U25 - Class Update - Rune-keeper

[Chris91]

- Hots are still looking very low, I'd like to see them buffed more, and even nerf some of the initial heals. healing RK is all about Hps and defensive utility.

No I disagree with that, the initial heals are important because without the initial heals being higher than the HoTs it isn't worth reapplying a heal that already ticks

Overall single target healing is totally fine. I also don't experience having everything on CD, there's always something to press

[Ethrildar]

Finally getting somewhere which is great to see. The changes to the laggier skills is wonderful, it's not perfect but after 5 years I will take it however it comes.

Rousing Words seems hilarious now, on my RK with poor gear (not 130) it has the healing potential of over a million morale to the group in a single use. Kinda comical but beats being effectively useless!

Radius on EftA AOE/splash components need to be changed from 5m to 30m. Nobody is ever within 5m of the tank.

Mending Verse CD needs to go back to 1 second, the rotation is filth right now because of this change. I don't really understand the logic either.

Got a single target parse on myself @ 67,000 HPS for 2 minutes. Not sure where that fits in nowadays with main healers as I've been on a hiatus, but seems pretty potent to me!! With a group to heal I'd love to see what the numbers come out to now.

[Vastin]

- you removed the -10% incoming damage buff from the morale bubbles

I did? Huh. That's an odd bug. Didn't touch that as far as I know, but I'll certainly go take a look at it.

-Vastin

[Gertes]

I'm still wondering why there hasn't been any substantial changes to red line? Our DPS is still EXTREMELY weak in comparison to all other classes in a Tier 3 Raid Setting, and even in 3/6mans, without a LM it's not great.

I hope we are not talking about the same game.

Rks Dps is on the level of Warden/Champ, only Hunters, and Burgs clearly out DPs him. So you still deal more damage than Minis, Captains, Guardians, Beorningers and Loremasters...
Champs dps can be higher, but just with a good raid/group setup. Rk's just need Loremasters to be effective, champs/wardens and Burglars need much more support to reach their maximum damage potential.

[Hephburz-2]

I hope we are not talking about the same game.

Rks Dps is on the level of Warden/Champ, only Hunters, and Burgs clearly out DPs him. So you still deal more damage than Minis, Captains, Guardians, Beorningers and Loremasters...
Champs dps can be higher, but just with a good raid/group setup. Rk's just need Loremasters to be effective, champs/wardens and Burglars need much more support to reach their maximum damage potential.

RK's have the lowest ST dps of all classes. In Tier 3 Anvil on Boss 3, every class is parsing higher with the ideal raid set up, which includes one of every class as a minimum, and then 2 cappies, and 2 burglars. RK is parsing lowest of all on ST, and lowest of all on AoE.

So IDK what game you're playing.

And you're really gonna sit there and say RK does more damage than "Minis, Captains, Guardians, Beornings and Loremasters", are you kidding me? xD

[jomanjy]

@vastin, if you are planning to buff RK heals more you might consider reducing the magnitude on the single target bubble though, 40% of max morale bubble on a 21s cd seems a bit too strong

EDIT: or at least make it like 10-20% of max morale in other lines and only 40% in blueline and increase the CD to 30s

[Ranmazu]

I hope we are not talking about the same game.

Rks Dps is on the level of Warden/Champ, only Hunters, and Burgs clearly out DPs him. So you still deal more damage than Minis, Captains, Guardians, Beorningers and Loremasters...
Champs dps can be higher, but just with a good raid/group setup. Rk's just need Loremasters to be effective, champs/wardens and Burglars need much more support to reach their maximum damage potential.

I don't know if you are playing the same game. It's true the gap between good Wardens/Champs and bad ones is way bigger.
But well played Wardens and Champs definitely deal more single target DPS than RKs.
RK is the easiest DPS class, but also the one with the lowest skill gap and lowest single target DPS (if you only consider the real DPS classes)

[ChrisJaij]

Pls remove the cooldown from mending verse! It was always the main healing skill and it is def a buff the runekeeper needs... Beo and mini would prob still be stronger than the runekeeper (heal)!
I also dont really understand why your only buffing the instant heals.. i thought the runekeeper was a hot class... atm most hots are healing nearly nothing...

The runekeeper has no special buffs or debuffs and less heal than beo and mini
Beo has way more aoe heal and even more single target heal + strong debuffs
Mini has also way more aoe and single target heal + strong anthems

Atleast more single target heal and maybe some stronger shields would be nice.

But atleast thx for removing the skill delays! The rotation feels alot better than before... only the long cooldown from mending verse feels wrong...

If you ask me for a way to fix the single target heal i would remove the cooldown from mending verse and buff the healing over time from it.

[Chris91]

Pls remove the cooldown from mending verse! It was always the main healing skill and it is def a buff the runekeeper needs... Beo and mini would prob still be stronger than the runekeeper (heal)!
I also dont really understand why your only buffing the instant heals.. i thought the runekeeper was a hot class... atm most hots are healing nearly nothing...

