Step ONE to fixing ranged healers: inherit melee healer cast times! [Archive]

Astral

01-05-2009, 12:33 PM

Perhaps ranged healers -- Zealots, Shaman, Rune Priests, and Archmages -- aren't broken per se, but the general tone on these forums is that, in recent days, they are significantly less capable than the melee healers -- Disciples of Khaine and Warrior Priests. "Capable" here refers to two principal areas: healing throughput and survivability.

Many of the ranged healer weaknesses are too shared by melee healers -- they certainly aren't without their share of problems -- but at least one is not and it's that particular weakness that is addressed in this topic: cast times.

Melee healers have greatly abbreviated cast times for two of the primary healing tools shared by all six healing classes; the directHeal+HoT and the group heal.
Melee healers spend 0.5 seconds casting Divine Aid (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8238)/Restore Essence (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9548). Ranged healers spend 1.0 seconds casting Healing Energy (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9236) and similar.

Melee healers spend 1.0 seconds casting Touch of the Divine (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8247)/Khaine's Embrace (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9557) with a 2.0 second cooldown. Ranged healers spend 3.0 seconds casting Blessing of Isha (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9245) and similar with a zero second cooldown.

Ranged healers also spend 2.5 seconds casting Boon of Hysh (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9242) and similar. The melee healer analogue is a melee-range channel (Divine Assault (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8244)/Rend Soul (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9554)) and not directly comparable.

What's the fix? Model cast times for the directHeal+HoT, group heal, and large single-target heal used by ranged healers after the melee healer versions. I'm linking Archmage versions, but the change would affect Zealot, Shaman, and Rune Priest as well.
Healing Energy (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9236) has a 0.5 second cast time.
Blessing of Isha (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9245) has a 1.0 second cast time and a 2.0 second cooldown.
Boon of Hysh (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9242) has a 1.0 second cast time and a 1.5 second cooldown.

What issues does the fix address? It certainly won't fix all the ailings of the ranged healer sub-archetype, but it will affect the two principal areas briefly noted above: throughput and survivability.
Long casts are incredibly prone to set-back from attacks, even when they aren't specifically penalized thus (reference pre-1.0.6 single target heals where a 90% complete cast bar would reset to zero after the caster sustains a single hit). Even with the penalty now mostly gone (debate continues as to whether they are still classified as "fragile" per the tooltips), the long casts are still highly vulnerable to delay and interruption, and are completely unwieldly to cast when affected by so much as a single disorient effect or when under attack from any singular entity. Throughput will go up by some degree with less time wasted channeling cast bars.

Movement is a key element to survivability in WAR, particularly the ability to move with the flow of combat so as not to be caught in a position of vulnerability. Long cast times greatly hinder the degree to which ranged healers are able to exercise mobility. Survivability will be somewhat improved with less time wasted channeling cast bars.

This idea has been offhandedly mentioned in various topics, and is certainly of enough merit to warrant a thread. Would changing ranged healer cast times as described be a good move for the game? Do ranged healers need changes? Would this change help either throughput or survivability?

Khaelann

01-05-2009, 02:00 PM

Asteria

01-05-2009, 02:32 PM

How about they remove the 8s cooldown from Rend Soul and Divine Assault then too? It is 3s channel with a 8s cooldown, meaning that you can drop several big heals in that time. If they'd go trough with your suggestions then you could do what, 6-7 big heals in the same time making our healing output totally inferior.

While we're at it, drop the casting times on our heals too. We need the mobility more than backline healers as we're actually up there fighting.

No, I don't think Rend Soul or Divine Assault should be reduced, if anything, it should be raised up. WPs and DoKs already have the advantage of medium armor opposed to robes and certainly shouldn't have more. Backline healers SHOULD be able to out heal a hybrid class, because that is what the word hybrid implies - jack of all trades, master of none. You shouldn't be able to out-heal a caster, but that's the case as it is. I agree with the OP's idea, and hopefully it's implemented sooner rather than later.

Khaelann

01-05-2009, 02:43 PM

No, I don't think Rend Soul or Divine Assault should be reduced, if anything, it should be raised up. WPs and DoKs already have the advantage of medium armor opposed to robes and certainly shouldn't have more. Backline healers SHOULD be able to out heal a hybrid class, because that is what the word hybrid implies - jack of all trades, master of none. You shouldn't be able to out-heal a caster, but that's the case as it is. I agree with the OP's idea, and hopefully it's implemented sooner rather than later.

All healers are hybrids per se. 2 out of 6 are melee and 4 out of 6 are ranged. It's just that the mechanics for the ranged healers arent working as Mythic envisioned and advertised in the beginning. They should focus on fixing that and the broken abilities before anything else. And yes, getting rid of the global +0.5s cast time bug would help all the healers, especially the ranged ones who are now forced to stay put for even longer than really needed.

Astral

01-05-2009, 03:01 PM

Bolding for emphasis,

While we're at it, drop the casting times on [melee healer] heals too. We need the mobility more than backline healers as we're actually up there fighting.

I don't think the bolded statement is an invalid position at all; the lowered cast times (if ranged healer spells are to be considered the "baseline") on melee healer spells was a wise design move. Melee healers absolutely need to maintain as much mobility as possible, and their cast times reflect that. However, I don't think it invalidates any points related to the need that ranged healers equally have for mobility. After all, if you're not mobile, you aren't going to be ranged for very long, are you?

The rest of your points are at best unrelated to the topic. If it's your position that melee healers need cast time reductions of their own, then I surely won't discourage you from starting a thread concerning that; they bear no relation to any ranged healer issue.

Khaelann

01-05-2009, 04:03 PM

However, I don't think it invalidates any points related to the need that ranged healers equally have for mobility. After all, if you're not mobile, you aren't going to be ranged for very long, are you?

And this isnt just about cast times but class synergy and team composition. When you have enough tanks to actually form a defensive line that is then used to push towards the enemy the ranged healers do stay ranged even with the current cast times. As to smaller fights, your own team and how it uses CC is the defining factor more than anything else and as such taking a look at those things would be in order before just changing the cast times.

Yes, there's a problem with the survivability of pretty much all classes in big fights and for healers it is even worse because we're focus fire targets for pretty much any decent enemies. However, when there's still alot of skills and tactics that arent working as they should be and there's an actual cast time bug that increases it globably I think doing something as drastic as cutting all the heal timers is not the best move. First they need to fix the broken stuff, then evaluate the problem and then adjust. Adjusting before fixing will just lead to new problems in the long run.

Also, I'm not a fan of whack-a-mole type of play and as such just decreasing all the timers by default is something I dont like even in principle. I'd go for buffs that are limited duration but allow casting on the move for example. Or speed your spells. Make these core abilities and give different ones to the different healers to make them more diverse. Say an AM would excel in instant or near instant heals while running the buff(a 30s-2min with a cooldown to balance it) while the RP would be able to cast his heals with the normal cast times but moving would not break the cast. And mirror that on Destruction or even have slight variations.

This would make it more strategic and also make the healers have different roles. For very intense fights you would want that instant healer, right? And when you're doing hit and run tactics you would want that moving RP even though he cant drop a heal as fast.

Astral

01-05-2009, 04:23 PM

In theory, I don't have much argument with your point about fixing broken abilities before implementing changes, Khaelann. In actual practice, though, I'm not quite sure which survival-type abilities you're pointing out as broken. Offhand, I can't really think of more than one or two across all healers that fit the bill as being outrightly broken. Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough, though -- if you have specific examples particularly for ranged healers I'd be interested in knowing of them.

I'd go for buffs that are limited duration but allow casting on the move for example. Or speed your spells. Make these core abilities and give different ones to the different healers to make them more diverse. Say an AM would excel in instant or near instant heals while running the buff(a 30s-2min with a cooldown to balance it) while the RP would be able to cast his heals with the normal cast times but moving would not break the cast. And mirror that on Destruction or even have slight variations.

This would make it more strategic and also make the healers have different roles. For very intense fights you would want that instant healer, right? And when you're doing hit and run tactics you would want that moving RP even though he cant drop a heal as fast.

Aside from your cooldown-centric point-of-view (I take the opposite here; the absence of long-duration ability cooldowns is a strength in my assessment), the remarks on healer class variety are very well taken. There's a scandalous dearth of variety amongst healers in general and ranged healers in particular. I don't have much hope in any sort of wide-reaching revamp that could address this issue, but the game would be a better one with more varied, interesting, and dynamic support roles.

jaydub

01-05-2009, 05:56 PM

give the shaman and AM channeled spell that does damage and heal for 350% of damage done.

just turn our current 6 second channel to a 3 second channel leave the same damage and make it heal for 350% damage done.

as an AM, i can heal better in rvr as a WP only for PVE where healing 1 target very consistently is where i do better on the AM. all other normal situations WP is better then AM for healer. the WP doesn't have to melee any more now that they have tomes so i can play the WP very much like the AM only down side is having to channel to regain more rightious fury in some situations. plus they have increased survivability and far more versility then the AM. str increases their healing for melee based moves for AM/shaman there is like 1 spell that heals for damage done and it is 24 second dot it is so useless. i use it to put long dots casters just to slow down cast time for classes that have long casts.

