Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Class Guides – Wrath Warrior Priest: MMOGrindHouse.com

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Class Guides – Wrath Warrior Priest

Thursday, July 9th, 2009 · Filed Under age of reckoning, the land of the dead, war online, warhammer asia, warhammer build guide, warhammer job change, warhammer online

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Hailed as one of the best MMORPG, WAR (Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning) focuses on Realm versus Realm (RvR) feature where players defend their homeland, conquer realms and fight against the opposing army.

The Path of Wrath Career Mastery focuses on offensive skills that disables and harasses the enemy making the Warrior Priest a force to be reckon with. The following guide discusses the Warrior Priest that specializes in the Wrath Mastery. This guide is created by Ravzar.

Comprehensive Guide for the Wrath Priest

Introduction

There have been many Warrior Priest guides made on both Warhammer Alliance and other websites. Due to this it is not necessary to create a comprehensive guide on how to play a Warrior Priest. This guide is merely to explain how to play a Wrath Priest for those who already have an interest in playing this very niche type of DPS/off healer. Many guides do not cover the Wrath tree in great detail and seek to undermine how useful the tree can be in a variety of situations. By the end of this guide I hope you have an understanding on what abilities, tactics, and play styles you will be using as a Wrath Priest. It should be noted that this entire guild is focused on a PvP or solo questing focus. For PvE I still do recommend you use a Salvation build in order to obtain the best outcome for your team. This is not to say you can’t PvE in Wrath but if no other healers are available Salvation would be optimal. That being said if there are other healers you are an excellent class to take a DPS spot. This is especially true when extra survivability is required such as an inexperienced group in the Lost Vale.

Why Wrath? Can we do great DPS?

Many people ask why you would choose to be a Wrath Priest. The reason is simple. For a trade of less damage than an MDPS class you get all the advantages of being a healer. You will not be able to out damage a Witch Hunter burst for burst. However you will be able to, at the end of a scenario for example, get more damage and killing blows for the simple reason that you survived and he did not.

Contrary to what many believe our DPS is quite good if you stack strength above all else. Expect critical hits of above 1000 on squishy targets in the right gear. You will have the DPS and the tools to burst down healers and casters alike.

Who am I? Why should you listen to me?

This is a fair question. Why should you take for granted the advice I write in my guide. I encourage you to check everything I say here out for yourself and see what works for you. I am merely showing you how I play. I have played this class for a long time and have learnt a lot alot the way. I hope to share this knowledge with you so you too can get the most out of your class.

What stats should I be stacking?

As a Wrath Priest many stats are important and I will go through each in turn.

Strength – This is extremely important. You should stack this very high. More than 700 strength is necessary however as your gear gets better you may be able to get over 800 and if you get some very good weapons, jewelry, and invader gear you may find yourself at over 900 strength,

Wounds – This is one of your most important stats. Many opinions differ as to how much you should have. Over 600 wounds is optimum and if you get invader and are willing to lose out on some strength there is no reason why you could have up to 7.5k quite easily while still having well over 700 strength. However prior to this over 600 wounds is excellent and is perfectly viable. Warrior Priests in general have awfully low natural wounds and thus increasing it can be difficult. Keep in mind that you are a healer and thus your 600 wounds would be equivalent to a real MDPS class having thousands more (due to divine assault which I will expand on later). I personally run only 608 wounds in order to get a large amount of strength and melee critical hit chance.

Toughness – Toughness is a good stat to have if you have a decent amount of it. I don’t run with much toughness since it is difficult to have good initiative, wounds, strength, and toughness and toughness is the stat which I simply neglect. If you are a bit of a toughness fan try to get it up to 300 and run greave of sigmar however this won’t help your damage much. I find guilty souls’ healing and damage is much better then trying to stack toughness.

Willpower – This is not your primary stat. It does provide a benefit to you though when you are unable to melee heal. Although do not stack this stat and any willpower you do get should merely be accidental and not on purpose. However since a lot of our gear does have willpower on it you may find yourself with up to 400 willpower naturally without trying.

Initiative – A very important stat but very hard to get a lot of while still keeping high wounds and strength. I would recommend you aim to get as much as you can but it will be difficult to balance with other stats. You can get a lot of initiative through the renown gear such as the 51 initiative cloak or 40 initiative ring. Alternatively you can try and get as much reduction in crit gear as you can get. Such pieces would include the Sentinel Helm and the Herald’s Cloak. For quite a while, until I got some high initiative gear from the Lost Vale, I specced some of my renown points into initiative as it does greatly increase your survivability.

