[Video] M*A*S*H Justicar/Shaman/Warden PVP @ Rank 4

[taugrim]

Forward: this spec is significantly different from the healing specs that the majority of Clerics run in PVP. As I wrote in my Guide, I don't claim that this is the best PVP healing spec or better than what you are running, but in my experience it's effective in PVP, and it's fun-to-play. Other endgame Clerics have raved about this spec in this thread.

The M*A*S*H healer is a highly-mobile, durable melee Cleric with strong AoE healing capability. This spec differs significantly from traditional Cleric healing specs in that it is not based on cast-time abilities.

Here is the 28 Justicar / 26 Shaman / 12 Warden M*A*S*H spec:
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=00...Ved0tMo0z.Vt0z

Here are the narrated PVP videos which discuss the gameplay mechanics for the spec:

1. Rank 4 (1.4): Intro to M*A*S*H Spec: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K76QaF3qon0
2. Rank 4 (1.4.1): A Thrilling Codex Match: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13oCDqjk1fk
3. Rank 7 (1.5): Surviving Under Heavy Fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aImsGdM3vIw
   
4. Rank 7 (1.5): Pre-Kiting and Kiting FTW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I01vCb3RA8
5. Rank 8 (1.5): Rank 8 in Library of the Runemasters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxE9xy4O6UU

I've written a Guide about the M*A*S*H spec. As the Guide is under frequent revision, I am not ready to post it in full here. Here are the Table of Contents in the Guide:

1. What is the M*A*S*H Healer?
2. Spec Mechanics, Strengths, and Weaknesses
3. Testimonials
4. PVP Videos
5. Global Cooldown Management and Rotation
6. Macros
7. Stats / Weapons / Runes
8. Spec Background
9. Acknowledgements
10. About the Author

[Suplex]

I'm 1 bar from rank 5 but you have a few hundred more valor than I (if I saw that correctly as 840?) I have every armor piece from rank 3 and 4 and the unseen +valor trinket. Where did you get so much valor?

I don't have any enchants and my unseen rep is only at decorated...is this where I'm missing out?


I enjoyed the video. I just can't get the hang of melee healing. It really just doesn't fit for me for some reason. I've only ever played dps classes in WoW but I'm loving the healing on this cleric (until I meet anyone r6 or higher)

[taugrim]

I'm 1 bar from rank 5 but you have a few hundred more valor than I (if I saw that correctly as 840?) I have every armor piece from rank 3 and 4 and the unseen +valor trinket. Where did you get so much valor?

I had 845 in the video, but it's higher now (still Rank 4) because I bought the first epic PVP rep lesser planar essence.

Aside from the armor slots, here are the other +Valor items:

• 50 Valor chest rune
• the PVP faction planar focus (50 Valor) - absolute must have IMO
• the PVP faction lesser essences (25+ Valor each, although as I wrote on my Guide you can also buy the green +10 Valor BoE's that drop from PVP Rift participation)
• the PVP faction trinket (which you have)

I enjoyed the video. I just can't get the hang of melee healing. It really just doesn't fit for me for some reason.

Have you played a MDPS or kiting RDPS in PVP before?

Some folks are not comfortable with the mobile meleeing aspect - and IMO it takes a lot of practice and a good hotkey/strafing setup to be able to do it fluidly.

Some folks prefer to sit in a spot (usually in the back) and heal.

Some folks prefer to not have to worry about another resource mechanic (Convictions) and prefer to simply manage mana.

At any rate, stick with the spec(s) you feel comfortable and effective with. My M*A*S*H would probably suit people who are experienced in PVP as MDPS or kiting RDPS, because those roles share the same mobility characteristic and need for good movement/strafing, etc.

've only ever played dps classes in WoW but I'm loving the healing on this cleric (until I meet anyone r6 or higher)

RIFT healing is the most fun healing I've seen in any game - the degree of in-class customization is amazing, and the cross-class healing mechanics are very different. And there are plenty of cooldowns to manage and work with. It all makes for very non-repetitive play.

And players can create specs like this one that suit a particular type of playstyle (e.g. durable mobile meleer) that are still effective in a general role (e.g. healer).

[Rudin]

hey Taugrim!

I tried this spec before but with templar instead of warden. I have something to add if you dont mind- Whenever I play any setup with a Justicar soul I keep both mien buffs hotkeyed so I can rotate between tank buff and heal/dps buffs whenever I need. It is really nice to get all the survivability from tank mien when you get focused or is about to and then you can insta go back to heal or DPS just wasting one global cooldown for it.