Sibelle

01-05-2009, 06:48 PM

jaydub

01-05-2009, 08:24 PM

with 1 second cast time and 2 second cool down is a lot faster then 3 second cast and zero recast

global cool downs start when the spell ends not when they cool down ends. global cool down is 1.5

just an example

with 1 second cast 2 second cool down you could cast every 3 seconds

with 3 second cast and 0 cool down it would take 4.5 seconds every cast after the first.

so with 1 second cast and 2 second recast you would be able to cast group heal a little more often. the huge PLUS would be being able to cast the same heal in 1 second vs 3 seconds. when getting hit with anything 1 second spells are easy to cast, 3 second not so easy.

when using focus mind group heal would be a about the same. 3 second spell @ 50% cast time reduction is 1.5 + 1.5 GCD = 3 seconds to start casting again.

with 1 second cast time at 50% would be .5 seconds + 1.5 GCD getting overlapped by spell cool down of 2 would be total of 2.5 seconds to cast again.

the ONLY down side IMO is the spell coefficient for WP. 3 seconds spells get max coefficient where 1 second spells get less. so our group heal would be a little less powerful but we could cast it faster and be much less stationary. i rarely run out of AP casting group heal. wild healing + group heal = 95% of the time wild healing is up.

i agree on spell push back. another thing i think is not right. melee have almost no abilitys with cast time yet caster have to deal with spell push back and melee dont. just like + cast time debuffs. they slow down melee attacks that cant get pushed back while it makes casters have to deal with longer cast time getting pushed back even more.

Astral

01-05-2009, 10:53 PM

with 1 second cast time and 2 second cool down is a lot faster then 3 second cast and zero recast

global cool downs start when the spell ends not when they cool down ends. global cool down is 1.5

It's even better than you describe; the global cooldown starts when the spell cast starts. For a 1.0s cast heal with a 2.0s cooldown, the global cooldown will finish 0.5 seconds after the cast fires, leaving time for a full ability activation before the first cooldown has expired.

Spam-casting with Focused Mind would be very marginally slower with the proposed style of change, but the other 50 seconds will have far greater mobility and healing output. Even the Focused Mind period could be more versatile; one could chain cast group/single heals alternatively with time to spare for movement. Still, I couldn't argue that the 10s Focused Mind stationary-group-heal-turret playstyle wouldn't be slightly hurt.

Question

01-06-2009, 02:13 AM

chemicalpoet

01-06-2009, 03:06 AM

Am i the only one who sees that the reason melee healers have lower cast times is because well they are melee and need righteous fury/soul essence to cast the same abilities that ranged healers dont need to stockpile for?

They "stockpile" in the form of a book/chalice, and that's it. It's a moot point because the passive regen rate is so high when these off-hand items are equipped.

I do believe melee healers should have lower cast times, it makes sense, but when hybrids (they are hybrids, and the ranged healers are in no way a hybrid in the same sense--think red mage from Final Fantasy.) should not be as effective as they are currently in contrast to ranged healers.

Ranged healers should have, at least, much higher spell coefficients, if the spells are going to be as similar as they are. As it stands right now, clothies do a smidge more healing with a couple of their spells only due to usually stacking more willpower.

So, we have some options to look at if we considering some of these things. We either nerf the melee healers, which would P-off a lot of healers already that say "this is all we have!", or we buff the ranged healer's overall healing power and potentially making healers in general over powered in most parts of the game.

I'm sure Mythic could come up with a creative way of making them both usable, but only time will tell. The things is, healers are starting to lose patience rapidly (I know 13 healers that have either rerolled or quit in T4 so far.)

Mallander

01-06-2009, 03:30 AM

Am i the only one who sees that the reason melee healers have lower cast times is because well they are melee and need righteous fury/soul essence to cast the same abilities that ranged healers dont need to stockpile for?

I'm quite happy for the melee healers to have faster cast times than the ranged healer (I play an AM alt), but what I don't understand is why the melee healers have a 150ft range on their healing spells.

I think their spell range should be reduced to 50-60ft forcing them to actually be closer to melee range to do some healing, as atm the there is no need for a WP/DoK to be anywhere near the front line doing damage if they have a good book/chalice to raise their fury/essence.

To compensate for the reduced range, the melee healers could be allowed to cast their healing spells while moving without reducing the existing cast times. This would allow them to have more mobility but the cast time would still allow an attacker the chance to disrupt/interrupt the casting.

Malark

01-06-2009, 07:30 AM

I think their spell range should be reduced to 50-60ft forcing them to actually be closer to melee range to do some healing, as atm the there is no need for a WP/DoK to be anywhere near the front line doing damage if they have a good book/chalice to raise their fury/essence.

To compensate for the reduced range, the melee healers could be allowed to cast their healing spells while moving without reducing the existing cast times. This would allow them to have more mobility but the cast time would still allow an attacker the chance to disrupt/interrupt the casting.

Yeah or just have it so if they cast a heal they take 8000 damage too. Just to make sure that they can't do anything useful in an any encounter.

No offence but I don't see the problem with DOKs/WP being versatile. As a DOK I can say that if I want to melee I need high strength and should be using 2 swords. Also it would probably be a good idea to slot in divine fury so I do 25% extra damage, guess what that does though ? Reduces casted heals by 20%. What that means is that I can't be a good backline healer and meleer at the same time. That's the way this game works.

Yes the DOK/WP has better armor, for what that's worth. But the AM/Zel/Sham/RP , they are supposed to have ranged abilities other than healing as well right ? Wheras the DOK/WP only really has a few morale abilties that work ranged. I think this is what needs to be looked at not any of the other stuff you guys talk about in this thread, you're on the wrong tangent.

Scudley

01-06-2009, 08:23 AM

Rhissa

01-06-2009, 08:44 AM

Maybe the melee healers are right now in a better shape than we ranged healers are, but nerfing them helps us ranged healers no little bit. The general problem is that most people prefer to spank people instead of healing people, and most healers play them because their guild/friends need a healer, not because healing is so much more fun than nailing AMs in 4-6sec out of stealth.

If anybody is rolling a healer nowadays, they roll a WP/DoK, if you nerf them down to ranged healer niveau this game will have no healers left at all. My AM is already pretty annoying, the only thing that keeps me healing is my long-standing guild mates already have a severe healer shortage.

TzuDevil

01-06-2009, 09:40 AM

I think the DoK/WP are very close to being the type of healer Mythic originally stated there would be in WAR... much more so then the other healing classes.

I think a couple things would give them more polish... basically I think they should be further encouraged to be on the front lines rather than to stand back and simply spam heal (which some still do because they can).

First, I think they should have a natural boost in there Spirit/Elemental/Corporial resists to help protect them from casters and ecourage them to spend more time on the front lines.

Second, I think their 1 sec Heal + HoT should be removed to discourage passive back line healing.

Third, I think their group heal should be instant cast with a longer cool down (10 to 15 sec).

As far as cast times go for other healers... they seem fine to me. Being 100 ft + from the front lines does afford you a lot more time to stop and do something. Even though my Rune Priest is a lot more mobile than my Archmage, I don't seem to have a problem healing with either and keeping up with my group's movements.

Cheers!

Astral

01-06-2009, 11:50 AM

Just to reiterate, the original post is advocating not a nerf of melee healers, but a buff of ranged healers. The suggestion is to model the ranged healer cast times after the melee healer versions which have very fast casts and very small cooldowns rather than very slow casts with no cooldown.

My personal opinion is that melee healers are in generally good condition and are now capable of performing their roles to adequate effect. It's the ranged healers that are in particular need of attention, one potential form of which being the topic of this thread.

Stormblazer

01-06-2009, 12:13 PM

While I agree the hybrid HoT cast times should be lowered (especially since they were wrongfully nerfed into the ground in 1.06 despite massive feedback and very little support for the nerf from anyone), the rest of it would probably be the wrong route.

Remember that the cast time bug is still rampant, so those 2.5s heals are more like 3.5 or even 4.0 seconds right now - so it's hard to say.

Malark

01-06-2009, 07:32 PM

You are better rewarded for being in the right place at the right time (whacking on the right target) as a melee healer than you are juggling health bars and ranging as a purely ..ranged healer.

This means that a player who spends more time and effort finding the right place at the right time (and the right targets) will get more return from their investiture of play behind the wheel of a melee healer toon.

This also means -- if you are good at playing a WP/DoK you will stand out more readily than if you are good at playing AM/Shammie Zealot/RP.

Verily. Like, totally fer sure (yo).

O_o

Side note -- making their life harder will not make your life easier or your play style more effective/effecient.

I don't really agree with that, it totally depends on the situation. Backline healing tends to be the best option in more circumstances than it isn't in my experience.

It's not all about skill either, with the CC in this game, if you get disabled/knocked down/interrupted/increased cast times etc no matter how good you are at reading the battlefield situation you won't be able to do your job properly.

Sinik

01-06-2009, 09:37 PM

Perhaps ranged healers -- Zealots, Shaman, Rune Priests, and Archmages -- aren't broken per se, but the general tone on these forums is that, in recent days, they are significantly less capable than the melee healers -- Disciples of Khaine and Warrior Priests. "Capable" here refers to two principal areas: healing throughput and survivability.

Many of the ranged healer weaknesses are too shared by melee healers -- they certainly aren't without their share of problems -- but at least one is not and it's that particular weakness that is addressed in this topic: cast times.

Melee healers have greatly abbreviated cast times for two of the primary healing tools shared by all six healing classes; the directHeal+HoT and the group heal.Melee healers spend 0.5 seconds casting Divine Aid (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8238)/Restore Essence (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9548). Ranged healers spend 1.0 seconds casting Healing Energy (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9236) and similar.

Melee healers spend 1.0 seconds casting Touch of the Divine (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8247)/Khaine's Embrace (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9557) with a 2.0 second cooldown. Ranged healers spend 3.0 seconds casting Blessing of Isha (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9245) and similar with a zero second cooldown.

