Asmodeus
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« on: September 04, 2008, 01:48:09 AM » |
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First, I would like to say that there is a lot of opinion here when it comes to abilities, tactics, and masteries. They are by no means definitive or the only way to play. This is just how I see the class, and how I plan to play it based on my experiences.
The Mechanic: Soul Essence (SE) I will first begin with the mechanic, a quick overview of how it works, and what affects it and what does not. When you are out of combat, it regenerates at 50 Soul Essence a second till it reaches 250. Our Soul Essence has a cap of 250. Now in combat, it does not regenerate, it requires you to Melee or use your Blood Offering spell to convert AP into SE. Do note, supplication does NOT allow you to stand back and heal. Its for oh moments, or if you are doing a long push with no out of combat moments to let it regenerate. All your damage abilities with the exception of a few unique ones, generate Soul Essence. All your heal abilities and beneficial effects, with hte exception of Covenants, use Soul Essence. You need to keep a good balance between your Damage spells and your healing. The mechanic is not effected by damage output or the speed of your attacks. The only thing that generates SE are your abilities that state they generate SE. It is a simple and straight to the point mechanic, but it also allows of to have some of the best damage and healing combo in the game because our two different aspects drain from different pools of power.
Basic Information: The disciple wears Medium Robe armor. This is an armor inbetween melee dps and tank. But its not enough to tank a Hero level mob alone, or even with healing. You can only use Swords and Chalices as your weapons and you do Dual Wield. In my opinion Dual Wielding two swords is more beneficial than Sword/Chalice. Being that because a chalice gives very little healing over a sword and you lose DPS. As a Disciple your job is to maximize both Damage and Healing at the same time. In scenerios you damage should be roughly around where your healing is. If you do nothing but heal, you are wasting your class and are not using it to its full potential. Roll and Shaman or a Zealot if you want to just heal and do minimal DPS, this is not the class for you. Your job as a Disciple is to do as much damage and healing as you can. It is why we get abilities that allow us ot heal from our damage abilities, or to transfer stats while doing damage, and so on. I have played on order and faught Disciples that did minimal damage and just healed, they were killed left and right, and did not benefit the fight because they were just getting killed. Our biggest healing ability acutally based on your damage that you do with the ability. Please play the class properly, or you will surely have a very uneventful time playing your disciple.
Abilities: I will put the abilities in order of receiving them from the trainer. I will have a masteries section after this explaining the masteries, the abilities you get from them and my thoughts on them. Here is the breakdown of your spells: You have damage abilities that generate SE. You have heal abilities and beneficial spells which use AP. Then you have Covenants which are like auras that affect your whole group. No cast time, no mana cost, stays up till you turn it off. You also have your stat transfer and dots and fight control abilities. I will be only going to level 20. Firsts thats as far I have gotten so far, and I don't want to give speculative information on abilities I have no used yet. Starting Abilities (Level 1): Fist Of Khaine This is your ranged attack that all melee users get, but ours is different from others, its a spell, because it is modified ot generate Soul Essence for us, while other melee classes just get a damage bonus if they hit from behind or the side. Very useful when chasing.
Restore Essence This is your first heal, it does a small heal, then puts a HoT on the target. You will be using this a lot, since we dont get a direct heal until our level 20 AoE heal or our level 8 Rank 1 Morale ability.
Cleave Soul Your main damage ability for a while. Does direct damage and generates soul essence. Will be used a LOT.
Blood Offering Converts 30 AP to 30 Soul essence every second for 5 seconds. (total of 150 AP to 150 SE) This is very inefficient and is used only in long pushes where you run low on SE, or you need emergency SE for a heal. Its not meant for standing back and healing.
Flee An ability all classes get, drains all your AP and SE, and makes you sprint for a while. It does drain your SE to 0.
Trained Abilities Consume Strength Transfers an amount of strength from your enemy target to your defensive target (which can also be you). Useful early on, but I seem to have less use for it in higher level battles. Its helpful, but in the mix of battle, its kind of hard to throw one in when you are trying to stay alive and 48 strength is less beneficial than your other abilities.
Soul Infusion Your second heal. This one is a pure HoT. Its quite powerful too, so you will be using it a lot in combination with Restore Essence.
Covenant of Tenacity Gives your entire group an armor buff. This helps early on int the game, and in PVE situations, but once you get your other covenents, they are better for RVR. I rarely use Tenacity after I get my second Covenant. Lacerate This is your bleed ability. It puts a Cripple effect on your target that opens up a few possibilities later on with other abilities.