Weapon Skill – Weapon Skill is nice to have but not necessary. Do not aim to get this stat as such but having it on your gear isn’t a waste either. You are a squishy killer and thus do not have as much use for piercing armour. Unlike MDPS who have methods to ignore the armour of their opponent, you do not. Thus attacking heavily armoured opponents becomes less useful and should be avoided unless there is no other target around. This is not because you can’t win against such an opponent but merely because it takes way to long when you could be out killing healers. In short yes weapon skill is useful but strength and wounds are more useful.

Resists – It is extremely useful to stack resists however it can be difficult. With the resist cap I don’t really bother these days since a Chosen or Magus will see you with no resists anyway. You will get what ever resists you need naturally on gear.

Intelligence and ballistics skill are completely useless for a Warrior Priest in all respects. Do not use any gear with these on it.

Gear

For most gear just follow the above guidelines on what to stack. However gear also deserves its own section due to Mythic breaking up our set pieces into healing and DPS gear.

Healing Sets

Our healing sets are Annihilator, Sentinel, and Dark Promise. These sets are less useful to a wrath priest. This is not to say that you can’t use some of these pieces. I would recommend wearing two sentinel pieces in a PvP build. The reason is that the belt counts as a piece for the purposes of set bonuses. Thus you can have 3 set bonuses over 6 pieces of set gear. I recommend wearing the helm and belt unless you have invader.

DPS Sets

For our DPS sets we have Conqueror, Invader, and Bloodlord. These sets are quite hard to get when compared to their PvE equivalents. The Bloodlord set is a recommended starting set if you can get your hands on it. Wearing two pieces of Bloodlord will give you a decent strength bonus. On most servers it is also easy to gain the Conqueror boots and the fists can be bought at Renown Rank 41. I personally favour using this, two sentinel pieces, and two other high strength pieces with talisman slots as good starting out gear.

Lower Level Sets

The Devastator Set is a DPS set from T3 and is an important stepping stone. It is wise to use at least two pieces of this set up until you can replace it with Bloodlord or Conqueror. The pieces itself also have high strength.

The Ruin Set is a set that precedes the Bloodlord Set for PvE. I would not use this set due to there being high amounts of willpower on the gear itself and the first set bonus also being willpower. The second set bonus is 55 strength but it is not worth wearing three of these pieces over the Devastator Set.

Jewelry, Cloaks, and Hammers

As far as jewelry goes you should aim to get the 20 strength 20 wounds rings until such time that you get something better. Items such as ruby of the warden/watcher from city instances, the onslaught scroll from contested city PQs, and jewelry from the Lost Vale etc. If you are low on wounds you may also like to run the 43 wounds ring or maybe the 41 initiative ring as well.

For cloaks I recommend the 30 strength 20 wound green cloak that can be bought from the AH quite often on most servers. You may also prefer to wear the 51 initiative cloak if you are low on initiative. A great melee cloak also comes from purple bags in forts and there are some very good cloaks to be found in the Lost Vale.

When you first reach 40 Faith is a decent weapon to use until you can get the Sledge of Light from the Elf T4 rewards. If you can get the drop or purchase the sledge of the warden then do so. It drops from level 40 city instances and is on the AH from time to time. Once you get to the Lost Vale the Lightbearer’s Fist drops off the third boss on the left side and iSs the best hammer in the game.

Tactics

I will not be going over all the tactics available to the Wrath Priest in this guide. I will discuss ones that I think should be used or what you may like to use. Many other guides have discussed tactics used for willpower focused builds and thus they will not be considered. I should say at the start that I think you should run with Divine Fury, Hastened Divinity, Fanaticism, and Guilty Soul. Thus these ones will be discussed first. I am also aware we have an AoE Detaunt and an explanation of why I don’t use it is included.

Divine Fury

Divine Fury is a must have in any Wrath Priest build. The 25 percent gain to damage has obvious advantages. However there is a 20 percent healing debuff although this does not effect melee heals and thus you will also gain 25 percent to all melee heals as well. You will be primarily a DPS off healer and this tactic is perfect for this role.

Fanaticism

This tactic will help your damage substantially by giving you a very high chance to critically hit on all targets. The benefit of this is obvious but becomes even more devastating when combined with Hasted Divinity.

Hastened Divinity

Auto attack damage can account for a lot of your damage. Due to this increasing the rate in which it hits results in massive amounts of burst damage.

On its own it is a very good tactic but when combined with fanaticism it provides a great synergy which increases damage dramatically. Your critical hit chance will be huge with this tactic combined with your initiative debuff. Often people do not stack that much initiative and this value could be up to 35 percent or more.