The runekeeper has no special buffs or debuffs and less heal than beo and mini
Beo has way more aoe heal and even more single target heal + strong debuffs
Mini has also way more aoe and single target heal + strong anthems

Atleast more single target heal and maybe some stronger shields would be nice.

But atleast thx for removing the skill delays! The rotation feels alot better than before... only the long cooldown from mending verse feels wrong...

If you ask me for a way to fix the single target heal i would remove the cooldown from mending verse and buff the healing over time from it.

Test it, single target healing is mighty fine. I would not buff it further

[ChrisJaij]

Test it, single target healing is mighty fine. I would not buff it further

I did... its okay! But if runekeeper want to compete with beo and mini your not fine with the same or little bit stronger single target heal, less aoe heal and no strong debuffs.

Nobody would switch a beo or a mini with a runekeeper if he doesnt get a little bit more...
Its still way stronger to bring a mini and a beo in a 12man raid... still no real spot for runekeeper on heal

[Gertes]

I don't know if you are playing the same game. It's true the gap between good Wardens/Champs and bad ones is way bigger.
But well played Wardens and Champs definitely deal more single target DPS than RKs.
RK is the easiest DPS class, but also the one with the lowest skill gap and lowest single target DPS (if you only consider the real DPS classes)

But this is just the case with a good group setup. If a champ has a Beo and a Warden he will out dps the Rk. But his is not always the case, that's why I think it's insanely important to update the whole debuff situation, that we currently have. Just if we have a proper and fair distribution of debuffs, we can argue about damage(potentials) on an fair base.

Also, something that is often overlooked is the utility potential Rk's offer.
They are Ranged
They have a rezz
They debuff both armor and fire mit (and buff 3% inc. critical chance)

I think the combination of Utility, easy to play and no need for a perfect Group/Raid Setup, makes Rk's overall so popular.

[Ranmazu]

But this is just the case with a good group setup. If a champ has a Beo and a Warden he will out dps the Rk. But his is not always the case, that's why I think it's insanely important to update the whole debuff situation, that we currently have. Just if we have a proper and fair distribution of debuffs, we can argue about damage(potentials) on an fair base.

You don't even need a Warden to deal more damage.

Also, something that is often overlooked is the utility potential Rk's offer.
They are Ranged
They have a rezz
They debuff both armor and fire mit (and buff 3% inc. critical chance)

I think the combination of Utility, easy to play and no need for a perfect Group/Raid Setup, makes Rk's overall so popular.

I agree with the range and rezz advantage even though I don't know why RKs still have the ability to have two DNFs at the same time.
If you ask me remove it entirely from the dmg specs but increase the skillgap.

[Olebenny]

So I did some healing on my fully lvl 120 rk as that is how all of you should be testing it. Leveling up yourself or LI's gives you nothing to compare it to so these "awesome 70k parses" could easilly mean absolute dog doo doo at lvl 130. I had no pre-existing HoTs or Attunement when I started and did multiple of 2 different rotations, copying you guys my best parse for each. 1 without bubbles and 1 with bubbles, also worth noting that my parse did drop a little over 1k each time as I waited to drop combat

Without Bubbles


With Bubbles


So this is alot closer to how a RK should be but I believe there is still work to be done. The easiest changes are the ones that dont have a huge impact on heals but should still be done imo
-Heal stone is abyssmal, though it did get about a 100% buff, I think it still needs another 100% buff and made raid wide. There arent many raid wide heals in the game, that mainly just belongs to the Beorning, and I think a, even with more buffs, low ticking steady pulse would be a nice addition to healing in general
-I would still like to see the -incoming damage and +incoming healing buffs to be removed from being tied to the existence of a bubble. Should the bubble get burned through, having the buffs still there would be nice, currently if the bubble gets burned through before expiration, the buffs go away with it
-Epic did get buffed back a little but still not performing well. The splash needs to be increased from 5m to atleast 20m and the splash heal needs a boost and/or a guaranteed way to crit the skill. Epic for the Ages consuming attunement and being a guaranteed crit at max attunement I think would be an excellent addition. The single target is much higher than it is on live but the HoT is essentially the same (like 2% increase from live) and the splash is still significantly nerfed. Live = 4993-7132 ||| BR = 3934-4810
-Doubling the duration of Frost Armour would be nice, a mini can keep -4% incoming damage up on the whole fellowship and asking for the RK to be able to do 10% on 2 targets is not absurd at all imo. Without the proc chance you cant even keep it up 100% of the time on 1 target. 10s CD on Rune Sign (which is what guarantees an application of frost armour) with only an 8s duration. Double that to 16s atleast or better yet, 20s so we can have it up on both our tanks in raids, caters to the RK single target healer role while not surpassing the mini
-Fates Entwined needs looking at! Please do not leave that skill as it is. Increase the damage reduction range back to 20m, that range nerf was not warranted at all. And then give it a new secondary effect. The +mastery is not really effective at all especially when your rk will most likely be in the tank group. Change that out for like.. +20k incoming healing on affected units. (lvl 120 value, scale it up of course) or just a raw % increase of ICH

