Fighter heals can no longer critically heal.?

[Khurghan]

<p><span >Fighter heals can no longer critically heal. .... ?</span></p>

[Wurm]

<p>Pretty sure we have Battle Grounds to thank for that stupidity.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>That's a great change.</p><p>Fighters self heal way too much.</p>

[Barx]

<p>Doesn't even have to be BG-caused (although that can still be an example of it). SF gives so much potency and crit bonus (and 100% crit basically guaranteed) that the heals were likely getting larger than they ever wanted them to be. So to curb it they prevent them from critting, so only potency instead of potency + crit bonus affects them and they grow at a slower rate.</p>

[Loxus]

<p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Pretty sure we have Battle Grounds to thank for that stupidity.</p></blockquote><p>If they start balancing classes based on PVP (which they said they wouldn't) it's going to destroy the game.  The Dev's at Blizzard are already had/having this problem as in wishing they never started.</p><p>EQ2's PVE combat mechanics are already a goat screw, it doesn't need help from PVP.</p>

[Zegon]

Just wondering if they're going to make other classes not crit on some things too while they're at it. "Yeah, Priests? You can't crit on your spells. And mages? Can't crit on your melee hits. Have fun guys." Aftermath of crit consolidation it seems.

[Irgun]

<p>Preventing fighters heals from critting at all is too harsh - sorry.</p><p>This would make critchance a useless stat - this is not the way to do it.</p><p>If you really think fighters heals are so bloody marvelous - nerf the raw numbers ffs (by about 25% - NOT 50-95%!)</p><p>So, no stat is useless and you have it your way - kthankyouverymuchbye</p>

[Landiin]

<p><cite>Irgin@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Preventing fighters heals from critting at all is too harsh - sorry.</p><p>This would make critchance a useless stat - this is not the way to do it.</p><p>If you really think fighters heals are so bloody marvelous - nerf the raw numbers ffs (by about 25% - NOT 50-95%!)</p><p>So, no stat is useless and you have it your way - kthankyouverymuchbye</p></blockquote><p>Umm How is this gonna make critchance a useless stat?</p>

[Obadiah]

<p>If they want to lower the amount of heals, they should make crits not apply to any % based abilities. That or lower the initial amounts. Either one (or both) makes more logical sense than reversing Crit Consolidation for 6 classes. It's painting with the wide brush again. It's patching the hole in the wall with duct tape; it looks stupid.</p><p>There is no way anyone can make a valid argument that removing crits and cutting Perseverance in half affects anything other than BG/PVP. It shouldn't bother me ... I mean, that heal generally accounts for anywhere between 0 and 2% of my self heals  since I generally stick to PVE on the Berserker ... but nerfing things that don't need it is offensive, and there really aren't many other places I want to spend those AA points. Then again, since Vision of Madness is likely to go back to never saving us from death, I suppose I may want to put some points into increasing that ... to get it back to where it is today.</p>

[etch666]

<p>Annoying. Thanks PVP.</p>

[Wasuna]

<p>I posted this in another thread but here it is again.</p><p>I'm not a fan of nerfs but some fighter classes are more powerful compared to current content that any class has ever been in the history of EQ2. There are multiple confirmed instances of fighters soloing the easy group instances in This Expansion. Not the old stuff, this new stuff.</p><p>The fighter classes that have been able to do this are the ones that can heal in some way. The other fighter classes that can not heal can not do this. There is a direct correlation and while I didn't see this coming, something had to be done.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>Tanks are not healers, and tanks should not zw heal for more than a healer.</p><p>IMO, further nerfing of fighter generated heals is still needed, but this is a step in a positive direction.</p>

[Wurm]

<p><cite>Wasuna wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I posted this in another thread but here it is again.</p><p>I'm not a fan of nerfs but some fighter classes are more powerful compared to current content that any class has ever been in the history of EQ2. There are multiple confirmed instances of fighters soloing the easy group instances in This Expansion. Not the old stuff, this new stuff.</p><p>The fighter classes that have been able to do this are the ones that can heal in some way. The other fighter classes that can not heal can not do this. There is a direct correlation and while I didn't see this coming, something had to be done.</p></blockquote><p>And I will say this again, you are talking about gear, not class.<strong><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Normal</span></em></strong> geared fighters are not soloing the easy group instances. So quit with the "I heard it from my uncle's step brother's father in law, so it must be true!" BS.</p>

[Wurm]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Tanks are not healers, and tanks should not zw heal for more than a healer.</p><p>IMO, further nerfing of fighter generated heals is still needed, but this is a step in a positive direction.</p></blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>No really, in some cases the tank is able to heal themselves faster than the healer could. </p><p>I think perhaps if you've not been with geared tanks demonstrating how little they actually require a healer, you probably don't have perspective to just how bad the issue is.</p>

