My Experience as a Disciple

Khaine's wrath is fearsome, and so is that of his disciples. Heal your allies by dealing damage with sharp blades--can it get any better? Come inside and see for yourself!
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Fhayd
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:53 MST

My Experience as a Disciple

Post by Fhayd »

Preface
My goal with this post is to share my experience as a disciple, doing an equal amount of rvr/scens/pve. Up until lvl 30, I was a bit confused and frustrated with playing a disciple. This all changed when I sat down, reevaluated my gear, and decided what I wanted to do. For anyone frustrated with the disciple, know this: we are not the be-all-end-all gods from T1-middle T2. T3 we die, we die a lot. Don't get frustrated, just adapt, reevaluate, pick what you want to do and give it a go! Worse case, you spend a few gold to respec after you tried something out.

What is a Disciple? What do they do?
To me, a disciple is whatever you want it to be. You can do some dps, some healing, some debuffing. The trick is to gear it towards what you, as a player want to add to a team. As a disciple, we can dps about as much as a sword/board tank, if geared for dps, maybe a 2h tank. We can heal, but not as much as a zealot or shaman, but they cannot keep up with us on a team heal level. Sure, all the healers can sit back and LoS spam team hots the whole time, but they have to wait for ap to come back, we can then rush to the front, and continue with some dps/healing, then fall back, rinse and repeat. The great thing about the disciple is that you can make it do what works for you. This can be a double edged sword though. I have seen disciples spreading themselves too thin, and have done that myself

as R31/RR22 disciple, I have come to realize quite a few things about this class. As a disciple, we are healers, but with the unique ability to focus on different means of doing so. We may not be spike healers, but we are useful none the less.

Here is what I noticed in scenarios at R31:

Experience with a Dark Rites build:
I have specc'd every way I found useful for R31, and geared accordingly. In the early stages of T3, I chose to gear for pure survivability, and Spec'd DR to add as much utility as possible, being that I knew I would be very underpowered in the early stages of the tier because I didn't have the gear to compete. With a DR-11 build (http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=23#9:544:0:0:0:0:25) I have been able to consistently pull at least 90k healing, and probably 5k-10k damage. I kept pumping points into this build till lvl 31, using team heals and bubbles from out of LoS, and doing direct SI/REs when needed. I could not compete with zealots/shaman, but I felt I was doing my part. With nearly 2k armor, and 6k hp, running CoT (tenacity cov.), tanking 5-7 order was possible, the 40% corp/elem resist didn't hurt either.

Experience with a Sacrifice build:
This build was satisfying, but I couldn't help but feel I was missing the point of the disciple. I could do well, but with medium armor and two swords, sitting in the back felt... wrong. I regrouped, and went on to spec as such: (http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=23# ... 11:2048:25). My readings in scenarios after this became consistent with what I have previously experienced in earlier tiers. Full DR I was pulling in around 110k total damage/heals combined, at about a 10:1 (healing:damage) ratio. Now, with a Sac/Tort build, I was pulling in 110k, but it was now approximately a 1:1 ratio (55k:55k). I was also able to affect more people, being that consume essence affects everyone, not just your team. With this setup, I also geared away from will and more towards Str, as that is what affects the healing power of consume essence (CE). With CE, spamming it I can get on average 200 health pulled from a lvl 30 IB, and about 540 from a clothy or less armored oppnent. Being able to hit this every 2s or so, and about 10-15 times per full AP bar, that is about 3k health to everyone within 10ft of your target, throw in a Rend to a target, and you just healed them almost 6k (provided you weren't set back at all/parried/blocked). Could it heal more? Yes, but that means there is a sacrifice. With this build and my gear, I can still tank well. I don't have much heavy Str gear on, and could easily bump it up another 80 or so (about 14dps), but that would mean less than a 10% corp/elem resist. Being a disciple on the front lines means you will be FF a lot more. To me, the goal is to let the tanks and dps go in, wait till they get to about 80%, then join the fray, drop on some hots as you reach them in the line. Once there, spam CE and rend if needed, with celerity running, anyone you hit is going to feel it, and they are not going to get away fast at all. A further strategy to this is acting as a quick striker, jumping in with the fray, hot as you go, hit a few times till out of ap, healing everyone within ten feet of that target for around 2k, the get out of there and to the back line, pulling the poor sap that decided to follow you, walking backwards as you rend and heal yourself, and maybe having a teammate take them down as you hit them. Requires team work, but I find that when I do this, 75% of the time I have a WH on me thinking "omg a free kill, stupid healer!", pulling him to the back line, watching his health drop as mine builds, and all my teammates hitting him have green numbers above their heads every hit. Feels quite good.

Experience with a Torture build:
To me, this tree is just a supplement to one of the other two trees, as well as a solo leveling aid for PvE. Disciples will never be amazing DPS, but we can help, and heal a bit at the same time. For a full torture build to be effective, a maximum of 18pts is required ( http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=23# ... 792:0:0:25 ). That leaves 7 pts for the other trees. which does not get you far at all into them, and those trees are what makes a disciple what we are. The minimum needed to get any benefit from torture is: ( http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=23#0:0:3:8:0:0:25 ). This is a great damage utility, that greatly affects the flow of battle. When your whole team has a snare that can activate 1 in 5 hits, and a pretty nasty dot, you can keep runners in, and take them down. Yes, I know the effect can actually be right-clicked off by order, but that means that player is moving their mouse, losing focus for that split second, just to have the debuff/snare reapplied. With this tactic, you still have 21 pts allowing you to go deep into DR or SAC, offering even more utility.

My career setup goal:
I want to offer as much utility as possible, being able to spam aoe heals, or be a front-line CE spammer. I don't want to swap gear every fight, so I geared up around tactics, and am able to swap in and out when there are lulls in a battle. At lvl 31, I am geared as such: ( http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=23# ... 11:2048:25 ).

I am not a big number cruncher, and tend to stick to more qualifying setups in mmo's rather than quantifying ones. This build makes me feel useful and happy. If anyone is out there playing a disciple and really frustrated or feeling UP and useless, give it a shot.


Sorry for writing so much, feel free to edit/delete/comment anything here. I am at work and it is very slow today.

-Fhayd
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