Is Sacrament HoT?

[Excalibre33]

<p>Paladins are fantastic tankers and probably the best healer you can get outside of priests, with healing as their primary focus. They pretty much personify the heal-based tank, and if that is SoE's goal then I say the only thing they're lacking is HoTs.</p><p>I have a Templar, Defiler and Fury (rerolled Warden) and I feel that I 'kinda know my way around healing in EQ2... <b>Crusaders could really use some HoTs</b> because they're so dang busy casting everything else on their hotbar and running around pulling and positioning that HoTs just makes sense for heal-based tankers. My Fury is the most mobile of all of my healers.</p><p>Food for thought: Turn sacrament into a HoT on a shorter casting timer... chew on it for a little bit.</p><p>I hardly ever use sacrament since the casting time is so high that I can't get it cast while fighting and med quicker waiting for solo heals without even having to touch-up with that horribly long heal between fights. I normally just pitch two faster heals instead of casting sacrament as I almost always have to interrupt it by moving around. The flow of the game just moves too fast for this antiquated spell line to be useful anymore. I don't think I'm the only Paladin to almost never cast it since LU13.</p><p>Side thought: A couple of other sacrament options: (a) make it more power draining with a shorter cast time, (b) remove the SELFONLY tag, or (c) let it be cast while moving ...any of these changes to the sacrament line may make it more clickable without drastically changing game mechanics. </p>

[Rast]

<p>no, I disagree.  Maybe Reverant could become a reactive instead of a straight heal, but our heals (other than maybe casting time/interuptablity) are fine as they are.</p>

[Excalibre33]

I could see that, and strongly considered suggesting reactives but, have been watching my healers very closely and decided dr00ds are the most mobile and HoT's are the most trustworthy when multi-tasking. It's easy to eyeball fast where a HoT will put you in 10 seconds while manuvering and casting other stuff as apposed to reactives that I tend to keep a much closer eye on and can't multi-task quite as easily... that's really my issue with Sacrament... Paladins are just too busy for long cast times... the Sacrament line seems to rot on a lot of folx' hotbars. You'll see two of my suggestions mention shortening the cast time. /wink

[khufure]

We need an instant cast "save the day" spell.  Or a strong debuff type thing on our defensive stance.  Healing sucks!

[Excalibre33]

Timmey@Unrest wrote: <blockquote>We need an instant cast "save the day" spell.  Or a strong debuff type thing on our defensive stance.  Healing sucks! </blockquote><p>I'm sure I'm baited into mentioning the LoH line that has saved countless regular group wipes and a few raids for me so, swing away Tim. /wink </p><p>It would be nice if it was hp % based so, it scaled for raiding but still it's recoved me enough after a nasty AoE to hang on my feet while a second healer dr00d got rezzed.</p>

[Tames]

<p>A Tank is designed to be hit by mobs, whatever is done on healing should include halving the cast time of the slow cast heals. If you are tanking multi's as a group or raid tank you dont need interrupts on critical heals.</p><p>Its amazing poor class design, if you give a tank heals, they need fast cast heals, we would quickly run out of mana if we chain cast so theres no fear of us taking over from healers but it does give us usable utility (unless their vision is of us sitting back doing stuff all but patch healing?).</p><p>Yes HoT's are a great idea but they should be fast cast.</p><p>While they are at it give our Rez some range so we dont have to stand on bodies we cant reach or even find, to rez them.</p>

[Excalibre33]

Tamesan wrote: <blockquote><p>While they are at it give our Rez some range so we dont have to stand on bodies we cant reach or even find, to rez them.</p></blockquote><p>Rez range doesn't seem over-powering in any way and why they made it to where we have to stand on the target has always perplexed me. Maybe they were listening to our whining about being rez-monkeys during raids a couple years ago and decided with this drawback we'd just never be able to effectively be a raid rezzer again. I think the timer increase was about all we needed to stop being point on rezing. It is definetly getting neglected on the hotbar now too... but I'm not complaining. I spent enough time on rez duty. /wink</p><p>Now those goons that peel aggro need to make a b-line for my feet as they're turned to floorwax or they can spend the encounter napping for all I care. I'm not going to sacrifice positioning or time fiddling around looking for their corpse unless I'm just open slot raidfiller and have nothing better to do.</p>

[Excalibre33]

<cite>Tamesan wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Its amazing poor class design, if you give a tank heals, they need fast cast heals, we would quickly run out of mana if we chain cast so theres no fear of us taking over from healers but it does give us usable utility (unless their vision is of us sitting back doing stuff all but patch healing?).</p></blockquote><p> I figured this deserved a double bump since that nails another fundemental that I'd like to voice an opinion on. If we're tanking AND healing, we're burning the power bar like there's no tomorrow. I'd love to see one of our heal lines... picking on sacrament again because I hate to see it rot on my hotbar... just take a bunch more power with faster casting times. This would allow Paladin's to control their their own power burn rate... If they focus on healing then there won't be much left for anything else and since sacrament is based on a consumable, we'd be limited away from chaining it even with max power regen. Today the consumable aspect of this line is laughable and useless. I think this change to the line would make great sense mechanically and logically. The Paladin digs deep to cast a big heal but wastes himself. We've got LoH as the savior line but we could use the "big heal", power ruiner just like any priest if you ask me. The problem is priests can stand still a lot longer than a tanker.</p><p>This makes hybrid classes a bit more difficult to play but I think it's how they should be designed. Paladin is already a tough class to roll. Folks that stick with it have no problem giving an extra effort learning to balance their own power consumption. All other casting classes live by managing that bluebar. I know we're tanks but, in a pinch we are casters.</p><p>If we come up with some constructive stuff in this thread I think I'll take it over to a board that devs pay attention to. I've seen a bunch of "Fix Sacrament" threads but now that I've dusted off my little righteous dorf after playing healers for the last year, I'm convinced that it's time to bring it up again. </p><p>I started this thread as somewhat of a petition in the Paladin community. If you think something should be done please chime in. /grin</p><p><span style="font-size: xx-small">v----v----v--<---<---<---please ignore the rantings of this [Removed for Content]. he should sleep more and type less.</span></p>