[Vortexelemental]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>No really, in some cases the tank is able to heal themselves faster than the healer could. </p><p>I think perhaps if you've not been with geared tanks demonstrating how little they actually require a healer, you probably don't have perspective to just how bad the issue is.</p></blockquote><p>That's an itemization problem not mechanics. This is going to have repurcussions from 1-90 not just at 90.</p><p>Soloing with any of those tanks is going to suck now.</p>

[Wurm]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>No really, in some cases the tank is able to heal themselves faster than the healer could. </p><p>I think perhaps if you've not been with geared tanks demonstrating how little they actually require a healer, you probably don't have perspective to just how bad the issue is.</p></blockquote><p>There is that word "geared" again...</p><p>And I constantly throw up my ward (when its up) and group heal (during AOEs) while tanking, I also cure myself when I can (its called taking the pressure off the healer). But without a (good) healer in places like Vig I'm going down no if ands or butts about it.</p><p>TBH I'm not too worried about this change,  but seriously, saying fighters heal better than healers do, is just as silly as people complaining about raid geared toons soloing Library.</p>

[Wilderbeast25]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>No really, in some cases the tank is able to heal themselves faster than the healer could. </p><p>I think perhaps if you've not been with geared tanks demonstrating how little they actually require a healer, you probably don't have perspective to just how bad the issue is.</p></blockquote><p>Well I have plenty of perspective and I hate the change.  They may need to look at some specific changes to help if this really is a issue in PvE, but all I see is the hosing over of the majority of people that don't have top-end gear.</p><p>Also if this is because of PvP then well they can go.....  well I think you can figure it out. PvP issues should only be dealt with at the PvP level not a sweeping change that affects PvE.</p>

[Zegon]

Speaking as someone who has done some pretty silly stuff on my tank, the issue isn't fighter heals but gear. Most of my self-healing comes from gear procs, lifetap procs from equipment, etc. I run instances with good healers and I will often outparse them on easier zones, at least zonewide, because the trash just doesn't hit very hard. But then again, I'm in raid gear doing instance content. Against nameds, a healer will almost always outparse me (exception being the last mob in VC, but % based heals when you have over 150k health get really ridiculous), and on raids I'm typically on the heal parse beneath every single healer, even the ones that aren't doing very well. I was happy getting self-heals that actually did something this expansion, because it was finally a way for me to boost my survivability noticeably through gear and AAs. Before this, pretty much every survival AA that a berserker had was pointless, as it either pushed you further into the mitigation cap or augmented a 150 point heal to be 200. I can't say I'm happy at all with a reversal of that. I'm just wondering why a huge blanket of 'No heal crits' to one archetype? If heals critting is so much of an issue, why do they crit at all?

[S_M_I_T_E]

<p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>Well, as a healer I've been in grouping "sessions" this past month as the only healer on occasion and I didn't even have to cast a heal on the SK's and Pallys I was with in the easiest instances. </p><p>Not one reactive or direct heal. Not one.</p><p>Not because I couldn't, or was incompetent, but becuase <strong><em>I didn't have to</em></strong>.... (Conservatory, Research Halls, etc.) </p><p>The medium instances I only actually healed <strong><em>some </em></strong>of the named fights.  After some recent experiences with groups with no bards, chanters, or 20K dps classes present I thought those "no healing" experiences were due to the lack of a bard/chanter.</p><p><em>This update says the cooks in the backroom are removing the secret ingredients that make this status quo for some of the tanks.</em></p>

[Vortexelemental]