Guilty Soul

In the old guide I didn’t recommend this tactic but now I do since it has been buffed. It scales by strength somewhat (although it doesn’t appear to take full stat contribution) and it also critically hits and it heals yourself for the full amount. This is especially cool when you smite crit on everyone. It also does a lot of extra damage and increases your DPS considerably.

Greave of Sigmar

This will reduce your opponent’s toughness and strength by approximately 100. Toughness is anti strength. By decreasing your opponent’s toughness you are effectively dealing 100 more strength worth of damage to your target. With the buff to you your opponent is also dealing 100 less strength worth of damage to you. On top of this you then also gain 100 strength and they lose 100 strength. You immediately put a 400 point stat point difference between you and your target by using this tactic when combined with the grace ability Sigmar’s Fist. This is an excellent tactic which some may prefer over guilty soul.

Intimidating Repent

This is a situational tactic but can be very useful. If I had a fifth tactic slot I would likely be using this. It is useless for 1v1 encounters but great in scenarios and open rvr. You can detaunt multiple opponents and then take them out one at a time while the others do 50 percent less damage. However this is a survivability tactic and will not maximize DPS. As a melee WP what kills you is also not often standing within 30 feet of each other. It helps against the melee train but often you will be killed by a sorc who probably isn’t even in LOS of you. If they are you can detaunt them without this tactic and if there are two sorcs within 30 feet even if you do detaunt them if they are focusing on you, you will die anyway. Also most of the time RDPS don’t stand within 30 feet of each other to really benefit from intimidating repent. However if you really do want to use this tactic then I recommend you use it instead of guilty soul.

Unwavering Faith

I consider this tactic to be worthless except in, for example, an organized duel against a DPS Chosen. Since most things in PvP are not organized there are much better tactics out there. You will get enough resists on your gear for this to not be that useful.

Emperor’s Ward

Prior to the latest patch there may have been an argument to use this tactic as damage was mitigated by armour, toughness, and resists and then taken off your absorb shield. Currently all damage that reaches this shield is unmitigated. Thus the tactic becomes less useful. This tactic can still be an alright one to use but it is normally reserved for those who spec Grace/Salv as they do not slot fanaticism. I find the healing of guilty soul more than makes up for not slotting this.

Shield of Faith

This tactic is of course useful. It should be also noted that if you want to maximize DPS this tactic becomes less useful and I probably wouldn’t use it.

Leading the Prayer

This tactic can be very useful as it is situational and only useful in full groups of six. You are not included in this group and neither are healers who are not doing any damage. On that note if you do run a regular group with an Engineer and Bright Wizard this tactic could make you Sigmar reincarnated. It can be pretty decent in scenarios. Just note that you need to be within 150ft of your group which isn’t so good for large scenarios that people tend to split up in like Thunder Valley.

Endless Guilt

This is a tactic within the Wrath tree. I do not recommend you use it. An AoE snare is not worth losing the benefit of any other tactic.

Core Abilities

Supplication

A Wrath Priest probably will not be using this ability to much. However it does have its uses if you need to heal yourself after a fight and you have no RF.

Healing Hand

This is your bread and butter HoT. It is good to preload this onto yourself before charging into battle. You can cast this while running to and thus you can stick it on a Bright Wizard or anyone who looks to be taking damage as you run by. As you are charging in you can normally click on all the portraits in your group and give everyone a healing hand.

Repent

This ability is very useful. It is great to cast it on Ranged DPS as you charge into their group. I also use it when I get disarmed and unable to defend myself. I normally detaunt my disarmer then proceed to heal myself with my non melee heals. This often allows me to survive the disarm and get in control of the situation.

Breath of Sigmar

This has obvious uses. Use it to resurrect if you can.

Purify

Cast this on yourself and allies regularly. It removes Damage over Time spells, roots, and a load of other debuffs too. It is quite useful but sometimes does not remove the specific curse or hex you wish to be removed. E.g. instead of removing a root on you it will remove a Damage over Time spell.

Purge

This can’t be used to remove that many things but it is EXTREMELY useful against Magus to dispel their armour buff. It also removes the enchantments Sorcerers cast on their group which gives them a chance to do extra damage. In addition it removes Chosen’s Bain Shield.

Divine Shock

When dueling with a WE I like to use it as soon as I see her parry one of my attacks. A parry means a disarm is forthcoming. If you can get this off before she disarms you, then you can prevent the disarm. It is also good for knocking away tanks who are blocking the way into keeps. However the cone of fire is pretty slim and it can be blocked and parried.