Okay now for the parses themself.
-Mending, great spot, dont touch it
-Prelude, great spot, dont touch it
-Wit, also in a great spot especially when you consider how much AOE healing it will do via rousing words
-Bombastic, I think is also in a great spot with the better animation now, can actually hit and use its expiration heal without dreading the idea of re-building to T3
-Rune sign I think could use a hefty HoT benefit, the cast point is fine but the HoT is kinda lame and despite hitting it quite a bit, you can see how little healing it did
-Epic for the Ages could maybe use a slight single target buff but otherwise it really just needs it splash and critability looked at. Its so demoralizing going through that god awfully long induction just to not crit and even if it did crit, only does a meer 5m tiny splash heal
-Rune stone, buff buff buff, and raid wide possibly?

Really not far off. My mini can hit 45k heals in a similar situation as my rk hit 46-47k in the screenshot but I think, comparatively, the rk should be edging over 50k single target heals without the use of bubbles. Its just how the class has always worked, amazing single target heals. And then it needs some utility buffing with Fates and Frost Armour. A mini can keep up the -4% ICD and 3% mits 100% of the time no sweat while doing GREAT aoe heals. RK just has -10% through frost armour when focusing healing the tank for the proc chance and then stuff you dont just have up 100% of the time like bubbles and fates. Gotta save those for times they are needed, so minor buffs to both of those via what I outlined above would be cool

KEEP IN MIND self esteem is doing 5-6% of my heals so you can straight up subtract that when you consider healing another target as the self esteem heals are purely on yourself. So yes the rk still needs a little work.

And red RK does NOT need a dps increase. It doesnt need to do the best single target damage, it still will be brought into a raid for its utility on single target fights via fire mit and armour reduction and then in AOE fights it will shine through as strong dps. Only red line ''buffs'' I would want is Searing Words from multiple RK's stacking and Fire Stone doing something like -crit defence so it is actually used. Right now it is only used on landscape to pull aggro of mobs and doesnt see the light of day as an actual dps skill in group content

Last thing cause this is BIG. RK needs to get its +%OGH bug fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It still does not benefit from any source of +%OGH while in blue line because of this trait. No cappy buffs affect us, no food affects us, no set bonus gear affects us. Please fix this, its the single most crucial bug to the RK right now.


When I did AOE heal parsing with the earlier RK changes it seemed in a good spot and with Rousing being buffed more, even with the CD increase, I think our AOE will be in a perfectly fine spot especially if heal stone gets another look at. I havent tested with the newest build but I think its a safe educated assumption.

Overall, very pleased, but still a little ways to go. Evne if it has to be pushed back to 25.1 that is totally fine, lets just make sure we get it right please. Oh and thankyou SOO much for the animation fixes, I can once again actually enjoy hitting Bombastic!

Edit : Can we please get Scribe a new Ending to be usable on the run? Im alright with the long animation it has if gets chagned to be usable on the run, huge QoL thing for all 3 lines.

[Mokri]

-Mending, great spot, dont touch it

?????????????????

3 secs cooldown are way to long and not needed! For what?
Runekeeper need buffs and not nerfs to compete with beos and minis...
Big single target heal was the way runekeeper could compete with minis in the past, but 45k is nothing...
If your dont give him the old our fates entwined skill back give him atleast a strong single target heal that is a little bit stronger than the ones from beo and mini.
Minis are healing around 40k+ single target and beos even 50k+ and they heal way more in aoe! The beo debuffs are op and the anthems are also stronger than the buffs from the runekeeper...

But the most important reason for me, why the cooldown should be reduce is, that the rotation feels really stupid/bad this way! Its a little stongly needed buff to reduce the cooldown. It would also bring a way more fun rotation that would greatly increase the gameplay experience!
There is nothing more fun that spamming mending verse! Pls give it back!

[Olebenny]

?????????????????

3 secs cooldown are way to long and not needed! For what?
Runekeeper need buffs and not nerfs to compete with beos and minis...
Big single target heal was the way runekeeper could compete with minis in the past, but 45k is nothing...
If your dont give him the old our fates entwined skill back give him atleast a strong single target heal that is a little bit stronger than the ones from beo and mini.
Minis are healing around 40k+ single target and beos even 50k+ and they heal way more in aoe! The beo debuffs are op and the anthems are also stronger than the buffs from the runekeeper...

But the most important reason for me, why the cooldown should be reduce is, that the rotation feels really stupid/bad this way! Its a little stongly needed buff to reduce the cooldown. It would also bring a way more fun rotation that would greatly increase the gameplay experience!
There is nothing more fun that spamming mending verse! Pls give it back!