<p><cite>S_M_I_T_E wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>Well, as a healer I've been in grouping "sessions" this past month as the only healer on occasion and I didn't even have to cast a heal on the SK's and Pallys I was with in the easiest instances. </p><p>Not one reactive or direct heal. Not one.</p><p>Not because I couldn't, or was incompetent, but becuase <strong><em>I didn't have to</em></strong>.... (Conservatory, Research Halls, etc.) </p><p>The medium instances I only actually healed <strong><em>some </em></strong>of the named fights.  After some recent experiences with groups with no bards, chanters, or 20K dps classes present I thought those "no healing" experiences were due to the lack of a bard/chanter.</p><p><em>This update says the cooks in the backroom are removing the secret ingredients that make this status quo for some of the tanks.</em></p></blockquote><p>And totally changes the game for the tanks who aren't geared. I am low geared and now I probably will have to be cautious of trying to tank any of the easy instances without a good healer now, my tank is an alt. He only has a couple of pieces of instance gear. His heals critting was a major step in his survivability.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>S_M_I_T_E wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>Well, as a healer I've been in grouping "sessions" this past month as the only healer on occasion and I didn't even have to cast a heal on the SK's and Pallys I was with in the easiest instances. </p><p>Not one reactive or direct heal. Not one.</p><p>Not because I couldn't, or was incompetent, but becuase <strong><em>I didn't have to</em></strong>.... (Conservatory, Research Halls, etc.) </p><p>The medium instances I only actually healed <strong><em>some </em></strong>of the named fights.  After some recent experiences with groups with no bards, chanters, or 20K dps classes present I thought those "no healing" experiences were due to the lack of a bard/chanter.</p><p><em>This update says the cooks in the backroom are removing the secret ingredients that make this status quo for some of the tanks.</em></p></blockquote><p>BINGO.</p><p>Yes, this issue is more pronounced in BG/PVP and you may hear it griped about there more than PVE, but this is by no means just a pvp issue impacting pve.</p><p>Really look at parse data on your fighters and see what they are healing zonewide, it is completely unreasonable for a tank archtype to be contributing the heal numbers they've been putting out.  In particular it scaled out of proportion with crit consolidation and uncapping potency/crit bonus.</p><p>This is the first step in returning some balance to archtypes.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>And totally changes the game for the tanks who aren't geared. I am low geared and now I probably will have to be cautious of trying to tank any of the easy instances without a good healer now, my tank is an alt. He only has a couple of pieces of instance gear. His heals critting was a major step in his survivability.</p></blockquote><p>Hogwash.</p><p>It makes it like it was before this expansion release when you didn't have crit bonus, and you didn't have consolidated crit modifier.  You still gain potency modifications to these heals, something you didn't have last expansion.</p><p>It makes you have to think about playing your tank a bit more defensively perhaps, it makes you have to maybe pause before you pull an entire room.  Its difficult for me to see how this isn't more healthy for the game.</p>

[Zaldor]

<p>While this kinda stinks, I am looking forward to my healers realizing that they are healers and not wizards.</p>

[Gaige]

<p><cite>Wasuna wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm not a fan of nerfs but some fighter classes are more powerful compared to current content that any class has ever been in the history of EQ2.</p></blockquote><p>No?  Guardians were amazingly overpowered in T5, almost unkillable in T6 and monsters in T7 as well.  You're just bitter that after 4 years of being bar none the best tank period forever with other tanks hardly even used at all even outside of raid content that you're not top dog anymore.</p>

[Xelgad]

<p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p>

[Jaremai]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>Can they crit if they have a Gold membership?</p><p>*giggles and runs off before getting hit by thrown objects*</p>

[Wurm]

<p>If I have a good healer in the group, in an easy instance, I don't heal. I ward on the pull and cure myself but that's it. It is doing PUGs with crappy healers where we got used to healing ourselves like mad.</p><p>That's where the blame (if any needs to be placed) belongs and not on the fighters.</p><p>Now lets discuss the hard SF instances I doubt you will find any healers complaining that they have nothing to do. And if you are in groups that are able to do the harder content then more than likely you all have gear that turns the easy zones into snooze fests.</p><p>Its call progression...</p>

[Zaldor]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>But it sure is influencing me to do more BGs to get better equipment so I can survive easier now in the real world.</p>

[Ristan]

<p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>S_M_I_T_E wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>Well, as a healer I've been in grouping "sessions" this past month as the only healer on occasion and I didn't even have to cast a heal on the SK's and Pallys I was with in the easiest instances. </p><p>Not one reactive or direct heal. Not one.</p><p>Not because I couldn't, or was incompetent, but becuase <strong><em>I didn't have to</em></strong>.... (Conservatory, Research Halls, etc.) </p><p>The medium instances I only actually healed <strong><em>some </em></strong>of the named fights.  After some recent experiences with groups with no bards, chanters, or 20K dps classes present I thought those "no healing" experiences were due to the lack of a bard/chanter.</p><p><em>This update says the cooks in the backroom are removing the secret ingredients that make this status quo for some of the tanks.</em></p></blockquote><p>And totally changes the game for the tanks who aren't geared. I am low geared and now I probably will have to be cautious of trying to tank any of the easy instances without a good healer now, my tank is an alt. He only has a couple of pieces of instance gear. His heals critting was a major step in his survivability.</p></blockquote><p>Welcome to being a tank. </p><p>My guardian alt has almost 0 heals in his arsonal.  I some how manage to tank most the zones. </p><p>I am a raid leader, who has a paladin MT, zerker OT.  Our zerker can parse 8-10% on the raid wide heal parse on easier named and trash.  Our pally alittle under that since he doesn't use his heals unless he's in trouble.  It's a bit rediculous that two tanks can take up 15-20% of the heal parse on a raid encounter.  They do out parse some of our healers cause our healers don't need to heal them so they are DPSing.</p><p>On harder named, sure not quite that much, but still within 3-5% for both.</p>

