link between the damage you do and the healing you put out. Indeed, so far the game seems to be set up that if you want to be a good healer you gear for healing, and use a special attack that does little damage and some healing while generating RF, instead of using a high-damage attack.
However, you still need to attack in order to heal, even if you aren’t hitting for very much. It’s pretty fun, and I’m still working out how to best play it.”
no. there actually is a move that heals based on damage done, one of their best heals (its called Rend Soul for DoK)