Gonna be honest, I enjoy the CD increase. Only thing is maybe I would want a .5s reduction, there were a couple times I wanted to hit it with most other skills on CD and it was just barely still on CD. But I dont think any more is needed, the rotation feels alot more fun and engaging

I liken it to the mini bolster cd change, meant hitting other skills now instead of one stupidly OP one on no CD. The class became alot more enjoyable to me, and besides there can easily be buffs elsewhere for the RK, the number dont lie, its close.

But I totally understand why this is a controversial point and why people probably hate me for thinking that :shrug: just my 2c

[Bitza]

-Heal stone ... still needs another 100% buff and made raid wide...
-I would still like to see the -incoming damage and +incoming healing buffs to be removed from being tied to the existence of a bubble....
-Epic ... splash needs to be increased from 5m to atleast 20m and the splash heal needs a boost and/or a guaranteed way to crit the skill.
-Doubling the duration of Frost Armour would be nice, ... 10s CD on Rune Sign (which is what guarantees an application of frost armour) with only an 8s duration. Double that to 16s atleast or better yet, 20s so we can have it up on both our tanks in raids, caters to the RK single target healer role while not surpassing the mini
-Fates Entwined ... Increase the damage reduction range back to 20m, that range nerf was not warranted at all. And then give it a new secondary effect. The +mastery is not really effective at all especially when your rk will most likely be in the tank group. Change that out for like.. +20k incoming healing on affected units. (lvl 120 value, scale it up of course) or just a raw % increase of ICH
Edit : Can we please get Scribe a new Ending to be usable on the run? Im alright with the long animation it has if gets chagned to be usable on the run, huge QoL thing for all 3 lines.

(I used .... to indicate places I cut some of his comments to make a more manageable/focused size quote)

Gonna be honest, I enjoy the CD increase.

I liken it to the mini bolster cd change, meant hitting other skills now instead of one stupidly OP one on no CD. The class became alot more enjoyable to me, and besides there can easily be buffs elsewhere for the RK, the number dont lie, its close.

I don't always agree with Olebenny, but in this case I'm pretty much in 100% agreement. I love the improvements, and for how I play, who I play with, and what I run I can probably pound out enough HPS to manage; but the further small changes -- PARTICULARLY RAID-WIDE STONES and Scribe being on the move -- would definitely be beneficial, particularly for the more hard-core raiders than I am.

As for the mending verse CD, I actually really like the increase as well. I found the rotation to be smooth, fluid, and fun. I never lacked for a skill to use, at least not for more than a split second.

[Kander]

I still have to do some more testing as I arrived home late and couldn't test for more than 5 minutes but general feedback:

Skill animations are better now, which actually makes the cd increase of mending verse something we could even get used to, given skills we never used before (bombastic, rune-sign) usable again, but will need to do more testing before giving a definitive answer to MV cd increase.

Rousing words is good spot now for an aoe skill, heals decently and allow you to keep writ t3 on group.
EftA splash radius should be increased to something like 20m or 30m even, also buffed in magnitude, or made guaranteed even on non crits while keeping same magnitude.
Rune of Restoration still too low, maybe add a support part to it and make it raid wide but keep magnitude? (something like 10% more outgoing damage to the group or 10% less inc damage).
Somewhat the healing part to me is almost finished, just take a look at EftA splash heal, rune of restoration and maybe Mending verse cd (still not sure), but the support part still needs to get looked at: Need some group wide deffensive buff that we can use in emergency situations, maybe a 50% less inc damage and 40% more inc healing on 1 target for 15-30s with 1min or 2 min cd? (like the old ST emergency skill we had for tank before trait trees). And certainly given how the game is handled in designing... need a conventional in combat rezz, something reliable we can use if we're in a 6 man group or a raid and you as a healer are expected to be able to.
Also fates entwined stone could be keep as it is right now if you give another emergency skill for tank as i mentioned before but increase radius back to 20m so it's actually useful for your group, cooldown could be lowered too since its magnitude is not that big anymore.

EDIT: I've tested more in all lines so I'll give a more deep feedback:
Heal:
Rune of restoration certainly too bad.
MV is actually good right now, and as I tested with the increased initial pulse of Bombastic, rune sign and prelude you actually can find a busy rotation even for just single target heal with 3s cd.
EftA splash is ridiculously low, should be massively buffed apart from increasing radius.
HPS I can't compare with other classes, it was a completely unbuffed with a just transfered char from live without using any LI xp for new tiers, so it's exactly same gear as live, it was 45k hps sustained ST.
Bubbles not scaling from 20% to 40% by attunement, must be some kind of multiplier there that was ignored during the change cause numbers change but certainly not from 20 to 40%.
Rune sign initial heal can't crit which I guess it's a bug.
What I said before about support I 100% keep it after testing further.
Rousing words heal is fine now, it heals quite a lot and writ initial heal on top of that is just on a sweet spot, minis and beorns will of course heal more than us in aoe but now the difference is not that massive and we can heal the group up if needed.
Essay of exaltation is kind of low heals, bubble is good but heals seems like totally not scaled, it heal less than a single pulse of rousing words.