[Zaldor]

<p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If I have a good healer in the group, in an easy instance, I don't heal. I ward on the pull and cure myself but that's it. It is doing PUGs with crappy healers where we got used to healing ourselves like mad.</p><p>That's where the blame (if any needs to be placed) belongs and not on the fighters.</p><p>Now lets discuss the hard SF instances I doubt you will find any healers complaining that they have nothing to do. And if you are in groups that are able to do the harder content then more than likely you all have gear that turns the easy zones into snooze fests.</p><p>Its call progression...</p></blockquote><p>Instead of taking away fighter crits they should make it so that every third spell that a healer casts has to be a heal and has to be targeted to the tank.</p>

[Ryai]

<p>I can't understand how this is <em>not </em>PvP driven. If its not, then its to balance an EXTREME MINORITY of players that are geared in t2/t3 raid gear.</p><p>And knowing SoE, it will be poorly implemented, which means SKs will be the #1 Tanks again, since their lifetaps are considered damage spells for crit reasons, rather than heal spells. Which means SK lifetaps will still crit, but every other fighter classes won't. Personally, I think this is an incredibly far reaching change which hasn't even been thought out at all.</p><p>So much for zerkers and paladins being good again, since they are immediately going to be relegated back to 2nd tier tanks when this goes live.</p><p>Another reason this is poorly thought out is that it invalidates a LOT of itemization choices that were previously present and viable options. Prayer of healing red adorn? Worthless now, since prayer of healing has only become worth anything after bonuses are applied. Otherwise its just a huge power drain.</p><p>Legionnaire's conviction switching to potency? Still completely worthless. So much for paladins actually being able to do something other than manage aggro. This invalidates paladins as an alt healer completely, which is arguably one of their roles, and what makes them unique.</p><p>There is so little thought as to class balance when blanket changes like this are applied. Instead of taking the time to do this correctly, and fixing the few skills that are most likely driving this, they are affecting every single tank class, needlessly. Yes, incredibly geared people can do things that most other people can't, but you aren't fixing that problem. Maybe... the content is too easy for the gear you released. And maybe, BG armor shouldn't be better than 95% of the crap out there. I should not need to play battegrounds because the admiral's chain is close to the BEST PVE TANK BELT.</p><p>Bottom line, this is a change obviously being driven due to the actions of a few people, rather than the majority of players. You will alienate a quarter of your player base minimum with this change, and expect your numbers to drop, since a lot of people are on the fence about continuing to play EQ2 at this point, and far reaching ill-considered changes like this do not help. SoE needs to make up its mind on PvE and PvP. Because right now all I see is PvP driven mechanics changes, and a PvP driven game is <em>not </em>the one I want to play. You are making the game <em>not fun</em> with changes like this. SoE is rapidly losing its way, seemingly interested in making things more difficult than fun for much of the content.</p><p>I would at least ask for some feedback on why this change is "necessary", but I don't have high expectations, since SoE has been MIA for a few weeks now.</p>

