Hi, after looking through the Soulmaker skill tree i see great potential for multiple builds despite the small singular tree. Although the dps looks somewhat low theres tons of utility in the tree that you'd probably do slightly more than a dps priest while although the healing tree looks some what lacking it has tools at its disposable to make it possible, perhaps with practice you could potentially heal 5 mans. With that said my end game healing experience is non-existent. Obviously whether you decide to spec for dps or healing the main reason and must have skills that make you important is the amazing buffs provided by the middle tree. As far as I'm concern as long as you have your buffs up your useful regardless of how little you heal or dps, you'd even be useful RO1 bard afking. A big problem I've noticed besides SP costs that I will mention in the healing tree, is that every thing has a cast time of at least 1 second and Immunity having a 2 second cast. For this build I focused on agility for crit with int as a secondary, I'm not sure what to card as of yet.
I'll first start by saying pretty much every thing in the buff tree is a must have since they are amazing buffs. Exploration seams Ok for leveling but standing so close to a group of enemies and casting seams like suicide leading me to think leaving a single point in Exploration is fine just as a prerequisite. Soul link: Devotion is used for the rez and the link damage seams suicidal so a single point in this skill should suffice. All other skills should be max rank in this tree as they just provide amazing utility (even if Soul Link: Balance is single target)
My first look at the skill tree in the healing tree leads me to these first observations. The soul keeper doesn't have an Aqua Benedicta mana regeneration skill or Water arms type of mana regeneration. While priests and sorcs could get by Ok perhaps with just pots the mana costs on their skills are WAY less. Your restore at rank 5 costs 25 SP! Your basic heal is even higher than highness heal as well as all of the other priest and sorc heals. Restoration is 26 SP at 5 and cure is 27 SP. However the plus side seams to be that they heal for very big amounts comparatively with cure although starting small growing very large. Another backing of them having large heals is the fact that they prefer to have high agility and crit chance to increase the buff bond %'s. This leads me to conclude that your ideally going to want to be spamming skills trying to achieve crits. At rank 1 Restore is 1 Sp and heals for more than rank 5 heal, it grows at 6 SP per rank and gains 5% magic per rank. If you want to spam this all day I'd consider leaving the rank low. Rank 1 for all day spam or 2 or 3 for larger heals. Restoration grows at 6 SP per rank and gains 3% magic at rank 2 and 3 but only 2% at rank 4 and 5. This growth rate leads me to considering only putting 3 points into the skill. Cure is the skill that confuses me more. I assume refreshing cure will reapply the buff as well as erase the scaling hot effect from the previous making it not ideal to cure the same target twice during the buff duration. Cure cannot crit and has a cast time for a HoT effect. It grows at 6 SP also per rank and only 1% magic per point. However the 1% will be applied for 15 ticks over 30 seconds giving it 15% per rank. Additionally the scaling progression of the HoT makes having a higher base bring a higher pay off. This skill has mixed bag of problems and advantages and I'm glad it does, hopefully other people will have better a analysis and conclusion of it.
For the other healing skills, Cure pearl isn't bad but its utility seams somewhat limited for the 30 second orb pickup heal cool down, however it seams that making a poor mans light well and ability to have an instant burst heal (run into orbs, preemptively cast) is very important. It scales at 6 SP per rank as all other healing skills but has 3% and 4% magic scaling at alternating ranks. This making putting 2 or 4 points in the skill is not optimal. The heavily increased cost at higher ranks of the skill for small pay out seams to be discouraging. Dispell and detection look like cool but unreliable pvp abilities.
Looking at the DPS tree gives me mixed feelings. I've seen many people talk about the synergy between Death Spell and Mental Breakdown and I see the aoe potential but pointing multiple points in these skills feels like a waist as the dps is probably sufficient at rank 1. Soul Extinction does great damage of a 1 second cast time but its 5 second cooldown makes it unspamable for the likes of leveling and dps. Soul Extinction mastery looks great for pvp and if you plan on doing colo I'd want this skill at max, a 3 second root on a 5 second cool down. Sacrifice hits REALLY hard and seams worth maxing as the scaling looks great and is very worth the 10% hp hit, the 30 second cooldown is the worst draw back. Awake : Soulmate looks really good and gives you yet another reason to get crit. Immunity is a 2 second cast with a 10 second cool down, the heal requires your allies to be close to the target thus making it seam situational at beast. The cast time makes it unusable in pvp.
With all that said I've made a few builds with all focusing on the buffs, I wouldn't be looking to replace a priest but if your desperate your off healing might be enough (for 5 mans), especially if you have a beast master tank. Ideally you'd want to replace a DPS as your buffs alone bring the utility to justify your presence.
The build I was looking at for general support with healing and damage options that focus on a pve and pvp hybrid would be this build (Focus on Soul Ex Mastery)
http://www.ro2base.c...9.1.2/0.0.0.0.0
An alternate pve build I was looking to focus on was improving Restore, however putting the extra points into Cure Pearl or Cure instead seam like competitive options
http://www.ro2base.c...9.1.2/0.0.0.0.0
I'd appreciate constructive criticism as well as counter arguments for focusing on different skills, ranking skills and stat focus.
Edited by DarkTycon, 10 September 2013 - 10:53 AM.