If you decide to give it a try let me know how it goes

[Suplex]

Yea I gotta save up for the source engine and essences. I bought the 7k ish planarite one instead because I didnt know there was a pvp engine. When I hit a new rank, I buy the armor before weapons/trinkets/essences as they are the bigger stat gains. Losing more than 50% of games is starting to grind on me. I'm losing out on more favor and it only gets worse with higher ranks. What I need is a good pvp guild or a defiant dominated battle group Haven't been in a single premade. Anyway. I'll check out your guides and see what else I've been missing out on.

[InferiOmega]

Hey Taugrim, I posted as Infares on the LOTRO forum.

Lately I've been using a 44 inquisitor/18 justicar/4 warden hybrid for PVP and also pve grinding (would most likely put the points in Vengeful Justice into Humility/Shield of Faith otherwise).

I switched to it from the other inquisicar spec I was using (33inq/29jus/4wdn) and found the loss of mitigation didn't really matter given the extra damage and healing I was doing, and there were many times I wished I had Circle of Oblivion and/or 1.5 second BoJs which the former spec lacked.

Your spec looks pretty fun and I might give it a whirl.

But yeah, I was already sort of treating the above two inquisicar variants in much the same way as your MASH spec, as a healer first, although I didn't go deeply enough into Warden (Might try an inquisicar variant that does, actually) and the earlier revs of the build went more Justicar heavy, just had enough Inquisitor for Aggressive Renewal, and instead went 15-17 points into Templar for Little off the Top and Rolling Punches (The former of which is of pretty limited use when your only single target heals are in the form of Bliss and Righteousness.).

The main reason I abandoned going more justicar heavy for the extra mitigation is primarily that I was rank 4 (now 5) and if you're being focus fired, there's generally no saving you regardless of your mitigation, and being primarily ranged meant that melees would generally have to overextend to get at you which is the main mechanical superiority in staying ranged over melee in general. The current state of warriors though means that half the time if one is ranked and geared, he can go as deeply into your back line as he wants and he isn't technically 'overextended' to the extent that other melees would be in the same situation, but at least at that point their pocket healers do have to push farther forward which makes it sorta salvageable if they can be picked off properly.

On paper, at least (And in practice having seen your video) I'd say this is a really solid melee justicar variant and it definitely looks entertaining.

hey Taugrim!

I tried this spec before but with templar instead of warden. I have something to add if you dont mind- Whenever I play any setup with a Justicar soul I keep both mien buffs hotkeyed so I can rotate between tank buff and heal/dps buffs whenever I need. It is really nice to get all the survivability from tank mien when you get focused or is about to and then you can insta go back to heal or DPS just wasting one global cooldown for it.

If you decide to give it a try let me know how it goes

I do this too, and have made macros of Mien of Leadership and Honor with a 2h on the latter and a mace/shield setup for the former for when things get excessively dicey.

[InferiOmega]

Also, looking over the spec, do you think swapping a couple points from Fluidity to Restorative Tide might be a decent change? It seems like in melee you'll be the subject of crits a lot (Even crit dots etc) and you may gain some self preservation with this change despite lowering your HoT effectiveness by just a hair. How often do you cast Deluge? You may gain from just going 13 warden (with the above change) and swap the extra point into Lust for Blood, or even just putting 1 into Restorative Tide, going 12 in Warden and maxing Lust for Blood out. Your healing wouldn't take that big of a hit (Primarily if you never use Deluge anyways) but you'd see a decent increase in killing power.

[taugrim]

Whenever I play any setup with a Justicar soul I keep both mien buffs hotkeyed so I can rotate between tank buff and heal/dps buffs whenever I need. It is really nice to get all the survivability from tank mien when you get focused or is about to and then you can insta go back to heal or DPS just wasting one global cooldown for it.

Yo Rudin! It's great to be on the same server and faction again as your guild. Your crew rocks and doesn't have an elitist attitude.

I have both Miens hotkeyed, they're mapped to 1 and 2.

I used to swap Miens at lower levels, but here's the rub

• When you switch to MoL, your Max HP goes up but your current HP doesn't change
• If you are taking heavy focus fire and your incoming heals isn't outpacing the incoming damage, the higher Max HP doesn't provide any value and the only benefit you get from MoL is the armor bonus, which matters to the extent you are taking Physical damage. The armor bonus used to be more helpful back in 1.3 and early 1.4 before the nerfs to the Warrior Champ and Paragon trees, but now a lot of Warriors are running Riftblade or VK with Champ and the amount of Physical damage has gone down
• Doctrine healing drops significantly without the 50% bonus from MoH
• Once you activate/swap a Mien, you have to wait 6 seconds before you can swap back to the other one

For the above reasons, Mien-swapping hasn't been as helpful as I might have hoped.