Ranged healers also spend 2.5 seconds casting Boon of Hysh (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9242) and similar. The melee healer analogue is a melee-range channel (Divine Assault (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8244)/Rend Soul (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9554)) and not directly comparable.What's the fix? Model cast times for the directHeal+HoT, group heal, and large single-target heal used by ranged healers after the melee healer versions. I'm linking Archmage versions, but the change would affect Zealot, Shaman, and Rune Priest as well.Healing Energy (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9236) has a 0.5 second cast time.
Blessing of Isha (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9245) has a 1.0 second cast time and a 2.0 second cooldown.
Boon of Hysh (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9242) has a 1.0 second cast time and a 1.5 second cooldown.What issues does the fix address? It certainly won't fix all the ailings of the ranged healer sub-archetype, but it will affect the two principal areas briefly noted above: throughput and survivability.Long casts are incredibly prone to set-back from attacks, even when they aren't specifically penalized thus (reference pre-1.0.6 single target heals where a 90% complete cast bar would reset to zero after the caster sustains a single hit). Even with the penalty now mostly gone (debate continues as to whether they are still classified as "fragile" per the tooltips), the long casts are still highly vulnerable to delay and interruption, and are completely unwieldly to cast when affected by so much as a single disorient effect or when under attack from any singular entity. Throughput will go up by some degree with less time wasted channeling cast bars.

Movement is a key element to survivability in WAR, particularly the ability to move with the flow of combat so as not to be caught in a position of vulnerability. Long cast times greatly hinder the degree to which ranged healers are able to exercise mobility. Survivability will be somewhat improved with less time wasted channeling cast bars.This idea has been offhandedly mentioned in various topics, and is certainly of enough merit to warrant a thread. Would changing ranged healer cast times as described be a good move for the game? Do ranged healers need changes? Would this change help either throughput or survivability?

My god astral...that is the most overpowered thing I have ever heard of. Healers have a problem with survivability in their current state with the dps increase across the boards but that patch was made so that people die. But it simultaneously allowed people to drop us in a few short seconds as we did not scale with the increased dps. That problem needs to be addressed but those kinds of cooldowns would make us near invincible and the group would never die. Lets find a more logical approach :P

verinus

01-07-2009, 01:58 AM

what players really should learn to understand is, that statwise aoe > single target all the time.

but that can just be numbers.

a WP excells at group/aoe healing. thus he leads the charts.

what makes a difference when sb is under attack is burst healing. the WP has only divine assault- beeing a channeled attack, that is set back by attacks, needs a target to be attacked, and is heavily mitigated by toughness, armor, dodge, parry and block.

WP is imho by no means OP quite on the contrary. SALV tree might seem a bit op with the changes to fury generation of books.

the other trees lack the survivability needed at the front lines. id say that a WP is the class that goes down the fastest of all melee classes.

cast times are simply not viable for a frontline healer and beeing even gace/wrath spec i tend to use TotD a lot to keep my group running, ending up in the top 5 without much willpower gear. with longer cast times this would not be possible.

to sum it up:

your issues are with salv priest wielding op fury generating books thus enabling them to stay back and keep healing. without them they would have to go into melee.

its not even about the class but the itemization.

Astral

01-07-2009, 07:51 AM

Healers have a problem with survivability in their current state with the dps increase across the boards but that patch was made so that people die. But it simultaneously allowed people to drop us in a few short seconds as we did not scale with the increased dps. That problem needs to be addressed but those kinds of cooldowns would make us near invincible and the group would never die. Lets find a more logical approach :P

This is probably the best counter-point I've heard. The changes as described in the original post would increase not just ranged healer survivability, but also ranged healer capability to keep allies alive. It's my opinion that healers do need better tools to mitigate (and not just repair) incoming damage and cannot presently keep allies alive under even mild amounts of focused fire -- however, that goal is tangential to the premise of the original post. There are certainly other ways to increase survivability, and simply raising healing output is assuredly not the best way to improve the healer support capability.

Didier

01-07-2009, 08:19 AM

chemicalpoet

01-07-2009, 02:46 PM

One thing that should probably be noted here, without having to make another thread in the balance forum, is healing in general, to the greatest extent ranged healers, is virtually useless is large scale, ORvR combat.

Healers have little to no way of combating the amount of damage that goes around in zergs, and the damage to healing ratio is nowhere near effective enough to warrant us anything but rez-bots when large battles come into effect. I dare say that when it comes to open fights, healers would be more of a benefactor to their side/team if they were actual DPS classes due to the exponential debilitation that comes simply with opposition growth.

In end game ORvR, for every 1 dps class that shows up, you are going to need 2 healers, and if you haven't noticed yet, there aren't too many happy go lucky heal bots running around lately; they rerolled or quit.

In my opinion, if they keep healing the way its being orchestrated now, healers will grow further and further into antiquation because of the increasing lack of the archetype. Thus, they should try to introduce some different forms of healing to at least make healing a viability on the battlefield.

If you look at the "weakest" healing class in game right now, the Archmage, he happens to have a rather dynamic healing ability called funnel essence. This kind of thing, but to all healers, would be a start. This in a limited AOE form would actually prove us useful in keeping people alive in large scale combat, v our current ability of maybe keeping one guy up, or "I'll just use my ae heal! Oh, wait. I'm in the wrong party." kind of thing.

Astral

01-07-2009, 04:23 PM

One thing that should probably be noted here, without having to make another thread in the balance forum, is healing in general, to the greatest extent ranged healers, is virtually useless is large scale, ORvR combat.

...

If you look at the "weakest" healing class in game right now, the Archmage, he happens to have a rather dynamic healing ability called funnel essence. This kind of thing, but to all healers, would be a start. This in a limited AOE form would actually prove us useful in keeping people alive in large scale combat, v our current ability of maybe keeping one guy up, or "I'll just use my ae heal! Oh, wait. I'm in the wrong party." kind of thing.

You certainly raise a thread-worthy point here; there's (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8170) no (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8188) reason (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8189) why (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9486) AOE (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=1387) healing (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9271) can't (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8177) be (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9506) as (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8032) versatile (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8497) as (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=650) AOE (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=1840) damage (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=1537). It's shameful that there's so many different forms of AOE damage and so few forms of AOE healing.

mashpotatoe

01-07-2009, 06:12 PM

The major problem in my humble opinion is that the boost of rightous fury/ divine essence from books/ mirror objects is far to great.

I frequently see WP in scenarios sitting at the back spam healing their group heal, that is not what they are mad for.

The amount of rightous fury they can generate efficitavly allows them to not even have to worry about mellee and they simply do the ranged healers job, just much better. They never have be concerned about AP (especially AP drains), they have higher armour and because their group heals are so fast, it pratically renders the Zealot/ RP AOE path (Which specializes in group healing) useless.

WP & DOK that sit back from the front are letting their teasm down,as they are allowing one more possible enemy mellee dps/tank to run through and kill the squishy range healers. WP/DOK dont have to worry about this though because if they are correctly specced they can tank better than an actual tank can!
It is not rare to see three players (two if ones a WE) smashing a WP while they sit there and contmptly exploit their quick casts to out heal the damage.

Astral

01-07-2009, 06:30 PM

The major problem in my humble opinion is that the boost of rightous fury/ divine essence from books/ mirror objects is far to great.

Your remarks are basically offtopic and irrelevant to the suggestion made by the original post. You do raise one interesting point, though, which is that healing-focused-offhand-wielding WP/DoKs are essentially immune to the effects of action point drains. You're also probably right that the mechanic regeneration bonus is too extreme, but it still has little to nothing to do with the topic.

Sidian

01-08-2009, 07:26 AM

I play both classes - a melee healer and a zealot. I have quite a good comparison of what both classes can do and how useful can they be. My zealot is generally skilled towards highest HPS on single targets, so it's up to 11 in the first tree + all the rest in the third + ritual of lunacy. My DoK, on the other hand, is fully torture specced lvl 27 atm.

I'd agree, that something needs to be done, as melee healers are overwhelming any other healer on the battlefield with ease. First of all even when healing and specced to heal they are able to take down or at least severly damage a ranged healer while healing themselves and their groups. Second of all if jumped by a cloaked opponent melee healers can survive at least long enough for reinforcements to come.

Also melee healers don't really have to be specced in their healing trees to heal. All they need to do is swap the tactics set, equip a different set of items, grab a chalice and go healing. It would require a complete reskill for a shaman and would be just next to impossible for a zealot.

In addition CC on melee healers if far better than the CC on ranged, at least a zealot. I am well aware of the fact, that a shaman controlled by a skilled player is invincible in 1v1 fights due to some of his tactics, detaunts and some other skills. The problem is, that their targets are also almost invincible, as shamans' damage output is medicore. Comparing a zealot to a dok in regards of CC i must say, that zealots suffer greatly because of no ability, that can slow down the enemy. DoK has 2 slow abilities (covenant + flay), while a zealot can only defend himself using long-reuse skills (knockback, damage reduction + detaunt) or a 3s stun (specced), which lasts too short to get out of Witch Hunter's shooting range (so you get slowed down instantly after the stun ends) and can, just as DoK's slow, be blocked, parried, dodged and disrupted (DoK's can't be disrupted).

Taking all that into consideration we can all agree, that changes should be done either by nerfing melee healers of buffing ranged healers. I think neither is a good idea without the other one. I'd guess, that reducing ranged healers cast times by 1s (at the cost of reducing their healing spells' power ofcourse) along with scalling down passive regen on melee healers by perhaps 25% would make the difference. That would make melee healers more like burst healers (forcing them to regenerate SE/RW more often), make ranged healers less boring (yes, it is boring to watch your 3s. cast bar slowly move), more mobile (so their survivability gets increased), less fragile because of interrupts, and in general more in line with melee healers.