[Rast]

<p>ummm, what consumable?  The shards have been removed for a year or more now <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Really, it isn't the cast time of the heals that is at issue, in many ways, they are just CAs times.  The issue is really their interuptability.  When you can take a 2.5s spell and it takes it to almost 5 before it is finally interupted, you've lost ALOT of precious time to taunt, auto attack, use other CAs, etc.  This is the poor design of interupable abilities on a class that is designed to be hit.</p>

[Excalibre33]

ROFLMAO! I still have a stack of those dumb shards on me. Yep... I have some relearning to do on this old toon. Sorry I'm dumb.

[Rast]

<p>Yah, it's been awhile <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I carried them for a long time half expecting them to reverse the decision though :p</p>

[CHIMPNOODLE.]

I kept a stack for nostalgia purposes in my vault. Not sure if they are still in there or if they have dissapeared.

[Tames]

Jalathan@Lucan DLere wrote: <blockquote><p>Really, it isn't the cast time of the heals that is at issue, in many ways, they are just CAs times.  The issue is really their interuptability.  When you can take a 2.5s spell and it takes it to almost 5 before it is finally interupted, you've lost ALOT of precious time to taunt, auto attack, use other CAs, etc.  This is the poor design of interupable abilities on a class that is designed to be hit.</p></blockquote><p>You are right about interupts however I dont think they are going to change a mechanic for all classes just for us.</p><p>There is also the issue of time, 2.5 secs is loss of taunts etc as you rightly point out and the agro of heals is half that of damage so you are better off doing damage for agro than healing. Our heals shoud be no longer than 1.5 secs max ie the single heals could be 1sec, group heal 1.5secs. That way less interupts when fighting multis/stun-knockback immunes and less loss of agro generation.</p><p>It wont be overpowering as heals still generate half the agro of damage and we still have the same mana pool and on long fights we have to pace ourselves anyway. It just gives us a usable utility when tanking rather than an unusable utility. </p>

[OrcSlayer96]

Bloo@Permafrost wrote: <blockquote>ROFLMAO! I still have a stack of those dumb shards on me. Yep... I have some relearning to do on this old toon. Sorry I'm dumb.</blockquote>No worries, as far as reverant Sacrament goes, i am still a devoted fan to having this spell changed from a heal to a self only ward.  It fits the stereotype role we have with our abilities and the cast/power cost would be inline with the spell currently.  It would also help on initail spike damage and with AA lines can be up for many fights.

[Excalibre33]

<cite>OrcSlayer96 wrote:</cite><blockquote>*snip*...as far as reverant Sacrament goes, i am still a devoted fan to having this spell changed from a heal to a self only ward.  It fits the stereotype role we have with our abilities and the cast/power cost would be inline with the spell currently... *snip*</blockquote> ooooooo that's hawt! A nice pre-ward. Now that would be '[Removed for Content] awesome. It gets rid of the long cast while fighting issue and since I instinctively pre-ward while healers are alphaing before a pull, I don't think this would slow stuff down too much at all. That's a nice idea.

[Rast]

<p>hmmm, in that same vein of concept.  Make it a castable (self only) buff that is a regenerative ward.  That would basically give it the HoT concept and make it a valuable tool as well.</p><p>Though, that may make it a bit too powerful...</p>

[Excalibre33]

Jalathan@Lucan DLere wrote: <blockquote><p>hmmm, in that same vein of concept.  Make it a castable (self only) buff that is a regenerative ward.  That would basically give it the HoT concept and make it a valuable tool as well.</p><p>Though, that may make it a bit too powerful...</p></blockquote><p> Cool thought... I have noticed my endgame Pally doesn't have a full buffbar like most of my other toons... something that takes a point of concentration may be a neat idea?</p><p>As I've been stewing on this today, I've really come down to one simple change that would fix my fundamental complaint and surprisingly it's not reducing the casting time. I goofed with this thing a bunch last night in cmm after we got a steady rhythm going and I noticed I really don't get interrupted too bad during fights even with dark oranges. Although sacrificing the casting time can certainly loose aggro, if you don't chain some X-over-time stuff before firing this off, the thing that really bugs me is I can't move and cast it. I'd probably use it to touch up more often if I was allowed some wiggle room like Brimstone.</p><p>Tanks don't stand still very long if they aren't raiding. During that occasional long fight with adds your rump isn't going to be saved by this spell. It's going to be saved by keeping aggro off your healers. The spell is really not effective if your tanking and healing either (no healer or poor healer)... with the long cast time it's not even a good touch up spell between fights... so sadly it rots. Casting while moving gives it a place to fit in the alpha or post fight routine.</p><p>I 'kinda miss the cannonball Paladins when wards could be cast on the move and when they nerfed it I was able to humble myself thinking that Paladins could train through any zone they liked but, the game has changed a bunch since then and almost every class is issued invis now or eats totems like food and water. Sacrament has such a long recast that I don't think it could be exploited to effectively cannonball around... at least no worse than the ward, run, stop, ward, run, stop, and so on method.</p>