[Wurm]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>Well then, don't mind me if I don't believe you if you aren't willing to say why the change was necessary.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Bottom line, this is a PVP driven mechanic change, which will have HUGE repurcussions on every single fighter class out there. Thanks Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>No.  No-no nononono, No!</p><p>PVP/BG just illustrated the issue more clearly so that *anyone* could see it.  The issue exists gamewide, and as Xelgad said, pvp wasn't the driving factor for why the change was made.</p><p>Trust me that they could easily only have changed how these heals work in pvp ruleset and not upset as many players, but the issue is, the heal amounts from fighters were out of bounds in all levels of gameplay.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>S_M_I_T_E wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>Well, as a healer I've been in grouping "sessions" this past month as the only healer on occasion and I didn't even have to cast a heal on the SK's and Pallys I was with in the easiest instances. </p><p>Not one reactive or direct heal. Not one.</p><p>Not because I couldn't, or was incompetent, but becuase <strong><em>I didn't have to</em></strong>.... (Conservatory, Research Halls, etc.) </p><p>The medium instances I only actually healed <strong><em>some </em></strong>of the named fights.  After some recent experiences with groups with no bards, chanters, or 20K dps classes present I thought those "no healing" experiences were due to the lack of a bard/chanter.</p><p><em>This update says the cooks in the backroom are removing the secret ingredients that make this status quo for some of the tanks.</em></p></blockquote><p>And totally changes the game for the tanks who aren't geared. I am low geared and now I probably will have to be cautious of trying to tank any of the easy instances without a good healer now, my tank is an alt. He only has a couple of pieces of instance gear. His heals critting was a major step in his survivability.</p></blockquote><p>QFT. As is generally the case, balance issues primarily exist at the top-end - particularly top-end gear doing low end content. I've healed Crusaders in instances (Labs comes to mind) I could barely keep alive. I've healed Guardians in instances (Cella) where my ST pre-ward lasted the duration of entire fights and then some.</p><p>A complete mechanics change specifically to reduce heal amounts is garbage, no matter how you look at it. Balancing heroic content around raid-geared Fighters = garbage. Balancing Fighters around PVP/BGs = garbage. Retracting crit consolidation to  balance Fighters = garbage. If some fighter classes are over-healing the amounts of the offending heals should be reduced. Wholesale mechanics revamps/overcomplications are inherently bad.</p><p>The only instance my Berserker has ever come remotely close to winning the heal parse in is Cella. % bsaed heals ... 200K HP ... yeah, that's not changing with this update. Since the very minor Berserk ward is the only ward, nothing else heals me if I am at 100%, meaning nothing else heals me 99% of the time. Nothing else heals me if I am shaman-warded. Nothing else heals me if I have reactives on.</p><p>BTW all red adornments associated with healing abilities need to be taken off their respective pieces of gear if this goes live. The changes are crap regardless.</p>

[Ryai]

<p>Fair enough, but then what is the point of ALL of my paladin heals?</p><p>Also, how does this fix the fact that the itemization is almost a bigger problem now, with all the stonewill/Fatal lifetap out there? This doesn't fix the problem, it just hugely negatively impacts every undergeared player out there.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>Well then, don't mind me if I don't believe you if you aren't willing to say why the change was necessary.</p></blockquote><p>+1</p><p>Lies make us sad.</p><p>A <em><strong>wholesale</strong></em> retraction of Crit Consolidation just because <em><strong>some</strong></em> fighters in extreme circumstances/gear/<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">PVP</span> were overpowered is a bit much to take without any explanation being offered to the playerbase. You <strong><em>JUST</em></strong> implemented crit consolidation six months ago. It simplified things greatly and made a lot of sense. Crumpling it up and throwing it out the window - for some classes only, no less - is a cheap cop out, not a fix.</p>

[CraigH]

<p>Fighters will still be able to critically heal for a small $1.99/month service fee.</p>

[Ryai]

<p>Here's the good news.</p><p>Starcraft 2 hits today.</p><p>Final Fantasy 14 is due to hit Sept 14.</p>

[Wasuna]

<p>Gear doesn't give you AoE life taps. Gear doesn't give you wards. Gear doesn't give you single target Lifetaps. Gear just makes them better.</p>

[guillero]

<p>What a load of crap! Do we Paladins get some DPS added, while our heals get nerfed into oblivion?! Tjeez! Thank you very much.</p><p>And again the casual player (me!) bites the dust.</p><p>Maybe the devs can just nerf the crap out of RAID gear instead of punishing the wide majority of players who will never get any of such gear and just try to enjoy the game with modest gear!</p><p>And this nerf is not PVP driven?? Yeah right! Like anyone here is going to believe that. lol.</p><p>This is just another EPIC FAIL panic nerf out of nowhere from $OE HQ. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" /></p>

[S_M_I_T_E]

<p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>And totally changes the game for the tanks who aren't geared. I am low geared and now I probably will have to be cautious of trying to tank any of the easy instances without a good healer now, my tank is an alt. He only has a couple of pieces of instance gear. His heals critting was a major step in his survivability.</p></blockquote><p>Well, the changes aren't live yet and I was with a Bzk last night who was so-so geared and lemme tell you RH was a real challenge with no bard/chanter or 20K dps.  <em>We did fine</em> and I actually had to heal, like all out not preward then dps but actually heal, debuff, heal. </p><p>Zone took <em>significantly longer</em> than 25min but it was fine really.  It was actualy <em>more fun </em>not pulling whole rooms just trying to dps to make the parse as the healer who wasn't really needed. </p><p>Now, if the "average" group starts taking 1.5hrs in RH they need to drop the mark merchant down from 220 or many of us will never get there this side of the next exp pack.  220 make sense if you run 4 easy zones at 28-42 min apeice for hoards of marks but if the time it takes to do zones goes up alot anyone who isn't geared yet is gonna be hosed and have to put in more time to get their than ppl who are already there. </p><p>Hopefully they'll think through unintended consequences of this <em>fighter change that might affect reward rates</em> for those who aren't at /beat game.</p>