Regards,
Sidian

Ravzar

01-08-2009, 08:25 AM

With the touch of the divine thing vs your big heal the difference is touch of the divine is our only main heal when salv specced. It is the only thing we can really rely on. We only have that to heal our group. There is literally nothing else except hots and martyrs blessing. Martyrs blessing is good in a way but not so good just for healing your group in scenarios. We also have no single target healing outside hots.

Divine assault doesn't count. Basically you use touch of the divine and stack willpower or you stack strength and use divine assault. When stacking strength only divine strike and divine assault are worth using. Your other heals wont save anyone at all.

However I am all for making melee heals stronger and ranged pure healing on the WP weaker. Personally I think WPs need to be a viable melee healer through pve dungeons when right now they are not. They simply do not heal for enough to keep a group up. I can melee heal through trash mobs through warpblade and crypts but can't melee heal through the boss. It is simply not enough healing power due to divine assault having such a large cooldown.

verinus

01-09-2009, 01:02 AM

Astral

01-15-2009, 04:40 PM

The more I think about this idea, the more I like the prospects of it. It might be that the cooldowns are too short (by a second or so) in the original post's version, but I think the game would be a lot more fun for ranged healers with less restrictive cast times.

The thread did get off track from the very start, but even with that in mind I'm surprised there wasn't more support for such a change. Ranged healers get a much-needed increase to survivability through greater mobility and higher throughput while under fire without particularly higher throughput while left alone. What's not to like?

WindySin

01-15-2009, 05:35 PM

...has the OP or anyone seen what a good RP can do?

I'm not a fan of the idea of passive regen on books because I feel it invalidates the need for us to be in melee, but that's a separate issue.

First let's look at my heals:

Our heal mechanics as salva WPs are *designed* for sustained group heals, what was in the WoW raiding days called 'healing the raid'. We expend our RF to heal and then we expend our AP to build RF, it goes in a cycle and we have to juggle which one we're doing in time with the flow of a battle (you'd be amazed how badly you're limited by GCD and RF availability during frantic fights). Because of the way the mechanic works, we have a *very* limited pool to expend when healing so we often have to add a melee skill (smiting 'blind' is a common way to do it) into rotation to keep our heal pool built. This means we're facing an extra skill build and GCD to output that heal, which in a busy fight can mean all the difference.

Also, as a WP, the vast majority of my heals are either over time, or relatively expensive to cast. Few if any of my skills are truly 'spammable', for a range of reasons.

- I have a single target HoT, which is effective and RF efficient, but it's a HoT, and won't save anyone who's taking significant damage.

- I have a single target heal with a HoT component, which is *not* RF efficient (it costs more than the HoT, isn't instacast and heals for something like 1/2 to 1/3 of the damage). This is strictly an emergency heal and spamming it both negates the HoT component (which I think is the bigger part of the heal) and also drains me of RF *very* quickly, so much so that I really can't sustain it.

- I have a party HoT, which is great at countering diffuse damage and just keeping the party healthy in general. It's relatively cheap, but it's HoT effect is significantly less than the single target HoT and it's on a 10s CD. Again, it won't save anyone who's taking a lot of damage.

- I have a party heal, which is *very* expensive to cast (a shade under 1/4 of my RF pool per cast) and takes 1s to cast. It's a very effective heal, but spamming it would be more or less impossible. Besides, spamming this means I neglect putting much needed heals on the targets that actually need heals and I'm wasting my valuable RF spamming AoE heals to people who don't neccessarily need it.

- Finally, I have a true AoE channeled heal. It's on a CD, so I can't spam it. It's not very cheap to use, so I can't spam it. It *is* however, pretty bloody awesome if I happen to have a whole bunch of injured allies standing within 30ft of me.

So, notice a pattern here? No big single target 'spammable' heals (not a lot in the way of effective single target heals at all, come to that). Limited pool for healing and *very* limited capacity to sustain burst healing. People point to skills like Divine Assault and other melee heals as somehow making us superior, but then to get those heals working you have to juggle two targets: a friendly and a hostile. Sure, it's an awesome burst heal when you can get it right, but let's look at Divine Assault: it's on a CD, it's pretty expensive on the RF side and the heal it does is based on damage. Yes, you read that right it's based on how much damage I do to the other guy. I'm a healer. I stacked Willpower. Yeah, I think you see the flaw here. Oh, and to get the most out of it I bloody well better be hitting a squishy. If I hit a tank with it, I do SFA damage and he'll block half or more of the hits, meaning there goes half my heal. Right. Thanks. And I damn well better be fast, because if someone's low and needs that focus healing, I've gotta get him targeted, find me a squishy target in melee range and then get that skill off. Easy.

Now, your heals:

I haven't played any of the other heal classes much so I can't say with a degree of certainty, but what I have seen is Zealots and RPs who can keep up targets through focused fire *very well*. What I do know is that the AM/Shaman mechanic gives you either increased effect for instacast spells, or reduced cast time for your actual heals, which that at max build up you can get off one of those big heals instantly. I also know that the shaman gets an AP drain, and presumably the AM gets something along those lines. Now, fair enough, in a fight you may not get the time or AP to put a few damage spells into your rotation, but guess what? I deal with that too. You're limited by your AP? Well OK, but AP regens pretty quickly and your AP pool is a damn sight bigger than my RF pool (which incidentally, regens a *lot* slower if I have a book equipped and not at all if I'm using a 2h). I also know that zealots and presumably RPs as well get a spammable instacast heal. That's it. Not a HoT. A heal. I don't know how AP efficient it is, but that's more than I bloody get.

TL;DR, WPs/DoKs have a mechanic to handle sustained area and group wide healing over time. AMs/Shamans and Zealot/RP are far superior at healing critical targets (tanks? anyone?) managing single target burst and sustained heals and countering spike damage. Stop griping about our strengths and learn to play to yours.

Ayamo

01-15-2009, 05:41 PM

Burst heals for doks outside their group so we can go solo for RP in Sc's 2 please.

Serious note, how childish it might seem, if you can't see the huge problem of heals bein group only (the heals that really matter), then there is no reason to dicuss about it in the first place.

Astral

01-15-2009, 05:53 PM

Ayamo

01-15-2009, 05:55 PM

I may have been misguided in reviving this thread, hoping that it might somehow meander back to the points made in the original post, fully zero of which relate to nerfing, changing, or adjusting Warrior Priests or Disciples of Khaine in any way. Regardless, I have no idea what either WindySin or Ayamo is responding to, and will try to remind any newcomers that the subject of the original post has naught to do with nerfing WP/DoK.

My problem is pure healers only looking at the bright side of hybrids, while not looking at their (mayor) downsides.

edit: and yes, that does matter, if you try to buff 1 class, to balance it up with another.

Litholen

01-16-2009, 06:38 AM

edit: and yes, that does matter, if you try to buff 1 class, to balance it up with another.
See, I don't follow the logic there. The original post didn't say anything about nerfing the melee healers, just reducing ranged healer cast times while increasing their cooldown to compensate. Now granted it's all theorycrafting thanks to that bloody daft cast-time bug which really, really hurts ranged healers. My DoK notices it if I'm backlining, but never notices it in melee; it debilitates my AM by 20-50% depending on the spell I'm casting at the time.

But none of this has anything to do with nerfing the DoK or the WP, and I'm not sure where that impression has come from. Do I think Rend Soul needs a cooldown reduction? Nope, because when it's on cooldown I'm building SE with Consume Essence and still churning out healing. But that's just me thinking the DoK doesn't need a buff, not that it needs a nerf.

The changes suggested by the OP are interesting - not necessarily how I'd go about fixing ranged healers, but that hardly means the ideas are without merit or worthy of base and biased derision.

To my mind, the proposed changes would truly shine in RvR. Accounting for the new cooldowns, the heals-per-second in PvE remain unchanged. In RvR, however, building a 1s cast time or a 1.5s cast time while under melee assault is much, much easier than building a 2.5s+casterlag cast time ability. There are fewer opportunities for the spell to be set-back or interrupted; one could argue that the cast times are, in fact, exponentially quicker under those scenarios, but it'd take quite a lot of effort to gather numerical data to prove it.

There's also the issue of AP regen. If a healer is spamming a large, single-target heal, currently they'll grind their AP to dust in less than five castings (since AP don't regen while building abilities, unlike Chalices/Books). If the changes were implemented, that same spam would have several seconds of cooldown with which to gain AP and cast maybe one or two more, depending on server lag, before AP-burnout.

Ultimately, this becomes a very noticeable shift in game balance and, in my opinion, shouldn't be considered until the casting time bug is completely expunged. Because only once that happens can we get a true idea of healing through-put post 1.06 - since, right now, no ranged healer has played with unbroken abilities since that patch.

Fix first, debate the merits or otherwise of buffing later :)

-L

Off-topic:

And to the guy who complained that ranged healers have it easier because all of their abilities come from the same resource pool, I guarantee you that there isn't a single AM on the boards who wouldn't happily exchange our mechanic for yours. The idea of 250 Mechanic Points for healing and 250 AP for damage, and having to do damage to replenish the healing pool? It's almost indecent how even the idea of the AM getting that mechanic affects me.

Gimme a lifetap in both camps (ranged Rend Soul equivalent in Healing, ranged Consume Essence equivalent in DPS) and you can forget about every single survivability complaint I've ever had about my class. Let the Romulan Gank Squad come to grind me to dogfood - because then I'm a class that's worth dedicating a tank on the back lines to protect.

