Fixing Divine Herald

[SaltedSalmon]

To make a short version of what I discussed elsewhere(My apologies to the forum-only users!),
EDIT: Apologies for not actually making a short post, I only had enough time to make a long one.

What's wrong with Divine Herald?
It doesn't have much of a direction to speak of. Their defining aspect, the rider abilities, aren't very good for actual fights and most of the people using this class are in it for the 2 Infinite Attacks, or the always active movement ability. Seriously, lets look over the class:

RIDER ABILITIES

All 4 rider abilities cost 90 Character Points, total, to obtain. That is of dubious cost already, considering their
Your first purchase before the actual skill, costing 30 CP, is probably bad. Dust to Dust is a hard counter to Liches and Revenants, I guess. The innate weapons before war/conquest are also odd. On a class like this you most likely want to deal the highest damage per swing and not being able to use enchants hurts that. They're not completely useless or anything, but they really feel more like 30 CP filler made to slow down the unlock of your actual abilities.
The exception to this is Steadfast Resolve, which is better than Harbinger of Judgement. DHs are not soak heavy and not able to use its 2 damage unsoakable aura very well, the electric damage restriction is a downside, and the +accuracy thing may have been good but Steadfast Resolve is much better for that.

As for the actual rider abilities, they're underwhelming. Some of them get pranked by Nexus Champions, and as I said I can't see someone paying 60/90 points for them.

THE BIG ONES

Everyone is here for Infinite+Righteous Attack Feet of Wind and Enhanced Senses.
This section doesn't even really need explaining, its just silly that the main appeal of a class is some generic stuff which multiple classes have, but this class happens to have the best slice of. Best damage boosts(+9 damage total), best movement(0.5 AP per tile movement, PASSIVE), and the useful-but-not-always-present enhanced senses.

Now.
I actually think its fitting that this class has good movement, high damage, and senses, but...
I don't know. We already have Eternal Soldier for that.

STUFF NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE ABOUT

Holy Fury goes here, I think. I do think maybe this one is useful, but
Demon Tracker is also underwhelming.

So with that in mind, I'm making a suggestions thread. Let me post a few things then...
I think Divine Herald should get a focus first. The whole rider forms thing is already done better by the Holy Champion's mantles anyways, even the mixed-element mantles are generally more useful than rider forms. Let us... Move on from all that.
The problem is, what gimmick should we give this class, if any? It seems like it needs something completely new.

I'm sorry, I intended to write a bit more, but I feel the need to sleep.

[Saint_Jimmy]

Grabbing the stats from the skills page:

Divine Herald Skills

Crimson Gladius (30 CP) - 23
Harbinger of War (60 CP) - 16
Demon Tracker (30 CP) - 52
Dust to Dust (30 CP) - 15
Harbinger of Death (60 CP) - 9
Enhanced Senses (30 CP) - 45
Feet of the Wind (30 CP) - 48
Holy Fury (30 CP) - 9
Infinite Attack (30 CP) - 48
Righteous Attack (60 CP) - 39
Oaken Greatbow (30 CP) - 30
Harbinger of Conquest (60 CP) - 22
Steadfast Resolve (30 CP) - 24
Harbinger of Judgement (60 CP) - 18




tldr: if you're going DH, you probably always pick up Infinite/Righteous attack+ your combat tree (assuming the people who haven't picked it up are people who either idled out before picking it up, or are people in the process of levelling and picking it up).


Anyway, my experiences with DH:

I wanted steadfast resolve because yay accuracy. but couldn't afford it on top of my other skills - I took dust to dust purely because of Harbinger of Death - AP + MP refund on kill is nice on a raid. Iirc (note that it's been a few years since I played my DH so can't remember the details on the stacking), if both Death and Conquest are active you get death damage, which is honestly kinda a pain because that's 1.5 classes you can't really kill then.

I went bows because duh. Grabbed ES because I wanted to try hunting with them, didn't particularly enjoy demon hunter but that was prior to it being buffed so that might be different now. Conquest was a solid pick up for me because even though you're almost never going to have the max bonus, it's still worth toggling for raids. I didn't hunt enough in the end to be able to properly judge it when hunting.

I do think it's hurt by being a worse form of air cloak in almost every way.

[catvom]

My personal experience from when Bob Ross was a feral melee DH.

The "gimmick" for this class is that they are the Good aligned hunter class, the mirror to the VW if you will. Hence the movement, ES, Demon hunter etc. And in my experience they do this very well.

As a feral with no access to enchants, the innate weapons granted by the various forms were super useful, no need for maintenance.

As I recall I had Harbinger of War and Judgement. Both of which were pretty useful, if only for the passive bonuses to accuracy and damage. I have never played a holy champion, so cannot comment on the comparison there.

Demon Tracker was fantastically useful for a dedicated demon hunter, and directly contributed to Bob Ross being number one demon hunter in the nexus (last breath, this breath he went Seraph to do other things, and now is only number 2). I mainly used it in urban/semi urban areas to eliminate large portions of the map without having to go inside each building to check for demons. Especially on planes with no power for shadow hunting. And this was before it distinguished PCs in SHs.

Holy fury directly contributed to him being the preeminent pet killer in the Nexus. It was possible to take out entire Hellhound packs without having a huge soak, due to the regen effect. This was before aura kills contributed to stats, so yes this is now outdone by a tank with an aura.

Now I acknowledge that this would be different as a member of an organised faction, but as a feral the class was actually pretty awesome.

All of that said, I agree that they are not particularly interesting and I am happy to hear any suggestions to improve them further
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Bob Ross | Feral | 3628 - Catvom | Feral | 3627 - Haldos Jnr. | RRF | 3659 - MonkeyDawg | PoR | 3631 - A Speciality Priest of Tempus | Lawful Good | 4489
Retribution | Eternals | 9134 - Minsc | Scales of Namm the Vigilant | 9008

[Kandarin]

Exalted Harbinger is getting some pretty big changes in B5 (as evidenced by the class actually being renamed).