Lightning: Again with same as live gear: Rotation seems smooth but I didn't find a single reason to use scribe's spark durint it, it deals less damage than ceaseless and longer animation. All skills seem to deal decent dps now, I was able to parse only 10-15% lower than fire in those 3 mins dummies. But certainly in raid with LM fire will have better gap and I'm yet to see how skills scale as we level.

Fire: Seems in a fine spot but I cannot compare to other classes, seems though that the rotation is smoother now with shorter animations in fire too so you can fit more skills between essay and smouldering. Being able to stack searing words from different runekeepers is a must and should be implemented soon.

[Ranmazu]

I never lacked for a skill to use, at least not for more than a split second.

That's reason enough for me to revert the CD increase.

[Mokri]

I never lacked for a skill to use, at least not for more than a split second.

Oh, only a split second where all heal skills are on cooldown... nice gameplay!
Its way more fun to be able to use different skills. Its also more fun to use a skills that stacks.. instead of renewing a existing hot.. the hot is also not that strong that the reduce cooldown would make it op! You could prob even think about buffing the hot.

[jomanjy]

Gonna be honest, I enjoy the CD increase. Only thing is maybe I would want a .5s reduction, there were a couple times I wanted to hit it with most other skills on CD and it was just barely still on CD. But I dont think any more is needed, the rotation feels alot more fun and engaging

I liken it to the mini bolster cd change, meant hitting other skills now instead of one stupidly OP one on no CD. The class became alot more enjoyable to me, and besides there can easily be buffs elsewhere for the RK, the number dont lie, its close.

But I totally understand why this is a controversial point and why people probably hate me for thinking that :shrug: just my 2c

agreed with this, actually after some more tests and getting used to the 3s cd MV, it feels a lot more fun and engaging, maybe increasing MV HoT duration would be good enough instead of reverting back the cd to 1s.

[thorin7]

Lots of people have made great suggestions regarding healing so I thought I'd take the time to talk about lightning since there doesn't seem to be much feedback on that yet.

Fire I will leave for another time mainly because I don't think it needs to be changed as much as healing or lightning and the only thing I really would like to see has been mentioned before, to allow the same tier of searing words from multiple runekeepers to stack. That way multiple rks on the same target with t3 writs wouldn't lose any dps from losing their searing words proc because another is already up.

For lightning testing I kept my rk at 120 with capped mastery (306k) and capped crit (230k) with all lightning legacies and tactical damage and heal ratings on my stone and bag maxed. Damage curves for skills may change as the character gets to 130 but this doesn't seem to be the case based on accounts from other rks. These are thoughts on the 10/23 update to build 2.



First a breakdown of skills as they currently are. Calculated damage increases on skills are due to the patch only, damage increases from LI legacy increases has been taken into account and disregarded. Values are rough and approximate based on raw numbers on skills on live and on beta before and after LIs were upgraded.


Ceaseless Argument:
The damage bump (about 90%) to this skill is greatly appreciated as it has been practically useless for so long because writ of lightning has a 1s cd and does more damage and gains more attunement as well as debuffing the target. However, with this update it does around 25% more damage than writ of lightning and 30% more damage than scribe's spark and has no cooldown which shifts the balance hugely in favor of ceaseless argument as a spammable skill and makes other skills not worth it. The only drawback is its much higher power cost (301 at level 120 vs 76 for SS or writ) which is a non issue with the fate trait and fate on crafted relics giving my rk about 14k icpr. Also every time a lightning skill crits it results 2% power which is close to 200 or so making power management in lightning a non-issue.

Recommendations: Reduce the damage of ceaseless argument relative to other skills to encourage a better rotation or give it a cooldown to force the use of other skills. I would rather see a damage reduction that is redistributed to other skills that did not get a damage buff in this patch, particularly scribe's spark, shocking words, or ec, but more on those later.

Scribe's Spark:
This skill did not get a significant damage bump with this patch, the damage increase is due to the changes to LIs mostly. With the buff to ceaseless argument, at the current time it is a useless skill. It does less damage and gives the same amount of attunement as ceaseless argument and with no cd on ceaseless argument, there is no reason to use it at all.

Recommendations: A few options: either leave the skill the same and increase the damage relative to CA to make it worth using when off cd instead of CA to prevent it from becoming obsolete, or give rks incentive to use it by letting it build more attunement, like 3 for example, or a combination of the two.

Writ of Lightning:
On live this is the primary skill for rks to use because it is the only builder that provides 3 attunement and it has a short cooldown and it also applies a mit debuff. Damage on this skill got a decent increase in addition to LI changes (about 25%) which makes it now do slightly more than scribes spark (compared to slightly less on live) and a fair bit less than ceaseless argument. The debuff portion of this skill is a great part of lightning dps and I would not change that part of the skill. With the buff to ceaseless argument though, it is now mostly best for that debuff and not necessarily for the damage it deals because CA does more, currently making it similar to pen shot on hunter. It is necessary to use it at least once every 15s to maintain the debuff. The other benefit is the 3 attunement per use instead of 1 for CA or SS, making it great to gain attunement for cashout skills like SW and EC, though the usefulness of those skills has gone down with this patch and I'll talk about that later.