[Shotneedle]

<p><cite>Wasuna wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Gear doesn't give you AoE life taps. Gear doesn't give you wards. Gear doesn't give you single target Lifetaps. Gear just makes them better.</p></blockquote><p>I'm sorry, what game are you playing?</p><p>Stonewill</p><p>Stonewill II</p><p>Stonewill III</p><p>Fatal Lifetap</p><p>Fatal Lifetap II</p><p>Fatal Lifetap III</p><p>Vig x2 Axe</p><p>Earthspine</p><p>Zarrakon Wrist</p><p>Lifespike</p><p>....Just a few off the top of my head.</p>

[Blaidd]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>So if you dont want Fighters to tank why give 2 classes an AA for enhancing it?</p><p>Legionairre's Focus improves the Heal Crit Bonus by 2% per rank but if they no longer crit this is obsolete. I hope you have a replacement AA ready.</p>

[Wilderbeast25]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>Sorry if I don't believe you.  If you really want to change people's minds about the reasoning then please give specific reasons.  Otherwise what I really believed happened was this:</p><p>DEV1:  People are complaining about fighter heals in Battlegrounds.</p><p>DEV2:  What should we do about that?</p><p>DEV1: Nerf all fighter heals so they don't crit anymore.</p><p>DEV2:  Shouldn't we just do that for PvP?  (I'm dreaming at this point because I'm giving credit that they care.)</p><p>DEV1:  No I don't feel like doing any extra work.</p><p>Now I realize that some tanks to have high heal parses.  Those are mostly tanks that are VERY well geared. Which is a very very small part of the overall population of EQ2 and it is my opinion that does not unbalance the game as most tanks don't have access to that gear so it is still my opinion this should not affect PvE.</p>

[Shotneedle]

<p><cite>Ysbryd@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>So if you dont want Fighters to tank why give 2 classes an AA for enhancing it?</p><p>Legionairre's Focus improves the Heal Crit Bonus by 2% per rank but if they no longer crit this is obsolete. I hope you have a replacement AA ready.</p></blockquote><p>ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT</p><p>Crusaders</p> <p>Legionnaire’s Focus now is 2% heal potency rather than 2% heal crit bonus per rank.</p>

[duckman2]

<p>if fighters are going to no longer be able to crit heal make it fare across the board me the healers not be able to crit attack lol tbh this is a terible idea who ever thought this one up should be fired.</p><p>taking a skill away from one sub class is a rediculous idea</p>

[aias]

<p><cite>Ysbryd@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>So if you dont want Fighters to tank why give 2 classes an AA for enhancing it?</p><p>Legionairre's Focus improves the Heal Crit Bonus by 2% per rank but if they no longer crit this is obsolete. I hope you have a replacement AA ready.</p></blockquote><p>I think a Tower of Stone or stoneskin would be a fair tradeoff?</p>

[Barx]

<p><cite>Ysbryd@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Legionairre's Focus improves the Heal Crit Bonus by 2% per rank but if they no longer crit this is obsolete. I hope you have a replacement AA ready.</p></blockquote><p>Read the actual changes rather than just what people are saying -- it's going to be changed to heal potency rather than crit, so the net effect on that particular AA is zilch (a net gain technically for those that werent at 100% crit).</p>

[Boli32]

<p>There are a total of 79 AA points which have somethign to do with heals on the Paladin/Crusader pages.</p><p>Paladins have 3 Lifetaps, 1 Ward, 4 Direct Heals. - in fact ~ 20% of a paladins spells ARE heals</p><p>When these heals were implimented the heal / health ratio meant when you hit a heal they were an effective way of reducing incoming damage.</p><p>Whilst the health has increased drastically the heals have not, and the only way they have kept pace with the masive health of a tank is because they can critically hit.</p><p>If heals can no longer crit the following heals are NOT WORTH CASTING : Sacrament, Aid, Prayer. and the AA points  / red adorns for these spells are now USELESS.</p><p>Demonstration of Faith already gimped by crit bonus is just becoming an even less effective way to reduce incoming damage due to the cast time.</p><p>Instead of what is being a MASSIVE survival nerf to Paladins in general you shoudl review the entire healing abilitys of tanks instead of what is basically a kneejerk reaction to what is a relatively minior issue except in pvp/bg settings.</p>

[Vortexelemental]