Consume Essence Does a hit that heals your group. I haven't used this much because it doesn't heal for much, and does not do good damage, its more of a PVE hit, where its just to keep people topped off. After getting rend soul, this feels even more useless to me.
Terrifying Vision This is you detaunt, Amazing in PVP because it lowers the damage the target does to you by 50% for 15 seconds. Only 1 target can be detaunted, but it helps if you ahve multiple people on you.
Divine Favor This is your first Morale ability, its a direct heal for a good amount. This is a good Oh button, or if you got a lot of health to catch up on. Used quite a bit.
Rend Soul This is your most powerful ability. Its a damage ability that uses up you Soul essence. Its channeled and usees 25 SE per second for 3 seconds. With every hit, it heals for 250% of the damage done to your defensive target. It is a very powerful ability, but it has a chance to be interupted because its channeled. Its different from a normal channeled ability. A hit doesn't always interupt it, and you can move while channeling it, so you can be chasing someone and using it. This ability allows you to tank mobs much much powerful than you and stay above 50% health, and lets you take on 3-5 people at a time in PVP for small range of levels (it doesn't scale very well at higher levels because it depends on damage). This ability is also depnedant on armor. So if you use it on a tank, it actually heals for less because you do less damage. It is one of your main abilities. It is buffed by your Healing tree (Dark Rites) instead of Torture or Sacrifice. Very unique ability and one of your most powerful.
Flay The first ability that takes advantage of Crippling. It does a small amount of damage, but if your target is crippled, to does a 40% snare on them. So this is comboed with Lacerate. Snares are snares, always useful.
Stand, Coward! Your rez ability, rezes someone with 20% health. This actually builds Essence. So its good to resurrect people when you can, but you can not ressurect while being hit.
Dark Blessings Your first tactic, but its not that great, its useful for a little while till your next good one. Increases all heals to you by 10%. Which always helps.
Essence Lash Does a damage in a cone 45 ft infront of you. Useful when you have a lot of people on you to use while you wait for other abilities to go off cooldown. Situational Use.
Rampaging Siphon This is a rank 2 morale that does Damage and then heals everyone in an AoE for the amount of damage done. But it takes a while to build up rank 2 morale, so its not that spamable, but it does help when doing group fights. Divine FuryI personally dont like this one. It increases your damage by 25% but decreases your healing by 20%. I don't like this tactic, it kind of diminishes your healing powers. Even though it increases damage, your healing goes down, and as a Healing archetype and someone that needs to keep a close balance between damage and healing. I don't agree with this tactic and on my testing disciple, I didn't even purchase the ability.
Covenant of Vitality Your next covenant, and a far better one for PVP and overall use. What it does is every hit has a 20% chance to do spirit damage and then heal you for the amount of damage done. Really helpful in tight situations cause it lets some people give them a tiny bit of self heal. It procs quite often.
Khaine's Blessing The next big tactic. It granst you the proc that anytime you have a critical hit, you get a 20% attackspeed increase. This helps a LOT and is a great tactic in battle.
Patch Wounds Just a Hex removal ability, Uses soul essence. Steal LifeA rank one morale, that puts a dot on the target, andheals the defensive target for 50% of the ticks. It gos in the same slot as Divine Favor, and I personally prefer Divine Favor because its a direct heal. I already got plenty of bleeds and hots, a direct heal is more beneficial to play.
Alignment of Naggaroth Increases Spiritual resistance. I am a bit hesitant of it. All it odes is increase resist against damage spells from healers. Its really not beneficial to me. I prefer Khaine's Blessing over this.
Covenant of Celerity Your best PVP covenant there is. It Gives everyone a 20% chance to apply a DoT on the target and snare them by 20%. There is a 3 point tactic in Torture (3 Points to get to it, 4th point to get it.) That increases the damage of the bleed, and 60% snare. Whichwill be a very good tactic for RVR.
Discipline Increases your willpower. For now I dont see a use for it, but maybe at higher levels when we have more tactic slots, it can be helpful.
Khaine's Embrace Aoe Heal, your first normal direct heal, and your first AoE normal heal. Will be used a lot, thats for sure.
Spine Fling This is really a good Morale. It removes all Status effects, snares, charms, disarms, and roots, and all your abilities will build faster and not get setback. This is Rank 2 but really its well worth having on your bar for PVP.
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