Recommendations: Keep the debuff functionality as is. Then, either increase the cooldown to maybe 5s or so to make it easy to maintain the debuff and keep the attunement portion the same or lower if the intention is to make this skill just about the debuff and not a primary dps builder skill, or keep the cooldown the same and lower the attunement building on it to 2 and buff the attunement building potential and damage of scribe's spark so that all 3 attunement builders are worthwhile skills and you can skill build attunement and cash out quickly, as lightning was designed to do.

In my opinion, Scribe's spark should do the most damage and build the most attunement, maybe 3, with the longest cooldown so it is a good skill to use whenever it is available, writ of lightning should be used to also build attunement, maybe 2, and maintain the debuff but do the least damage of the 3 basic builders so that ceaseless argument is somewhere in the middle with no cooldown and does respectable damage but only attunes 1 and has no cooldown which makes it not a bad skill to use a few times in a row, but would not lead to the best dps rotation that way and it means there is always something to use.

Essence of Storm:
This skill got a significant damage buff (about 40%) with the update which in my opinion gives it a nice buff about in line with what I expected for a lightning rework. This skill always crit alot and with my current gear it has normal hits higher than the basic builders and crits hit moderately higher than builders. If ceaseless argument is toned down a bit then it will be in about the same place it is on live in the dps rotation, a good skill to use when available and not rediculous.

Recommendations: Leave as is.

Shocking Words:
This skill did not receive a buff, only damage increase is from upgraded LIs. Currently, this skill seems to be lacking from a dps perspective. The damage scaling from attunement seems reasonable, with my setup the larger of the two numbers goes from 50k at 0 attunement to 67k at 9 with the tactical damage proc up. However, losing the crit chance and crit magnitude from other skills due to being at max attunement is not enough reason to use SW with the damage where it is. For comparison, when used at full attunement, shocking words crit for about 300k on the galtrev dummy, ceaseless argument crit for 190k, essence of storm 250k, epic conclusion 325k, static surge 400k, vivid imagery 450k. In my opinion, the most damaging skills should be the ones consuming all of your attunement with a long cd. Right now it would be better to just stay at full attunement and use ceaseless argument, surge, VI, and essence of storm whenever possible instead of cashing out on SW or EC.

Recommendations: If other big skills like static surge and VI stay in the same place for their damage (and I think they should), then SW should be buffed to around the same damage they do, otherwise the only reason to use it would be for the stun which has limited use in dps-focused situations as most mobs where high dps is important are immune to stuns anyway. If the intention is to reduce the damage of this skill and take it out of the primary dps rotation and have the stun be the incentive to use it, then it is fine where it is (though I always thought it was fun to call down a lightning bolt).

Sustaining Bolt:
This skill seems to have been slightly buffed (around 5%). The current damage makes it do slightly more damage than essence of storm on a regular hit and around the same on crits. Because it cashes out attunement, there would be no reason to use this skill in a dps rotation as it has the same drawbacks as shocking words but does less damage. The exception is with the charged effect that makes it free so it doesn't cash out attunement. I like this mechanic and it happens often enough to be useful. The primary reason to use it is for the heal, hence the name. Normal heals from mine are around 15-20k when used at full attunement and could crit for up to 50k. With the increase in morale pools I think this number could be increased some more, or alternatively changed to be like 20% of the rk's morale and maybe 30% if it crits. However, with the state of self motivation and how easy it is to regain morale on a dps rk, it might be best to nerf that skill if the heal from sustaining bolt is buffed significantly.

Recommendations: The damage is fine, the heal could be buffed if self motivation is nerfed, or at least the ability to get it to a 15s cd. The -5% power cost buff seems useless as power problems are never an issue in lightning but it isn't hurting anything.

Vivid Imagery:
This skill got an enormous buff compared to live (about 300%). I think this is a good change. With such a long cd and animation, it makes sense that it should do more damage to justify that. VI now does more damage than any other skill in lightning. While I think this buff is good, it does seem odd that it does the most, since it builds attunement rather than cashing it out. It does have the longest cooldown though, so I think it is justified. Before this buff, it was only used if a daze was needed, else there was no reason to use it in a dps rotation.

Recommendations: Good change, damage seems in line with the animation and cooldown and it is now a good skill to use in a rotation. Having to still be in melee range of the target seems like a fair trade for the huge damage and daze. An increase in the radius would be appreciated. Currently is it 5 meters, which is much narrower than the animation of the skill and means you need to be practically adjacent to your target to hit it. I think 10 meters would be a reasonable change.