<p><cite>S_M_I_T_E wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>And totally changes the game for the tanks who aren't geared. I am low geared and now I probably will have to be cautious of trying to tank any of the easy instances without a good healer now, my tank is an alt. He only has a couple of pieces of instance gear. His heals critting was a major step in his survivability.</p></blockquote><p>Well, the changes aren't live yet and I was with a Bzk last night who was so-so geared and lemme tell you RH was a real challenge with no bard/chanter or 20K dps.  <em>We did fine</em> and I actually had to heal, like all out not preward then dps but actually heal, debuff, heal. </p><p>Zone took <em>significantly longer</em> than 25min but it was fine really.  It was actualy <em>more fun </em>not pulling whole rooms just trying to dps to make the parse as the healer who wasn't really needed. </p><p>Now, if the "average" group starts taking 1.5hrs in RH they need to drop the mark merchant down from 220 or many of us will never get there this side of the next exp pack.  220 make sense if you run 4 easy zones at 28-42 min apeice for hoards of marks but if the time it takes to do zones goes up alot anyone who isn't geared yet is gonna be hosed and have to put in more time to get their than ppl who are already there. </p><p>Hopefully they'll think through unintended consequences of this <em>fighter change that might affect reward rates</em> for those who aren't at /beat game.</p></blockquote><p>Yep and do you think you would be able to take him through that same zone, once this change is done?</p>

[S_M_I_T_E]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>QFT. As is generally the case, balance issues primarily exist at the top-end - particularly top-end gear doing low end content. I've healed Crusaders in instances (Labs comes to mind) I could barely keep alive. I've healed Guardians in instances (Cella) where my ST pre-ward lasted the duration of entire fights and then some.</p></blockquote><p>I agree raid players doing easy content is a problem but I didn't expect any different from the raid brusier pulling rooms of RH without me healing but the legendary plate pallys and sk's doing so were just silly.</p><p>I will admit there was <em>almost always a bard or chanter</em> <em>or both</em> present and without those classes some of the "uberness" of the tanks would be taken away.</p>

[Shotneedle]

<p><cite>duckman2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>if fighters are going to no longer be able to crit heal make it fare across the board me the healers not be able to crit attack lol tbh this is a terible idea who ever thought this one up should be fired.</p><p>taking a skill away from one sub class is a rediculous idea</p></blockquote><p>They already have only 1.2 crit mod for spells.</p>

[Zegon]

<p><cite>Buffrat@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wasuna wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Gear doesn't give you AoE life taps. Gear doesn't give you wards. Gear doesn't give you single target Lifetaps. Gear just makes them better.</p></blockquote><p>I'm sorry, what game are you playing?</p><p>Stonewill</p><p>Stonewill II</p><p>Stonewill III</p><p>Fatal Lifetap</p><p>Fatal Lifetap II</p><p>Fatal Lifetap III</p><p>Vig x2 Axe</p><p>Earthspine</p><p>Zarrakon Wrist</p><p>Lifespike</p><p>....Just a few off the top of my head.</p></blockquote><p>You're forgetting any reactive ward gear from TSO (Kurn's Belt, War Stud of the Prime Everdark, Thick Banded Belt, Ring of Repulsion, Xebnok's Band of Might) and anything with Blood Ritual.  Now, gear doesn't give AoE lifetaps that I know of, but guess what.  AoE lifetaps aren't getting changed because it's an 'offensive spell' so the heal will still crit like it always has.  Isn't balance grand?</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Ysbryd@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>So if you dont want Fighters to tank why give 2 classes an AA for enhancing it?</p><p>Legionairre's Focus improves the Heal Crit Bonus by 2% per rank but if they no longer crit this is obsolete. I hope you have a replacement AA ready.</p></blockquote><p>Ofcourse they don't!  Just like when they shifted the Paladin's primary stat from WIS to STR and rendered a whole AA line completely useless, without updating it and still haven't today!!</p><p>And now we Paladins get this nerf as well, wich will impact this class A LOT!!</p><p>I duo a lot with my gf, and as I do not like a healbot class, I rolled a Paladin and love playing it. My gf is a Berserker. And together we duo all the time, with me with my Paladin support healing on tougher encounters.</p><p>This stupid CRAP nerf is going to severely impact us and our enjoyment duo'ing together!</p><p>But because of 0,5% of the playerbase having overpowered RAID gear, together with the Battlegrounds. We ALL have to be punished and get our beloved class nerfed into oblivion!!</p><p>what a load of crap!</p>

[Landiin]

<p>This thread is full of QQ!</p><p>You had to see this coming or something like it for a while now. To expect fighters to continue to be able to heal like they where would be just silly. </p>

[seamus]