Mastery Tree Abilities

I will be considering all Wrath abilities and the abilities from other mastery trees which are useful for a Wrath priest. Prayers will be discussed at the end of this section.

Wrath Tree

Castigation

This ability is extremely useful. It will often be one of the first abilities in your attack rotation. Besides from being a necessary part of your snare, it also debuffs your opponent’s initiative by a considerable amount. This maximizes DPS through an extra chance to critically hit.

Weight of Guilt

This will always be followed directly after castigation. It is necessary to complete your snare and also does considerable baseline damage.

Smite

This ability is useful when running in to a large group. Each hit has a chance to critically hit and thus proc hastened divinity. It will also proc your prayers and guilty soul.

Bludgeon

In the lower levels this will likely be your bread and butter attack. The higher your level the less useful it becomes. By Tier 4 you can safely remove this ability from your hotbar completely as you will be using divine strike instead. However in the lower levels you will have a distinct lack of damaging abilities and thus this one can be quite important for some time.

Absence of Faith

This ability can be worth getting. It is your personal choice whether you wish to use it or not. Some Wrath Priests choose not to use it and others do.

Soulfire

I consider this ability to be almost worthless. It gets set back significantly with every hit making it almost impossible to cast during combat. It serves no purpose smite cannot serve in this regard as smite cannot be set back. However it is worth noting that this is a curse. By cursing all your targets when running in you can use Weight of Guilt to snare a single target without first using Castigation. However I do not find this to be very useful at all. Some may find a use for this ability though.

Hammer of Sigmar

This is the highlight of the Wrath Tree. This is the one ability you do not leave home without. It is your single most damaging spell and when used on a target with under 50 percent health it will be responsible for your largest critical hits which can leave MDPS classes jealous. This is a must have. Note that this attack bugs out and doesn’t work unless you use another attack first so you can’t immediately use it on an almost dead target.

Divine Amazement

I personally do not use this ability. It is a rank four morale ability and requires 15 points into the Wrath Tree. It can be very useful in keep raids and scenarios alike but with immunity timers it isn’t that great and it doesn’t do any damage. For you it may be good and thus I would encourage you to try it out.

Grace Tree

Only the abilities that can possibly be used in Grace with 13 points deep in Wrath will be discussed.

Divine Strike

This is what I recommend for your “spam” ability instead of Bludgeon in Tier 4. For lower levels this will likely result in a lot less damage due to having no points in Grace. You should not really spam this ability however if you are trying to burst a target down. It is great for healing yourself and others around you but you have many other damaging attacks that are far more useful until you need to resort to Divine Strike as your damaging attack.

Sigmar’s Radiance

I often forget this ability has a melee heal attached to it due to how low it heals for and the fact that it does not effect you. Despite this it offers quite high damage and worth putting in your attack rotation in an effort to get your enemy below 50 percent health in order to use Hammer of Sigmar.

Vow of Silence

This is extremely useful. You will need to wait until level 35 but when you do get it bursting down casters and healers is a breeze. It also has some decent damage attached to it too.

Sigmar’s Fist

This is an excellent ability. It should be used as soon as possible in your attack rotation. Depending on the target I will use it before my snare if it is melee or after if it is a ranged opponent. Against ranged I will often use Vow of Silence first, followed by the snare, then Sigmar’s Fist. This is to stop your opponent both casting and moving.

Sigmar’s Vision

You should definitely get this ability. It does quite high base damage and also increases your parry by 10 percent which is useful against all melee classes including that elusive Witch Elf.

Sigmar’s Shield

It is possible to obtain this ability despite it being in the middle of the Grace Tree. It is very situational. I find it to be pretty useless. Don’t bother.

Salvation Tree

Divine Assault

This is the absolute highlight of a Wrath Priests healing ability. On a target with low armour you can heal yourself, or your defensive target, for thousands over just a few seconds. It scales by strength and thus is very useful even with no points in the Salvation Tree.

Divine Aid

Not much to say about this ability. It takes a lot of RF and doesn’t heal for much. However I still use it to heal others and myself and often preload it on myself before heading into combat. It is Useful but nothing to get excited about.

Touch of the Divine

This is great because it heals your whole group and gives you that burst heal. I don’t use it in combat at all but do use it out of combat or when getting hit by ranged. It doesn’t heal that well when not stacking willpower and using Divine Furybut it can still be quite a good ability.