Static Surge:
This skill also got a large buff (around 30%). I like this skill alot and the damage on it is now only about 10% behind VI making it the second highest hitting skill for lightning. It is the primary aoe skill for a lightning rk and it hits hard enough to make aoe reasonable but not the focus, which I think is fine. The damage is appropriate, but I think some mechanical changes are warranted.

Recommendations: The melee character of this skill makes it interesting for lightning and I like it. However, the tracking of the frontal cone can sometimes be difficult to aim, especially on moving targets. Increasing the radius by a few meters or reducing the attack duration on it and making the attack happen faster after it is pressed would help alot with that (though all lightning rk skills in this beta seem to go off faster so it is definitely better already compared to live, thank you!). Also the mechanic to proc it is very rng, any lightning skill (including surge itself) has a 10% chance to allow the rk to use it. This means that you can get 3 or 4 in a row or you can go a few minutes without any. I think a good change would be to either make it like perfect ending on minstrel or born for combat on champ and let lightning skills stack a buff up and let the rk use static surge after 8 or so other skills, or increase the proc chance and increase the cooldown to compensate. I think more consistent use of static surge would be preferable to highs and lows because it is a good dps skill to have in the rotation.

Epic Conclusion:
This skill did not get buffed with this patch, any increase is just due to LI upgrades. The mechanics of this skill I think are good. I like the choice of either to keep the combined tactical damage and crit chance buff and use it for other skills or use ec with increased damage and consume the buff. That said, I think this skill should be the hardest hitting skill for a lightning rk, and by a decent margin. At the moment, it does a fair bit less damage than static surge and VI, about 25% less when used with at full attunement with the combined ec buff active.

Recommendations: Increase the damage, either by bumping up base damage, or by buffing the the combined buff trait. The buff says +50% damage when active but that number is actually much less in practice. At full attunement the difference between having and not having the buff up is only around 20% instead of 50. EC should do the most damage, I would argue about 20%+ more than the next highest skill. To compensate, I think the cooldown needs to be increased. When used with the buff, the 30s cooldown is cut in half to 15s, which makes ec more of a dps rotation skill rather than a finisher. I would rather buff the damage a bit and either remove the part of the trait that halves the cooldown if it is used when the buff is active, or just increase the base cooldown to 1 minute, maybe more or less depending on the magnitude of the damage increase.

Fulgerite Rune-Stone:
I admit to not using this skill much when in lightning, and with the changes it seems like it will only be good for aoe cc and slows. The 50% uptime seems like a good amount. If it is only intended for cc purposes, then I think it is fine. If it is meant to use while dpsing, it needs a large damage increase to justify using it instead of a different skill. The damage from it ticks 4 times around 5k per target each time. This would need to be increased significantly to make it a dps skill worth using, but I think it is just fine the way it is, it isn't necessary to have it be part of the dps rotation in lightning. Having some utility skills is helpful.

Concession and Rebuttal:
Unchanged from live. I think this is a good skill and in general I like the extra buffs it applies with the exception of power restore from sustaining bolt. It might be better to make sustaining bolt a free skill like when the charged buff is up. Since it has a 15s cooldown it is unlikely that people would just save it for a sustaining bolt but it would make using it once per use of C&R reasonable. The incoming damage reduction for 3 minutes on it while you havent used the buffed skills is nice, though being able to use it and swap trait lines and have 3 minutes of -20% incoming damage seems unintentional. Could also be used to implement recommendations I have previously mentioned.



Traits


Most traits in lightning are good. If not mentioned, then I think the trait should remain unchanged.
With there being so few traits outside of the traitline you are traited into that benefit your spec, rks have alot of trait points that could be used elsewhere to increase their dps, and there are few in other lines that are useful.

Flashing Images:
This trait was useless for a while since rk bubbles were so poor but now that they are morale % based, it might be useful again. However, since you can build attunement so quickly in lightning anyway, I don't see myself using it much even if that is the case. I would rather see a trait that buffs dps somehow. Both fire and healing have 1 capstone trait that is a good skill and the other trait buffs dps or healing. Either a strait buff to the base damage of certain skills (EC and SW possibly?), a cooldown reduction, or maybe some implementation of one of the recommendations above would be great.

Confounding Principles:
The damage on shocking touch is not terrible but not enough to justify using it, especially when it brings you towards neutral attunement. An increase in damage and daze duration doesn't make it a useful skill. Damage aside, the daze duration is short enough to not be a great cc skill so unless the daze duration was increased to 20s or longer via the trait, I don't see a reason to use this trait.

Light on One's Feet:
Not a lightning trait, but one of the options for spending some leftover points. However, evade chance for rks doesn't help at all. There are few situations where rks should be getting hit with anything that could be evaded (aoe tactical damage from bosses/puddles cannot be evaded) and if there was, the mob probably has enough finesse to make the trait useless anyway because the base evade and parry chance on an rk is close to 0. A much better trait would be to give some other simple useful buff like other classes have, like vitality, max morale, tactical mastery, tactical mitigation, incoming healing, etc.

