Been playing mostly playing my Zealot over the last few days, for no real reason other than I fancied a change and wanted to get his gear up a little bit more. So I took him from RR40 to RR45, which obviously isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but unlike most careers, with Zealots it has quite a big impact. Now most WAR players will know about this, but I figured I’d explain why for anyone that is a new starter or are looking for an alt with an easy life.
At RR45 you can equip full conqueror armour, a set that was traditionally a DPS armour set. However because of the (fairly) recent changes to the Harbinger system it’s actually a lot more flexible than it used to be. The Harbinger ability is now a toggle between DPS and healing. It does this by converting all your armour’s Willpower to Intelligence, Heal Crit to Magic Crit, Heal Power to Magic Power and vice versa. In some respects I am not a fan of this new system, the cooldown on the ability can at times be a little too restrictive, but I can live with that because of the how easy it makes getting reasonable stats for a levelling Zealot.
As a lowbie it makes a lot of sense to run as a healer rather than DPS. It is great renown and you don’t need to worry about killing high RR players. Leaving your harbinger toggle in healing mode will mean that all your Intelligence counts as Willpower, etc as mentioned above. So if you had an item with say 20 Willpower and 20 Intelligence, it would actually count as 40 Willpower, which if you’re healing is a much better stat. Since Conqueror armour (and pretty much every other set too) has both Willpower and Intelligence on it, this means that with no effort or dicking about combining sets for different bonuses you can get extremely high Willpower. This then gives you plenty of freedom to invest in other stats like wounds and widens your options when choosing renown abilities.
This all means that for Zealots it’s incredibly easy to get focussed healing (or DPS…) stats that are just not possible with other careers at that low renown rank. My Shaman is higher RR and has a load of PvE gear from the likes of Lost Vale to choose from, but he can’t get stats anywhere near my Zealot’s who’s never done any PvE.
Now I’m sure there’s far better gear combinations possible than my simple “chuck on Conqueror cos its easy” thing. In fact I bet with some thought put to it you could really make the most of this ability and end up with pretty damn good stats at a very low RR. So if you're looking for a character you can gear up quite easily and you don't mind playing a healer, then it's well worth considering a Zealot.
Well.. but you have difficulties in doing anything besides pure healing as most of you CC can be easily disrupted.
ReplyDeleteImho playing a healer effectively is more than just pure healing. This is where the Runepriest/Zelot mechanic gets really restrictive.
I'd agree with Zizlak.
ReplyDeleteFrom a pure healing role it's great, since that brings in the RPs, but things like silence, stagger (Now this seems to effect RP's earnt as well) are just as a important in tighter fights.
Though, lets be honest, hoping from keep siege (defence) to keep seige (defense) is a great way to level up (with AAO thrown in for luck).
Played my RP a bit recently (out of necessity) and yeah, it really pisses me off to have the stagger/knockback/silence disrupted. They really should make those defensive things scale off either willpower or intellect, whichever is the highest stat.
ReplyDeleteI love Zealots on my Slayer, poor buggers can't cleanse Shatter Limb/Deep Wound which leaves them dead in the watter if I disrupt the stagger. :(
Yes the low level items makes your willpower skyrocket if you are in healingmode, but like the rest says, our surv skills gets disrupted and thats never fun.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree guys. I know I have a lot of L2P to do before being even half decent with my Zealot, but I do find the Harbinger far too restrictive. It seems you really pick either pure healer or (mediocre) DPS, there's not much inbetween.
ReplyDeleteStill, I am actually enjoying playing as both styles depending on what's needed and it's nice to be able to heal fairly effectively so early on.