I mostly stay in MoH for the Doctrine healing buff, and I use my mobility / snares / punts to get out of trouble, which is one of the strengths of the spec. The kiting mechanics rock. In a pinch I do switch to MoL, e.g. if I'm the FC and I'm backed by good healing.

Hey Taugrim, I posted as Infares on the LOTRO forum.

It's been 4 years since I've we posted back and forth on the LOTRO Captain forum. Good to hear from you again

Lately I've been using a 44 inquisitor/18 justicar/4 warden hybrid for PVP and also pve grinding (would most likely put the points in Vengeful Justice into Humility/Shield of Faith otherwise).

The main reason I abandoned going more justicar heavy for the extra mitigation is primarily that I was rank 4 (now 5) and if you're being focus fired, there's generally no saving you regardless of your mitigation, and being primarily ranged meant that melees would generally have to overextend to get at you which is the main mechanical superiority in staying ranged over melee in general

Yea, playing ranged has the advantage of distance and being able to kite before things get ugly.

That being said, the 15% passive Justicar mitigation is huge IMO.

I was just testing with a Mage and the crits without Shield of Faith were over 700 but with SoF were under 600. So the mitigation seems to stack and work correctly with Valor, at least at my Valor level of 868.

I'm relatively low ranked @ 4 compared to most players in PVP but have been able to survive under some heavy focus fire.

I do this too, and have made macros of Mien of Leadership and Honor with a 2h on the latter and a mace/shield setup for the former for when things get excessively dicey.

In other games, where block is avoidance, swapping to 1H + shield provides a huge benefit.

In RIFT, block is mitigation, and for a Cleric without the talents for increasing block, the base block % is anemic (like 1%).

So all you really get for swapping from 2H to 1H is armor, but Cleric shields don't have much of that stat and armor is only good against Physical damage. So it can help a bit to swap weapons, but not to the extent I've seen in other games.

I'm losing out on more favor and it only gets worse with higher ranks. What I need is a good pvp guild or a defiant dominated battle group Haven't been in a single premade. Anyway. I'll check out your guides and see what else I've been missing out on.

Not sure what you mean by gets worse with higher ranks. My healing output and survivability jumped significantly from R1->R2, R2->R3, and R3->R4. I can't wait to get to R5 and R6

So you'll be a stronger healer as you rank up and have more influence on the outcomes of warfronts.

At any rate, let me know if you have any questions.

Also, looking over the spec, do you think swapping a couple points from Fluidity to Restorative Tide might be a decent change? It seems like in melee you'll be the subject of crits a lot (Even crit dots etc) and you may gain some self preservation with this change despite lowering your HoT effectiveness by just a hair.

Fluidity buffs Healing Flood, which is a great ability.

I haven't tested with RT yet - does it scale with stats aside from Wisdom?

If the answer is no, for PVP the HoT would probably be too small - and moreover spread over too long a time - to provide significant value.
If the answer is yes, it would depend how well it scales.

How often do you cast Deluge? You may gain from just going 13 warden (with the above change) and swap the extra point into Lust for Blood, or even just putting 1 into Restorative Tide, going 12 in Warden and maxing Lust for Blood out. Your healing wouldn't take that big of a hit (Primarily if you never use Deluge anyways) but you'd see a decent increase in killing power.

I only use Deluge in situations where 1 player is getting focused repeatedly (e.g. FC in Black Garden).

I go 14 instead of 12 in Warden to buff my HoT healing with Fluidity, not necessarily to get Deluge.

Given that most of my GCDs are used for Life-based attacks, further investment in LfB won't really help from a DPS perspective. For a Shaman-heavy spec using GCDs for Massive Blow / Crushing Blow and with their associated talents, absolutely Lust for Blood is awesome. For a Life-based Justicar healer, not so much.

[InferiOmega]

AFIK Restorative Tide might increase with Favor of the Valnir, and if you use Courage of the Eagle it'd get buffed further.

Might drop my pvp straight healing spec for yours now that I have 51 justicar for tanking (works good for support too) and my inquisicar spec otherwise. Should be fun.

And yeah, if you're going deep enough into Shaman to get all the Massive Blow stuff, Lust for Blood is more or less a filler point. Hell, might see if you can stick it someplace else altogether.

[InferiOmega]

Boo, edit window.

2/3 Devout Deflection will provide much more benefit than the points in Vengeful Justice IMO, especially once you factor in a Burning Powerstoned p4 or better hammer.

