Saturday, February 02, 2008

Warrior Priest Masteries

Thanks to Kaziel for bringing this to my attention. I'm surprised anyone was still checking the website after 2 months, lol. From Garthilk, an administrator over at Warhammer Alliance, some news about the Warrior Priest masteries (think talent tree specializations from WoW):

Warrior Priest of Sigmar Career Masteries

The Warrior Priests worship Sigmar, the now-deified warrior who united the tribes of man and formed the Empire long ago. In honor of their legendary patron, the Warrior Priests seek to follow in Sigmar's warrior path by purifying the Empire with equal measures of prayer and might. They march into battle shouting holy scriptures even as they bring their blessed warhammers to bear in the name of their god. By proving their devotion and righteousness through valor in combat, they are rewarded with divine powers, which manifest in the form of potent healing abilities. Their presence on the front lines of battle serves as a constant inspiration to the soldiers who march in defense of the Empire.

Warrior Priest Mechanic

Sigmar is a warrior god, and his priests gain divine favor only by fighting to defend the Empire that he built. The holy symbol of Sigmar is a hammer, and the Warrior Priests have adopted the warhammer as their weapon of choice in honor of their patron. The Righteous Fury of Sigmar fills the Warrior Priest with each swing of their weapon, and this divine power can then be used to fuel their healing magic. This becomes something of both a freedom and a restriction for the Warrior Priest - since all of his magic is powered by Righteous Fury, he can throw himself wholeheartedly into melee combat and then still have resources left to heal with, but at the same time, his healing capabilities become dramatically more limited when there are no enemies in arm's reach.

Warrior Priest Masteries

Path of Salvation

The Path of Salvation focuses on divine magic, primarily healing abilities. A player who specializes in Salvation will become a much more powerful healer, although they will still need to place themselves into the front lines of a melee combat in order to build up their Righteous Fury.

Path of Grace
The Path of Grace is centered around melee attacks which inspire and bolster the Warrior Priest and his allies. A Master of Grace will be able to simultaneously wreak havoc upon his enemies with his warhammer and improve himself and his companions, making him an especially valuable player when standing side-by-side with other allies.

Path of Wrath
The Path of Wrath is focused on crippling melee attacks which weaken, hinder, and harass the player's opponents. Someone who specializes in Wrath will certainly be the most offensively-focused type of Warrior Priest, as they will be both damaging their enemies and weakening them with each swing of their warhammer.

3 Comments:

Blogger Vaelin said...

Expect to see "Wrathnoob" among the earliest perjoratives in the WAR playerbase lexicon.

I know I'll be one : P

9:09 AM  
Blogger Kaziel said...

It's part of my weekly Blog rotation. Certain ones are daily (such as Tobold's or Blessing of Kings), while others that are less frequent updates (such as yours) I check usually on Monday. I specifically posted that because I checked your blog to see if you had posted on it.

Now to reply to your post: The key question is how much each tree with specialize a person. Will it be similar to WoW post-tBC where if you aren't specialized in a given tree you can basically discount being able to effectively fill that role? Or will it be more in-line with early raiding pre-expansion, in which as long as you were the right class you could generally fill the role, with others who have points in the appropriate tree just doing a little better than you.

Also there are two other things to consider. First, in the videos I've seen have it's been said that there will only be enough points to go fully up one tree. You can choose to spread out your points or go fully into one spec, but there will be nothing like how it is in WoW, with one tree fully filled and another partially filled. You either decide to go hybrid, full, or go home.

The other thing to consider is potential synergies between "undesirable" roles and "fun" trees. In this case I'm going with your view of smashing is fun and straight healing is undesirable (and leave out all the "one man's trash is another man's treasure" arguments I so often get myself into when talking to you). Let's say that one of the effects of going deeper into the Wrath Tree is faster Righteous Fury generation. Now, I'm making the base assumption that, much like Goblin Shaman, the more special energy type you build up from combat the more powerful and faster casting your spells become. Since a Wrath Path Warrior Priest can generate Righteous Fury faster than a Salvation or Grace Path WP, despite not being as good at the heals, they can build up the RF more quickly, toss out a quick heal and then get back to the important stuff: Bashing faces in. Now, the difference in time to reach max RF between someone who's Wrath and who's not Wrath can't be huge. Something small like 7 seconds and 10 seconds, plus the ease with which they build up RF allows them to more willingly use it for non-healing since they can quickly refill their meter again.

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My personal feeling is that even a putting all your points (estimated to be 31 at max level, based upon this video) into the Salvation Path will still lead to the WP meleeing. No matter how you swing it, the WP needs RF to effectively heal. The only way to build up RF will be to melee. Therefore I Warrior Priest will have to be both parts of his name to heal: A priest to heal and a warrior to get the power to heal. Unless they remove the Righteous Fury mechanic entirely, Warrior Priests are what we hope they should be.

3:16 PM  
Blogger Kaziel said...

I totally forgot to link this video... here: http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/media/flash/careermastery_BR1000.html

9:33 AM  

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