Judgement

Not too much to say about this one. It scales by strength and can critically hit reasonably well and proc prayers. It’s only use is to catch runners and high Crowd Control targets like Squig Herders.

Recommended Builds

The Cookie Cutter Spec

Tri Spec Build

Greave of Sigmar Build

Prayers

Prayer of Devotion

This is useful when you want less burst and more survivability e.g. against tanks and MDPS. It is not that good against casters. You can switch prayers to this when needed.

Prayer of Righteousness

This is what I run most of the time since it does do a nice amount of extra damage. It procs on average 3 – 4 times on each target

Prayer of Absolution

I don’t really run this but it does add an extra 9% mitigation. Not worth it in my opinion.

Renown Points

Honestly I can’t tell you how to spec this. It depends on your current gear and what it lacks. You must spec renown into what compliments the rest of your gear. That being said I always do recommend 5 points in Might but after that you may choose to spec into initiative rather then say assault since it gives you significant survivability. When you get a good amount of points built up you can also spec into melee crit which I recommend.

Recommended Attack Rotation

Healers/Casters except Magus

On all squishy targets you should start with running in with Smite if possible then Vow of Silence, Castigation, Weight of Guilt, and then Sigmar’s Fist. This will silence and snare them and buff you. After this use Sigmar’s Vision, Sigmar’s Radiance, then Hammer of Sigmar. On non healers you can normally skip Sigmar’s Radiance and go straight for Hammer of Sigmar. If they still aren’t dead a couple of divine strikes will kill them.

Magus

Your attack rotation for the Magus is slightly different. In addition to the above you should use purge either when you first reach the Magus, after your silence, or after your snare is complete.
If you use purge when you first reach the Magus and you haven’t seen them cast their root recently this can be very dangerous as they will root you and run and thus you should silence then purge. However if the Magus is a flight risk and you feel you won’t have time to snare before it flees away you may like to silence, snare, then use purge. I prefer this approach. The reason you must do this is that Magus have a significant armour buff unless you purge it. This armour buff does not diminish with time however it will disappear after the Magus is attacked 20 times. The fact that you need to purge this target means that it may be not as high of a target as say a sorcerer. Although note that the Magus pull can be devastating to your side.

MDPS

MDPS have a habit of not running away so you don’t need to snare them right away. I start with Sigmar’s Fist, then Castigation and Weight of guilt to restrict their movement so they can’t easily circle strafe around me. I then use Sigmar’s Vision for the extra parry, Sigmar’s radiance, then if I can Hammer of Sigmar. If I can’t I just use divine strike until weight of guilt, Sigmar’s radiance, or Sigmar’s vision is up again. It really depends how tough they are and how good your gear is.
Often you will be using Divine Assault in this rotation as well as MDPS tend to do a lot of damage. Always stray off your standard attack rotation for Divine Assault if you need it.

Tanks

In scenarios you generally won’t be fighting tanks unless there is nothing left. If you have to though it is pretty similar to the MDPS attack rotation except make sure you have your HoTs on you at all times due to tanks mitigating and blocking your Divine Assault. You can just grind them down after that. There are always exceptions like DPS Chosen tanks which can be devastating. If you aren’t planning to get into a duel with one it will be a very tough fight and you could lose due to them debuffing all your resists. However in 1.2.1 this is getting nerfed. Until then if you know you are going to fight a DPS Chosen then stack plenty of spiritual resist and even swap out guilty soul for unwavering faith. You need around 1000 since they will debuff it by 378.

Advanced Play Style: Getting Position

When you start getting a hang for the Wrath Priest you should master positional combat. Despite not having any positional abilities this class, as is every class, a positional class. You must do everything you can get to get position on your target. What this means is hitting their back and sides. When you hit their back and sides they can’t block or parry. This is extremely important when using divine assault against MDPS careers which is quite common on the front lines.

The way to get position is to master circle strafing and strafe around your target. While this game does have auto face when your opponent is out of AP or on the global cool down then they will not auto face you. This will allow you to get behind them or to their sides to divine assault or land a devastating final blow. This is very important against MDPS; especially when they have their 100 percent parry morale up. You also need to circle strafe to prevent your opponent getting position on you. Remember that every class is a positional class and every class can parry and this includes you. Keep your opponent in front of you so that you have a chance to parry their attacks.

Another way to get position is to run through your target. If you run into your target for more than a few seconds you will run right through them and end up behind them. This can be good to run right through to divine assault on the other side.

If you are having problems with these concepts I recommend you play a Witch Hunter till level 20 or so and learn how to use their torment ability effectively. It will greatly enhance how you play against other melee careers.

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