[taugrim]

Boo, edit window.

2/3 Devout Deflection will provide much more benefit than the points in Vengeful Justice IMO, especially once you factor in a Burning Powerstoned p4 or better hammer.

I've gone back and forth on Vengeful Justice and Devout Deflection.

I have found some points in Vengeful Justice to be helpful in close quarters with clumped enemies, e.g. around flags. So I've kept 2 points in it. I think 1-2 is enough, 3 really is needed only in PVE situations (e.g. Duracell).

Devout Deflection is an interesting talent. Without it, our Parry and Dodge are negligible, < 1% combined. With 3/3 DD provides 18+% combined mitigation. So in PVP you do end up avoiding non-spell attacks. But you also trigger the reactive on-Dodge/on-Parry abilities that some melee specs have, and some attacks are not Dodgeable / Parryable.

This all points back to the fact that spec'ing in RIFT is about making real tradeoff decisions, which is really cool.

[liddan]

As with almost any hybrid it's not ideal for group gameplay.

At any given time you will have to choose either a healing ability or a damaging ability. If you have used one part of the points to improve damage and one part to improve healing, you wont do either as efficiently as possible.

Hybrids are good for 1v1 but for group gameplay it's always better to have people focused on one role. I've heard arguments along the lines of "hybrids can do what the situation call for". True but you have up to five roles and it takes just a few seconds to switch. Get atleast one good dps build and one good healing build and ditch the hybrids. I've tried enough of them to know that it's not the most efficient way to play.

[liddan]

Should add that I only encourage clerics to dps in the rarest of occassions. Make a chloro switch to dps before you do.

Only cleric dps that can contend with other classes' is the cabalist and that's only when you have extreme amounts of sp. 2k+ preferably.
I want mdps to be good and I want inquisitor and full justicar-hit-for-healing to be viable but it just isn't. If anyone can prove me wrong - go ahead.

[taugrim]

As with almost any hybrid it's not ideal for group gameplay.

At any given time you will have to choose either a healing ability or a damaging ability. If you have used one part of the points to improve damage and one part to improve healing, you wont do either as efficiently as possible.

I don't consider this a hybrid. It's a durable, mobile, AOE healer first and foremost, and with its mechanics it can provide some decent burst and positional control.

I've typically been top 1-3 in healing in warfronts at R4 (and at R3 for that matter), even at this point in the game when there are R5-R8 players in every match, including the one in this video. So I am outhealing players who have superior gear.

It's not like I roll in high-ranked easy-mode premades either, most of my guildees are mid-ranked like me since we re-rolled to our current server.

Granted, healing numbers are not the only important indicator of healer performance, but it's an important number.

I want mdps to be good and I want inquisitor and full justicar-hit-for-healing to be viable but it just isn't. If anyone can prove me wrong - go ahead.

Did you actually watch the video?

I'm not expecting to generate much healing via hit-for-healing - the mechanics simply aren't there for Justicar. That's pretty obvious. This spec's healing is based on the AoE heals DoL and HF, not Reparation healing.

Also, looking over the spec, do you think swapping a couple points from Fluidity to Restorative Tide might be a decent change?

By the way, I tested and RT is as impotent I was expecting. You'd be better off closing your eyes and clicking 2 points elsewhere

[liddan]

I don't consider this a hybrid. It's a durable, mobile, AOE healer first and foremost, and with its mechanics it can provide some decent burst and positional control.

An AOE-healer with a total of 27 points that doesn't aid mana gain, survivability or healing in any way. It's a hybrid.

I've typically been top 1-3 in healing in warfronts at R4 (and at R3 for that matter), even at this point in the game when there are R5-R8 players in every match, including the one in this video. So I am outhealing players who have superior gear.

And by going senticar and spamming DoL you'd be top 1. Why the other clerics don't outheal you when all you have is DoL is beyond me. They probably use mainly single target healing because against any opponent team with focused dps they'd have to in order to keep people alive.

Did you actually watch the video?

I'm not expecting to generate much healing via hit-for-healing - the mechanics simply aren't there for Justicar. That's pretty obvious. This spec's healing is based on the AoE heals DoL and HF, not Reparation healing.

Never said you were. It was an example of a build that I want to be as viable as the other builds but it just isn't.

Surely you must agree that it's more efficient distribution of points to have one healer and one dps rather than two characters that can do both things. Right? It's just common sense.

Edit: Should add that I definitely think people should play what they enjoy but since this obviously is a discussion of tactics, I'll critize the build.