-L

rauchster

01-16-2009, 06:49 AM

Melee healers spend 0.5 seconds casting Divine Aid (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8238)/Restore Essence (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9548). Ranged healers spend 1.0 seconds casting Healing Energy (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9236) and similar.

Melee healers spend 1.0 seconds casting Touch of the Divine (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8247)/Khaine's Embrace (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9557) with a 2.0 second cooldown. Ranged healers spend 3.0 seconds casting Blessing of Isha (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9245) and similar with a zero second cooldown.

Ranged healers also spend 2.5 seconds casting Boon of Hysh (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9242) and similar. The melee healer analogue is a melee-range channel (Divine Assault (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=8244)/Rend Soul (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9554)) and not directly comparable.

While I agree with you that the ranged healers need to be worked on, as their overall mechanic/character seems a bit off, I wanted to point out a couple of things.

I know that Divine Aid/Restore Essence SHOWS 0.5s. But it does take longer, even if slightly. Same with Touch of the Divine/Khaine's Embrace.

And remember. a ranged healer can stand still and cast their heals and attacks without worrying about their targets range.

While up front, mixing it up with a MDPS, and they are trying to get behind me to go hit on you, that .5s(I think it's closer to .75 if not a full 1s), means they are now out of range for me. I can't do anything about it either, as my CC pre-R40 is just a single melee range snare, and even at R40, it's not going to help me, as they are a silence and a knockback, neither of which gets them back in my melee range.

Basically, if I have to stand still for anything, it means I have to find a new target. That isn't a concern for you.

And
Off-topic:

And to the guy who complained that ranged healers have it easier because all of their abilities come from the same resource pool, I guarantee you that there isn't a single AM on the boards who wouldn't happily exchange our mechanic for yours. The idea of 250 Mechanic Points for healing and 250 AP for damage, and having to do damage to replenish the healing pool? It's almost indecent how even the idea of the AM getting that mechanic affects me.

Gimme a lifetap in both camps (ranged Rend Soul equivalent in Healing, ranged Consume Essence equivalent in DPS) and you can forget about every single survivability complaint I've ever had about my class. Let the Romulan Gank Squad come to grind me to dogfood - because then I'm a class that's worth dedicating a tank on the back lines to protect.

While I won't say your mechanic is fine (and a working mechanic is ALWAYS better than a borked one), the RF/SE mechanic isn't quite as rosy as it seems.
Yes, the tomes/chalices helped, but that's IF you use one. When you do, you sacrifice a lot of damage, and since our best heals are from damage, it means you lose a lot of healing power too.

The RF pool drains exceptionally fast. You can use up to 100 RF in a single melee heal (Divine Assault), and several other costs are in the 55-80 range.
Action Points are also regen'ed at ANY time you are not casting. RF isn't regen'ed unless you still still for several seconds using your AP->RF/SE skill. (It does regenerate out of combat, but that's not the issue)

So while you may think it's an awesome mechanic, remember that you are comparing it to a broken mechanic, and while the grass does look greener, let's wait until you have grass to compare it to.

Efertin

01-16-2009, 07:11 AM

If anything, books and chalices should be toned down. No class, especially the melee healers, should be totally be able to ignore their mechanic, and get extremely good numbers because of that.

They've got the best AoE healing by far, best survivability out of non-tank classes and the best burst heal in the game PvP wise, all this while totally ignoring their mechanic which was supposed to limit their healing ability unless they were meleeing (and taking more damage).

And AoE heals with such a short cooldown and cast time and quite big healing are totally saving people and aren't useless by no means.

And before I get jumped on: Melee healing outside DA should see some major buffs with Grace/Sac spec. 200-250% healing on Divine Strike/Consume Essence would be a good start, with the tactic.

Ayamo

01-16-2009, 07:31 AM

But none of this has anything to do with nerfing the DoK or the WP, and I'm not sure where that impression has come from.
-L

I haven't said the word nerf anywhere, its the probleem that people want to get buffed (not nerfed), because the other class is superior in a certain aspect. TOTALY ignoring the other aspects,

Okay, ranged healers do need a change and some love, but not by giving them, what others have, cause those others lack stuff range healers have in place again.

(this is not a ''doks are lolhorrible rant, I think doks/wp's are amazing, but just different')

Ayamo

01-16-2009, 07:32 AM

Litholen

01-16-2009, 08:01 AM

The RF pool drains exceptionally fast. You can use up to 100 RF in a single melee heal (Divine Assault), and several other costs are in the 55-80 range.
First off, I would like to point out that I agree with you - I was more trying to raise the point that because we only have to worry about one resource pool, it does mean that we only have one resource pool. And it's a resource pool that is exceptionally hard to stack regen on if you're also having to stack a minimum 350 wounds from gear, as much willpower as you can, intelligence if you actually intend to fill your role as a RDPS/Healer hybrid, and now I'm told initiative (because it's a self-inflicted death if we don't stack Initiative, didn't you know?), to boot.

So the folks who think RDPS/healing hybrids have it easier simply because we don't have to worry about balancing a mechanic resource pool against an action resource pool are, to a point, flat wrong. I'd much rather have to micromanage two resource pools and flick between offensive and defensive targets and abilities to make optimal use of my class, than watch all my AP drain away with a chain of five spells, and have nothing to do (except, possibly, die) while I'm waiting for my AP to replenish.

I can manage it quite happily on my DoK, and the rewards there are fantastic; I don't suddenly lose 40 IQ points and all my hand-eye coordination when I log into my AM ;)

Action Points are also regen'ed at ANY time you are not casting. RF isn't regen'ed unless you still still for several seconds using your AP->RF/SE skill. (It does regenerate out of combat, but that's not the issue)
Chalices aside, that's a valid point. Although I always feel like I'm cheating a bit when my DoK hits Flee with the cap objective and I can still HoT myself while I run. But since Ranged Healers are out of the game while they wait for their AP to regenerate in any case, it's not as big a difference as you might think in practise. If you look at our AP costs on heals, and compare them to your mechanic costs, you'll find there isn't a whole heap of difference.

To put it another way, my DoK is never impotent - I've always got either AP or mechanic, and abilities that do both damage and healing in both 'schools'. My AM is impotent after ten seconds of the group coming under heavy fire. Or maybe that's just our dress sense :D

So while you may think it's an awesome mechanic, remember that you are comparing it to a broken mechanic, and while the grass does look greener, let's wait until you have grass to compare it to.
And I agree, entirely. As I say, my point was mainly a rebuttal to the fellow who seems to be under the impression that the grass is greener for us even though we have, as you say, no grass. Perhaps he likes moss-riddled crazy paving, but I've always been partial to a well-mown lawn, myself.

-L

Grung

01-16-2009, 10:12 AM

Tired of this excuse, you can stack AP a second if you want and outdo SE each second.
Stacking AP is quite difficult to do when the vast majority of AP reg. items relies on player/world random drops to occur which is going to take a while to get (Gear with wards has at best 3-4 AP reg. for the whole set, but that is another issue).

Efertin

01-16-2009, 10:47 AM

Stacking AP is quite difficult to do when the vast majority of AP reg. items relies on player/world random drops to occur which is going to take a while to get (Gear with wards has at best 3-4 AP reg. for the whole set, but that is another issue).

Combined with the fact that when you're regening AP, you aren't casting.

It'd be equal if the RF/SE regen from books/chalices didn't work while you're casting, using morales or have used an instant spell within the last two seconds.

AP regen is only worth it if you can cast a spell because of it from the AP of one AP tick.

As for the topic itself, ranged healers need better shields (the current shields are nothing but totally laughable) and better tools to survive a while without outside assistance, not the melee healer cast times.

Musax

01-20-2009, 03:26 AM

I agree with the OP
i dont want Dok or WPs nerfed, but give us ranged healers the tools to do what we are mee meant for: healing ST against focused fire
atm we cant do that, if only one party member is taking dmg a Dok firing grp-hot and a grp-heal after that will have healed more than me casting a big single target heal at the time my heal goes off
and if other targets in grp took dmg by then he will heal them too

stacking AP gear doesnt equal the chalices/books of melee healers, cause AP-Regen does not work while casting, we have to stop when our AP is empty, shamans get an AP drain which makes it a little easier, but after all the AP drain cost pretty much AP itself, and then takes time to tick first time, so its doesnt keep us healing all the time, its just a really good spell to make other healers life even harder draining down their AP pool (oh wait other healers...well not melee healers, they dont care bout AP drain much ^^)

- I have a single target HoT, which is effective and RF efficient, but it's a HoT, and won't save anyone who's taking significant damage.

- I have a single target heal with a HoT component, which is *not* RF efficient (it costs more than the HoT, isn't instacast and heals for something like 1/2 to 1/3 of the damage). This is strictly an emergency heal and spamming it both negates the HoT component (which I think is the bigger part of the heal) and also drains me of RF *very* quickly, so much so that I really can't sustain it.

- I have a party HoT, which is great at countering diffuse damage and just keeping the party healthy in general. It's relatively cheap, but it's HoT effect is significantly less than the single target HoT and it's on a 10s CD. Again, it won't save anyone who's taking a lot of damage.

- I have a party heal, which is *very* expensive to cast (a shade under 1/4 of my RF pool per cast) and takes 1s to cast. It's a very effective heal, but spamming it would be more or less impossible. Besides, spamming this means I neglect putting much needed heals on the targets that actually need heals and I'm wasting my valuable RF spamming AoE heals to people who don't neccessarily need it.