Determination:
Similar to the above trait, will is not as useless as evade chance because it does give some mastery and tactical mitigation but with only 2 points of mastery per will and the mastery cap being so high, this trait would also be better if replaced with one of the suggestions for the previous trait or something else more helpful.




TL;DR - I like where lightning rk is going and the damage buff was needed. I recommend nerfing CA a bit to make scribe's spark usable, and buffing SW and EC so they feel about the same as they do on live (around the same damage as VI or Surge), which is to say that cashing out your attunement to use them feels justified for the burst damage. A few traits could be changed but in general not many complaints there.

I have yet to do parses with 130 gear against fire to compare dps numbers and I am still figuring out a dps rotation for lightning with the current build, that comparison may come later.

[Hephburz-2]

Now that we're finally moving in the right direction, and having had some more time to test, here are my thoughts;

--

Healing;

• With the changes to the other healing skills, there is now less reliance on Mending Verse (which means the cooldown increase is 'almost' justified), however to me, the inability to spam this skill like before removes several of the key HoTs we would have had on the target, I'd like to see the pulse duration increased to compensate for the increased cooldown.
• Runekeeper healers still lack ANY offensive buffs in comparison to the other 3 healers in the game, can this be addressed?
• Fates Entwined cooldown should be reverted [90->60s CD], the damage buff provided by the stone should be changed from a +xxxx rating to a +x%.
• As others have pointed out, the splash heal from EftA needs a much bigger radius, 5m is far too low, especially considering EftA will almost only ever be used on the tank, and it highly unlikely people will ever be that close to the tank, even melee's are roughly around 7m~ away.
• Undo the change that removed the -% damage reduction from the bubbles (I see you've already mentioned that this was a mistake, but adding it to the list for good measure).
• The bubbles from Essay and Word of Exaltation do not seem to scale properly between the 20% and 40% of player morale as has been suggested from zero to max attunement.
• The Frost Affinity trait still ''sets'' your outgoing healing to 90% (providing you are at max OGH), rather than being an additive buff.
• Rune of Restoration pulse heal should just be increased to 5k at minimum imo.
• It would seem you are unable to crit the initial heal from Rune Sign of Winter - and as suggested by Olebenny above, I would love to see the frost armour buff increased to 20s at least.

--

Fire;

• Please allow multiple RKs to stack the same tier of Searing Words on the target rather than it being one dot per tier per mob.
• I would still like to see an overall 5-10% increase in red line damage, as I and others have pointed out many times, Red-Line RKs are still by far the weakest DPSers in an end-game raid setting.

--

Lightning;

• PLEASE consider lowering the cooldown of Concession and Rebuttal to either 90s or 120s, down from 180s.
• Something needs to change in regards to static surge, the skill is far too unreliable, boasting a very small usage range, and a very small radius - Please increase both of these to 10m at a minimum. If memory serves the skill also operates on a 90 degree arc, this should be increased to 180.

[Kalvon]

I agree with most of what is written here, but I still have a few remarks to make, so here are my 2 cents:

• Word/Essay of Exaltation bubble is now based on % Morale - ranging from ~20-40% depending on healing focus at time of casting.

Keep also in mind, that the new bubble scaling gives the yellow and red Runekeeper a good new utility in Raid. Every 30 s a 40% bubble on the tank is pretty strong, especially as it doesn't take much time to cast it with steady hands. Maybe here are still adjustment necessary.

I would welcome a buff of winter skills in the blue line (be it shorter induction time, longer buff timers or something like that), to give the trait line something special besides healing.
Also DNF should be nerfed in red and yellow since it is to strong at the moment, e.g. DNF should only be distributed in blue twice and in red and blue only once and for comparison, one could perhaps increase the damage a little bit.

[Arandour]

I hope we are not talking about the same game.

Rks Dps is on the level of Warden/Champ, only Hunters, and Burgs clearly out DPs him. So you still deal more damage than Minis, Captains, Guardians, Beorningers and Loremasters...
Champs dps can be higher, but just with a good raid/group setup. Rk's just need Loremasters to be effective, champs/wardens and Burglars need much more support to reach their maximum damage potential.

I totally agree.Also try to play a champion with out weapon swapping and see who is the weakest dps class at single target in this game...

[Mukor]

Last thing cause this is BIG. RK needs to get its +%OGH bug fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It still does not benefit from any source of +%OGH while in blue line because of this trait. No cappy buffs affect us, no food affects us, no set bonus gear affects us. Please fix this, its the single most crucial bug to the RK right now.

I´m not sure that this is a bug. If you read the tooltip of frost affinity. You see " Set the outgoing healing modifier to +20%"
But it should become changed eitherway to "+20% healing modifier."
Through this bonus rks are the only class limited in their outgoing healing. ALL OTHER healers can reach more outgoing healing.
Worst senario would be that we will be able to get more than 20% modifier than frost affinity would become an malus.