1.
the Hot is the same for all archetypes

2.
guess what, its the same here for ranged healers too, cost tons of AP and isnt efficient at all, even when not spamming

3.
other healers dont have anything comparable, we have the big-ST-heal instead, which fails in keeping someone taking heavy dmg from a threeman assist up too, sure i like it but i dont use it as much as i use hots/grpheal because in 2of3 tries i cast it 2seconds and then my target is dead
oh, i almost forgot, your grp-hot has a 10second cooldown, funny you mention that, cause it lasts 15secs...recasting it before 15secs are over would actually lower your HPS, only time the cooldown matters if its cast while someone is dead, and that person gets rezzed while cooldown is up

4.
grpheal: it cast less then 1/4?? well i have an AP pool of 250 and the grpheal cost 65AP, you do the math, i cant even spam 4of them in a row, and my AP-Pool takes more time then your essence-pool to fill up, if you convert AP->essence
+you can cast grp-heal and one other spell while i can only cast one grp-heal and if im setback you will most likely cast a second grpheal before my first gets trough

5. the instant heal Zealot/RP get you seem to think is good, dont heal for ...i had Hots tick for more then their instant heal heals for
well unless you meant the 1800HP instantheal+wounds buff....but that has a 3min cooldown and is thus not really worth mentioning

im okay if you guys keep being the best grp-healers but then at least give us the ability to realy heal a focused target, while we let you keep the group up
crosshealing out of group isnt really a big advantage...cause it isnt strong enough to keep alot of people alive while keeping your own grp up...and if the other groups have their own healers they wont need you healing them
if you are one healer for two grps, its going to suck anyways so the crosshealing is a mute point

Stormblazer

01-20-2009, 11:50 AM

This would make ranged healers too powerful. No, seriously. I agree that the hybrid HoTs need to be shorter, but the group heal and big heal need to remain as is. However, I would also ask that they get around to freaking fixing Master Rune of Speed (they broke it in 1.06 and it hasn't worked right if at all since), and give Zealots an equivalent ability in the same spot since their existing one is crap. This would tremendously improve RP/Zealot utility and improve their synergy with AM/Shaman.

They need to revert the extremely poorly thought out nerf to absorb shields, buff the absorb values of ranged healer absorb shields substantially, and increase the scaling on hybrid HoTs OR increase their base healing values.

AM mechanic needs to reduce AP and Transfer Magic should actually give the AM the AP without the tactic, but remove the damage component (shaman has no need for this with YNSB), and the mechanics for both need to have their effect increased for instants, and the number reduced while keeping speed effect the same. Additionally, value on the first mastery ability needs substantial boost and shorter cast time. Transfer Force / Bleed fer me need to be boosted either by lowering duration while maintaining value or by simply increasing value (former option preferred). Funnel Essence needs to not break on damage. The top ability for both shaman and AM healing trees need to be redone outright.

RP/Zealot gear needs to have more +AP regen on it instead of intellect in stupid places.

WP/DoK offhands need to be fixed, BUT raise the base regen such that greens are +9, Blues are maybe +15, and epics are +21. For those who don't know, many offhands currently go at +12 for greens, +18 for blues, and +24 for epics (in otherwords, double what the item actually says because it regens twice a second instead of once a second). So, a mild nerf that looks like a buff to people who didn't know =P

Finally, Zealot/RP buffs need to be looked at. I'm not sure exactly what should change - the two stat buffs need to be increased substantially OR they should stay the same but stack with everything. I'm not sure what to do about the resist buff... it's pretty good as it is, but if it stacked with everything it'd be OP IMO due to Chosen/KotBS resist buff auras and AM/Shaman resist buff. Resists are honestly too high in T4 as it is.
The granted abilities need to be overhauled. Either increase the damage (and make them scale by the target career's main stats), or change them completely into something else. For example, you might change the direct damage ability into a small instant AP or HP restore on demand.

Astral

01-20-2009, 01:28 PM

This would make ranged healers too powerful. No, seriously. I agree that the hybrid HoTs need to be shorter, but the group heal and big heal need to remain as is.

What aspect of ranged healers would the proposed change make too powerful? Would they be capable of outputting too much healing? Would they be too survivable? Too mobile? What elements of balance would it specifically overpower?

Do you believe that the group heal and larger single target heal are intended to be balanced around their cumbersome cast times? Is the current degree of fragility on these longer casts a fair trade for the power of those spells?

To the very last question above, my answer would be no -- some form of change needs to be made in terms of cast time, output, secondary effect, or any other relevant trait of the longer cast spells. It sounds as if your answer would be yes -- the casts are of appropriate lengths and appropriate effect and should not be the focus of any ranged healer changes.

Khaelann

01-20-2009, 11:49 PM

WP/DoK offhands need to be fixed, BUT raise the base regen such that greens are +9, Blues are maybe +15, and epics are +21. For those who don't know, many offhands currently go at +12 for greens, +18 for blues, and +24 for epics (in otherwords, double what the item actually says because it regens twice a second instead of once a second). So, a mild nerf that looks like a buff to people who didn't know =P

I've yet to find a single purple bugged Chalice and there's only a couple of green/blue ones that I know. So what are these many you are referring to? Most of the blue/purple chalices I've picked up are working 100% as they should be.

Stormblazer

01-21-2009, 12:21 AM

I've yet to find a single purple bugged Chalice and there's only a couple of green/blue ones that I know. So what are these many you are referring to? Most of the blue/purple chalices I've picked up are working 100% as they should be.
I've yet to find an epic book that isn't bugged. I know one of the T2 INF reward epic books is bugged at 12RF per half second, and my own WP has an r11 book that's bugged at 12RF per second. Several others I've talked with have epic books of diverse sources that are also bugged. I know most of the green ones appear to be bugged as well. Have not used a blue book yet.

Stormblazer

01-21-2009, 12:26 AM

What aspect of ranged healers would the proposed change make too powerful? Would they be capable of outputting too much healing? Would they be too survivable? Too mobile? What elements of balance would it specifically overpower?

Do you believe that the group heal and larger single target heal are intended to be balanced around their cumbersome cast times? Is the current degree of fragility on these longer casts a fair trade for the power of those spells?

To the very last question above, my answer would be no -- some form of change needs to be made in terms of cast time, output, secondary effect, or any other relevant trait of the longer cast spells. It sounds as if your answer would be yes -- the casts are of appropriate lengths and appropriate effect and should not be the focus of any ranged healer changes.
There are better ways to balance the system, and it certainly shouldn't be done for AM/Shaman (better to improve and revamp their mechanic, which can affect cast times).
For RP/Zealot, I think it would be better to make Master Rune of Speed work again and give a version of it to the Zealot - in case you don't know, I'm talking about 25% reduction in cast times.

As to what would overpowered by the changed cast times: Everything you said. They'd be too mobile, they'd heal too fast.. It's not even a question IMO. It would become far too hard to kill things.

I do agree things need to be changed - I've posted some ideas of my own in a new thread. But really, it needs to come from a different direction, it should be more comprehensive and in line with the careers, and with an eye on utility over outright healing in many cases.

Khaelann

01-21-2009, 01:27 AM

I've yet to find an epic book that isn't bugged. I know one of the T2 INF reward epic books is bugged at 12RF per half second, and my own WP has an r11 book that's bugged at 12RF per second. Several others I've talked with have epic books of diverse sources that are also bugged. I know most of the green ones appear to be bugged as well. Have not used a blue book yet.

All books? Think this is where it gets funny :P As I said, I know of only a couple of chalices that are bugged but if the WP books are bugged more often that could explain why so many Order people are commenting on them.

Raynos

01-21-2009, 04:23 AM

How about they remove the 8s cooldown from Rend Soul and Divine Assault then too? It is 3s channel with a 8s cooldown, meaning that you can drop several big heals in that time. If they'd go trough with your suggestions then you could do what, 6-7 big heals in the same time making our healing output totally inferior.

While we're at it, drop the casting times on our heals too. We need the mobility more than backline healers as we're actually up there fighting.

Here's the rub though - no, no you actually don't need any of that.

You don't need anything because WP and DoKs are absolutely fine. If you feel otherwise, you are just simply a bad player.

As it stands, WP and DoK are the only healers that aren't completely shut down by a melee on them. In fact, you have a spamable attack that deals deceny damage, and heals you for the same amount. So long as no other class can damage and heal at the same time as well, you're niche is secure.

I would suggest OP not effect the cast time/cooldown of Boon of Hysh (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9242), but rather its fragility. Let it be cast under pressure just as easily as any other spell. That would add quite a bit of survivability to healers, I think. Besides, Rend Soul works just fine when you're being attacked - why shouldn't the other healers big heal?

Tiara

01-21-2009, 06:00 AM

I've yet to find an epic book that isn't bugged. I know one of the T2 INF reward epic books is bugged at 12RF per half second, and my own WP has an r11 book that's bugged at 12RF per second. Several others I've talked with have epic books of diverse sources that are also bugged. I know most of the green ones appear to be bugged as well. Have not used a blue book yet.

I dont know about green or purple (only had blue so far) but I do know I have 3 blue books of wich none are bugged.

Astral

01-21-2009, 09:51 AM

I would suggest OP not effect the cast time/cooldown of Boon of Hysh (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9242), but rather its fragility. Let it be cast under pressure just as easily as any other spell. That would add quite a bit of survivability to healers, I think.

Your remarks here are where things get murky. No spell in the game with a greater than one second cast time can be easily cast under pressure.

Almost every offensive-oriented class in the game has a rate of attack that will significantly delay even a 1.0 second cast time spell. A Witch Elf, Witch Hunter, White Lion, Marauder, Engineer, or Magus can easily stretch a basic 1.0 second cast into a two, three, and rarely four seconds long nightmare. May a diety have mercy on your soul if you're additionally inflicted with any type of disorient effect. There is no cast-time ability in the game that is resistant or immune to this standard pushback from attacks.

The "fragility" to which I refer in follow-ups to the original post is of this basic nature of pushback from attacks, not to the specific penalty further applied to the larger single target heals of ranged healer classes. Yes, those larger single target heals are further penalized, but even spells without that penalty cannot be reliably cast while under any degree of attack.

It would be interesting to see how the game would play out without the pushbacks from ordinary damage, such that a two second cast spell would always cast in two seconds unless directly interrupted. I cannot claim to know whether the elimination of basic pushback would achieve the same goals as intended by the proposal in the original post. It may; it may not.

DreadMage

01-21-2009, 07:30 PM

All books? Think this is where it gets funny :P As I said, I know of only a couple of chalices that are bugged but if the WP books are bugged more often that could explain why so many Order people are commenting on them.

I got 3 random Green Chalices from mob drops and all regen +12 SE/s ;) Maybe I'm that lucky.

BlackCoyote

01-22-2009, 12:40 PM

Besides, Rend Soul works just fine when you're being attacked - why shouldn't the other healers big heal?

Not quite... Rend soul is a channeled spell, and has a cast bar. If you're under attack by a melee, you might only get 2 ticks from it due to pushback. That doesn't account for parried attacks either. CE is nice too, but again you have to deal with parries and armor, and in no way is it going to heal for enough to keep you up by itself, esp. if you're a DR DoK.

As to the original post, I don't think that dropping the cast time is the best solution. First off, as Litholen stated, it's tough to come up with a solution to a broken problem. Wait until Mythic gets around to fixing the classes before asking for drastic changes. Another issue which I think somebody brought up was that you can't buff one thing without affecting the balance of everything else. If you make healers too mobile, MDPS will never be able to catch and kill them, so nobody ever dies.

I'm not saying that healers don't need a bit of work still, but I don't think that all healers should be able to run and heal on the fly; in large scale RvR, no class/archtype should be self-sufficient. MDPS and tanks need healers to keep them alive while healers and RDPS need tanks and MDPS to protect them. Dropping the cast times as you suggested would upset this balance too much imo.

Khaelann

01-22-2009, 01:20 PM

Here's the rub though - no, no you actually don't need any of that.

You don't need anything because WP and DoKs are absolutely fine. If you feel otherwise, you are just simply a bad player.

As are WHs and WEs. Hi Raynos the Crusader :) If you cant work with your WH, you're just a bad player, simple as that.

As it stands, WP and DoK are the only healers that aren't completely shut down by a melee on them. In fact, you have a spamable attack that deals deceny damage, and heals you for the same amount.

Does decent damage if you're actually Grace/Sacrifice but is a joke for Salv/DR. Both Salvation and DR rely on Willpower and book/chalice regen so we do very little damage in melee. You're falling prey to the same mistake every other melee does when he talks about the healers. You assume that every build can do the exact same things.

Besides, Rend Soul works just fine when you're being attacked - why shouldn't the other healers big heal?

Rend Soul is subject to pushback and interrupt. It can also be parried or blocked and if you hit an absorb shield with it it will heal for 1 HP, regardless of the damage it would deal(the damage the shield absorbs).

Astral

01-22-2009, 01:30 PM

First off, as Litholen stated, it's tough to come up with a solution to a broken problem. Wait until Mythic gets around to fixing the classes before asking for drastic changes.

I have to admit I don't understand this perspective -- at least when considered in a vacuum. I don't think there will come a time where Mythic can announce that "every career is now a-okay." Balance is an on-going process in games of this sort, and sometimes drastic changes (which I would not consider the original proposal as) are a part of "fixing the classes."

I don't understand the perspective when considered in relation to the current game environment, either. Mythic has no public list of known issues that are scheduled for resolution. Mythic has no coherent public vision of inter-class balance. Given the stunning silence we've seen since the new year, we presently have no strong indication that Mythic officially acknowledges any combat imbalances whatsoever.

It is, however, common sense that there are imbalances, and that Mythic has the capability to recognize that there are imbalances. It's equally common sense, of course, that we have already waited for Mythic to "get around to fixing the classes" (reference the "Combat&Careers" patch 1.0.6 which was hyped for a number of weeks). This particular issue of ranged healer survivability and throughput directly stems from the results of that patch.

Pedantry is not my intent with this dosage of common sense. The point is that there's never a wrong time to have a well-informed discussion about the workings of any system -- even one continually under construction.

BlackCoyote

01-22-2009, 02:04 PM

I have to admit I don't understand this perspective -- at least when considered in a vacuum. I don't think there will come a time where Mythic can announce that "every career is now a-okay." Balance is an on-going process in games of this sort, and sometimes drastic changes (which I would not consider the original proposal as) are a part of "fixing the classes."

I don't understand the perspective when considered in relation to the current game environment, either. Mythic has no public list of known issues that are scheduled for resolution. Mythic has no coherent public vision of inter-class balance. Given the stunning silence we've seen since the new year, we presently have no strong indication that Mythic officially acknowledges any combat imbalances whatsoever.

It is, however, common sense that there are imbalances, and that Mythic has the capability to recognize that there are imbalances. It's equally common sense, of course, that we have already waited for Mythic to "get around to fixing the classes" (reference the "Combat&Careers" patch 1.0.6 which was hyped for a number of weeks). This particular issue of ranged healer survivability and throughput directly stems from the results of that patch.

Pedantry is not my intent with this dosage of common sense. The point is that there's never a wrong time to have a well-informed discussion about the workings of any system -- even one continually under construction.

I agree that balancing is an ongoing process, and that we're not going to all wake up one day with everything set up perfectly. Perhaps what I should have said was wait until mythic has the game out for a bit longer. Look at how long it took WoW to fix some of the major issues. The game has only been out for about 4 months.

As far as Mythic having a list of all known issues which are going to be fixed, you talked about balancing as always being in flux. As such, the list of things to be balanced would be in flux as well. Making such a list public would also open a whole new can of worms. At this point, I feel like Mythic is doing the right thing in keeping quite on what/when they are going to do on every little issue.

Another point on the original topic: if a RDPS/ranged healer has the same cast times as a melee counterpart, how are melee ever supposed to catch them? The greatest advantage of being ranged is that you don't have to be as mobile to do your job, but if you have to become mobile, you become less effective. Coming back to being successful as a group, it's up to those around you to allow you to remain stationary and be as effective as possible.

Astral

01-22-2009, 02:30 PM

Another point on the original topic: if a RDPS/ranged healer has the same cast times as a melee counterpart, how are melee ever supposed to catch them? The greatest advantage of being ranged is that you don't have to be as mobile to do your job, but if you have to become mobile, you become less effective. Coming back to being successful as a group, it's up to those around you to allow you to remain stationary and be as effective as possible.

This seems like a relatively simple answer; melee DPS types do not currently have issue engaging melee healers who orient toward the backlines, and I can't therefore imagine how melee DPS types could have issue engaging ranged healers with shortened cast times who also orient toward the backlines. Put more simply, the healing-spec'd/offhand-reliant melee healers aren't invulnerable to MDPS advances, and neither would be ranged healers with similar cast times. After all, the greatest advantage of being melee is that you have many tools to help you engage in melee combat -- see Fetch, Terrible Embrace, Prowl, Incognito, Charge!, Pounce, Can't Hit Me!, Hold The Line, Snap Shot, Throwing Dagger, 200% uptime snares, and so on.

I might quarrel with the "stationary for max effect" philosophy, since that isn't at all the game we were sold. This wasn't a game where players were meant to be immobile heal/DPS "turrets." It's of minor relevance to this conversation, though, and we don't need to get into it here.

As far as Mythic having a list of all known issues which are going to be fixed, you talked about balancing as always being in flux. As such, the list of things to be balanced would be in flux as well. Making such a list public would also open a whole new can of worms. At this point, I feel like Mythic is doing the right thing in keeping quite on what/when they are going to do on every little issue.
I don't necessarily disagree with this. A list of known issues communicates little to the players. More important than any individual issue is the process used to determine issues; presenting a cohesive vision for how combat is intended to flow and how careers are intended to shape it would be a far more informative venture. This is the knowledge we most sorely lack.

Astral

02-19-2009, 06:38 AM

Time to bring this up again, perhaps?

In patch 1.2, all six healing careers received a notable boost -- about 230 points at rank 40 -- to their group heal spells. Zealots, Shaman, Rune Priests, and Archmages had an additional change: their group heal cast time was reduced from 3.0 seconds to 2.5 seconds. The long-cast single-target heals used by those four ranged healer careers were left alone, thus shrinking the gulf in single target effectiveness between the group and single target heals. Some numbers:

With 800 Willpower in patch 1.2,
-- All six healing career group heals restore just about 1250 health, up from about 1000.
-- All four ranged healer long-cast single-target heals restore just about 1500 health.

Group heals have three unique traits over their single-target companions: they do not require a specific target, they ignore line-of-sight restrictions, and they heal up to six targets.

The two melee healer careers cast their group heals in 1.0 seconds with a 2.0 (or is it 1.5 now? I haven't been able to copy mine over to test) second cooldown. What's the end result of all these changes? The melee healer group heal provides nearly as much single-target throughput as the ranged healer single-target casts when neither is under attack, and more throughput when both are under attack.

Okay, so patch 1.2 continues the trend of marginal buffs along with vague and/or comparative nerfs to ranged healers. I completely stand by the proposal outlined in the original post and suspect it could bring much closer parity to the healing careers by giving the ranged healers a distinct advantage in single-target healing output.

Marsares

02-19-2009, 07:35 AM

I could not agree more with you Astral.

The 1.2 changes are baffling to me as an AM, and basically it feels like Mythic is telling me to forget about the AM and roll a WP.

Firstly, their group-heal now casts a lot faster, thereby making it very difficult to disrupt, and heals for only 250-ish points less than my biggest heal (Boon of Hysh), which has a 2.5s cast time. Add in the cast bar bug, plus disrupts and often I'm looking at >4s. On top of that, my Boon of Hysh requires LoS and is single target.

Secondly, there really is no need any longer to use single target heals, as AoE heals for almost just as much, whilst topping off some more people in your party. However, because the AM groupheal has a 2.5s cast time as well, WP's can time their group heals much better. Often when I use mine, people will have died by the time I finish casting.

Thirdly, then add in the book/chalice regen rates, and the fact that they now broke Wild Healing (http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9293) tactic which no longer procs of DoTs as the patch notes stated, but also no longer from HoTs (no mention of that). It basically means that WP's can constantly spam their group heal, whilst AM's will have to pause frequently to regen AP.

Add all this up, and WP group heal trumps AM single target heal any time of the day: faster cast time, little chance to be set back, no LoS requirements and of course it heals multiple targets, whilst having the ability to do so constantly.

Now, I'm not asking WP's or DoK's to be nerfed. I think they're one of the few classes that are fine the way they are, but AM's just lost their one defining attribute: allegedly being the best single-target burst healer.

Crabnot

02-19-2009, 09:03 AM

I don't want cooldowns on my abilities.

I want my abilities to work at the speed they are supposed to and I want a nerf / cap to the amount of spell pushback we receive.

Simply put, when I use Focused Mind for a 50% cast speed reduction, I don't want to be waiting on cooldowns, I want to be able to bomb my party (or specific players) for maximum damage recovery.
Well, I'd rather not have to ever use Focused Mind just to try to remotely compete in HPS to the standard capabilities of the melee healer classes.

I think a change exactly like the OP describes is completely warranted. Shaman/Archmage/Zealot/Rune Priest have way too little mobility! That's our only potential defense, we don't have CC!

afinalcadence

02-19-2009, 09:57 AM

First off, props to Astral for debating this for so long. Whether this is a good idea or not, I respect that you're putting so much effort into this [and being so level-headed].

Secondly, I agree with his proposal but with a couple tweaks.

With this latest patch, Mythic has even further marginalized the value of the single target heal. Group heals are free of line of sight issues, targetting, and can heal up to six players. And now, the value they heal for is encroaching on single target heal territory. At the very least, something needs to be done to rebalance single target heals versus group heals.

2.5 seconds is too long to save someone from coordinated fire. If you just stack enough dps classes, eventually you reach a point where you can kill a target before the healers can finish their 2.5 second heals. I think 1 second is too fast of a cast, especially considering the amount of HP it'll return, but 1.5 seconds should actually do quite nicely. Change the ranged healers' single target heals to 1.5 second cast time, 1 second cooldown. And then lower the coefficient of the spell from 3.0x to 2.5x, and lower the tooltip healing value by 30% so that the tooltip healing will go down from about 1,050 to 850 [about 50% more than the tooltip for Fireball]. A healer would be pulling 1250 HP heals with 800 willpower. Sounds like a nerf, but since it'll cast faster, you'll have time to cast the hybrid heal or a hot, and make up the difference. In ideal situations, it shouldn't increase their healing output much. In fact, it'll actually make the healers go through AP even faster, so they won't last as long. But it'll allow ranged healers to survive better when under pressure, be useful while under pressure, stay mobile, and actually be able to respond to spike damage properly.

If healing really becomes "too" strong, this will just force people to start coordinating their healing debuffs [which can stack up to 75%], and lead to a more competitive metagame.

Also, the healing buff group heals got should be reverted [back to roughly 520 tooltip -- roughly 50% more than the tooltip for Fiery Blast], but the 2.5 second cast time should be kept for ranged healers. The melee healers should get a 1.5 second cast group heal with a 1 second cooldown. With 800 willpower, these would be healing for about 900 HP. This also reasserts the ranged healers' roles as single target healers and the melee healers as group healers and prevents group heals from making single target heals obsolete.

I would even argue melee healers are superior single target healers for players inside their group post 1.2. The group heal puts up slightly less numbers, but the hybrid heal in between casts can easily make up the difference. It costs a lot of righteous fury/soul essence, but they have Smite [well, disciples really need their essence lash changed into what smite is], which gives a minimum a 45 righteous fury -- 60 if it hits just a single target. They have supplication, to get an instantaneous 30 righteous fury. And if they wait even just a single second [why wouldn't you -- you'll be in the global cooldown anyway] they gain another 30. Not to mention their tomes and chalices. It's not that hard, at least for the Warrior Priest, to regenerate righteous fury.

Another thing, AoE heals should be changed to work like Martyr's Blessing. It should affect all allies within a certain radius [I'm thinking 30 or 45 feet]. Why is it that dps classes can spam their AoE and hit an infinite number of targets but heals can only hit six? This puts healers at a huge disadvantage in large scale combat, and relegates them to the res-bot role. Healing is a losing battle in this game. If a bunch of magus, bright wizard, whatever start dropping their AoE into a single spot, there's not much healers can do to save them. Mythic has created a situation where 2 or 3 healers in a single group literally have to compete with the dps of 10 or even 20+ players alone. If all the healers in the area coordinate to cross heal on single targets [not likely], you're left with a couple people who may or may not survive, and a bunch of dead people. If you try to spam AoE heals, you lose and start preparing your resurrects. And group heals shouldn't be so simple and easy to use. You literally don't have to think about it all right now. No line of sight. No targetting. No prioritizing. Just fire it.

Wrektem

02-19-2009, 10:54 AM

I think if the Shammy/AM mechanic reduced cast time it would be pretty awesome. I play a DoK and while I don't think there should be a base buff, their mechanics are kind of dumb. I played a shammy and lost interest in it because it was best to just straight heal.

Give the mechanic more Yin & Yang

It was a long time ago so I don't remember if it's just power or crit, but if crit isn't involved I think it should be as well.

Chakraa

02-19-2009, 05:08 PM

Laeir

02-19-2009, 05:25 PM

Personally, I don't think long cast times belong in a PvP game outside of spells which should be nearly impossible to get off under fire (like Resurrection). You only have to look as far as Guildwars to see what cast-time on skills should be like. In Guildwars, 2 sec cast is considered extremely slow and very easy to interrupt. Most skills have 0.25 to 1.0 sec cast times. Cooldowns are fine, but long cast times really make for dull play as you generally end up chaining those skills. Group heal, Group heal, Group heal, ....., are we done yet?,.... Group heal, Group heal, Group heal...only 40 more minutes to go! AP and cool-downs should be the limiters.

Soulran

02-19-2009, 05:50 PM

I tested both a 40 WP and a 40 AM.

With the changes to totd and divine aide, salvaton WP's will be able to out heal a single target provided they are in the same group.

I don't see how this is ok. I really don't think that having to be grouped with a person to effectively heal them is so much a disadvantage that they get superior EVERYTHING to a ranged healer.

At this point, there are 0 reasons to want an AM to heal for your group over a WP. You might want RP's for self rez, or buffs, but other than that doesn't seem like they bring much either.

I'm losing faith that there is any thought going into how they balance classes out.

Chruch

02-21-2009, 10:12 PM

I didn't read the entire thread but I do have a couple of points to make. I have a R40 Zealot and R40 DoK

1) A DoK specced dark rites with a chalice is not a hybrid. He is a healer plain and simple. He has a full healing mastery tree that is dedicated to group healing and group shields and has very little DPS potential. (Pretty much the same as Zealot) By rights they are and should be the premier group healers in the game after all they have no dependable single target heals.

2) Zealots/Shamans have the advantage of cross group healing and single target heals. The problem I see is the desparity in the cast times and relative strength of those single target heals by comparison. IMO the ranged healers need to be made the premier single target healers since they are the only ones with them. I would say 1.5 second cast times with a 2s cooldown and a 15-20% increase in healing on single target direct heals would do the trick.

Your aware of the allie heals right? Sure they are on decently long CD's .. but a pure AoE (not group .. AOE) heal is some awsome cross group healing .... Also the AM's not that great at cross healing. As was pointed out earlier in this post AM and RP targeted heals are just an inefficient as the DOK / WPs ... they just have nothing else they can use. People claiming the +AP stacking is viable .. well lawl.

Doing the math after the 1.2 changes ... an AM can single target outheal anyone until around the 7.5 second mark (assuming no lag) at that point the WP sceams ahead and starts to out heal single targets, BUT, the WP is GROUP healing .. so sure for 7.5seconds (ie FE + Hot + heal) an AM is a great single target healer ... but honestly your better off with a WP who's healing the WHOLE group (and AoE healing friends) since I've never seen a group battle that ended in under 7s. Sad? I think so.

As to your point #1 .. Yup you can spec a DoK for pure healing ... you can also spec a DoK to DPS. AM's really lack this .. you can try but the tradeoff is just not worth it. AM's can DPS but hell RP's with a DPS build out damage them !! So much for the caster/healer hybrid huh?