<p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That's an itemization problem not mechanics. This is going to have repurcussions from 1-90 not just at 90.</p><p>Soloing with any of those tanks is going to suck now.</p></blockquote><p>Bingo! While this change may or may not be appropriate for Raid geared players it is probably inappropriate for those who do not max level in 2 days, have few AA's, nor raid.</p><p>Though I'll wait to actually see the effects of the change before deciding if it sucks to solo. I know my SK won't be able to solo some of the tougher content he can now but he'll still be a strong solo class. Though I think it will be tougher for Paladins.</p>

[Avianna]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>How is this Class wide nerf what we asked for as a player base? We asked for fighter balance not class wide nerf! Meaning bring down the sk a bit and bring up the guard a bit and meet somewhere in the middle where both the guard and the SK can live in harmony.</p><p> That is what the player base has asked for plain and simple.</p><p>There are a lot of twists and turns as to how that should be done but that is the basis of it.</p><p>This is what we get?</p><p>We ask for balance and get a classwide nerf.</p><p>My Opinion?</p><p>Many four letter words to say about this change while STILL ticked off about the very same issue of balance in the first place. You don't balance us by unilatterally nerfing ALL of us equally.</p>

[Khalindor]

<ul><li>Fighter heals can no longer critically heal.</li></ul><p>One word.. burn in hell. About the most ludicrous thing i have ever seen. Keep this up and you are going to outdo even the mythical escapades of Aeralik.  Might aswell remove all melee crits from warriors/brawlers while you are at it. About the same kind of impact. Since they arnt supposed to do dps anyway!</p>

[Cusashorn]

<p>Thanks. You just nerfed my monk's soloability.</p>

[Theren]

trash

[EQPrime]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ofcourse they don't!  Just like when they shifted the Paladin's primary stat from WIS to STR and rendered a whole AA line completely useless, without updating it and still haven't today!!</p></blockquote><p>What are you talking about?  Are you saying the wis line isn't good because wis isn't a pally primary stat anymore?</p><p>In regards to Xelgad's post, I really don't believe this wasn't influenced by PvP in a big way.  It is a foolish change.  It would have been better to reduce all of the fighter heal amounts and leave the crit mechanic alone because now you're undoing the good you did with the crit consolidation in the first place!  It is a poor choice to make special rules for certain abililties rather than just fix the abilities in the first place.</p>

[S_M_I_T_E]

<p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yep and do you think you would be able to take him through that same zone, once this change is done?</p></blockquote><p>After this update <em>I'm not going in without  that dirge or coercer or both</em> to juice <em>that particular player</em> up next time so I don't have to spend more time doing RH than I would participate in a weekend PUG raid session. </p><p>To be fair, I did notice that in the same group someone went and grabbed a non- 250 /beat game SK to try and go faster and I noticed that defensive vs offensive stance matters <em>a whole lot</em> when utility <em>isn't present</em>.</p>

[TheGeneral]

<p>.... wow.  I don't even know how to respond to this load of trash. ... just wow.</p><p>Just when I thought things were getting better.  Going to be fun at FF this year.... I hope there is enough booze to go out in style.</p>

[Aule]

$50 bucks says they screw up and Sk's still crit with their heals. Seeing as their "heals" aren't healing spells anyways, they're damage spells with a heal rider component. (And they crit last expansion based on spell crit rate NOT heal crit rate).

[circusgirl]

<p>Will the heal portion of a SK's lifetaps be unable to crit as well, or do these still count as spells?  It would be rather unhappy-making if everyone got the nerf except for one.</p>

[S_M_I_T_E]

<p><cite>duckman2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>if fighters are going to no longer be able to crit heal make it fare across the board <strong>me the healers not be able to crit attack lol</strong> tbh this is a terible idea who ever thought this one up should be fired.</p><p>taking a skill away from one sub class is a rediculous idea</p></blockquote><p>As long as fighters aren't #1 on the parse in group instances and are at the bottom below us healers after proposed nerf that's fine with me.   Might actually be able to dust off my wizard then of sitting in the inqusitor limbo. </p><p>Although I'm still toying with the idea of making a tank since I miss being #1 on the parse and that isn't changing anytime soon.</p><p><strong><em>All jesting aside, I agree with you.</em></strong>  The game is tuned at the raid end and the heroic game is borked looking.  Fighters shouldn't be #1 on the parse, healers shouldn't realy be able to be where they are when grouping (although I like it), and many T1 need the right "raid buffs" to really be all they can be which they aren't while grouping. </p><p>The devs in the mechanics cubicles should <em>consider using the mythical buff spells as "conditional" if solo if group if raid effects to kind of mitigate what they want at the freshest end teir every exp pack.</em> </p><p>If solo the SK = 7K dps, if group then dps --> 1.5hate instead, if raid ... etc. or If group wizzy = free time compression or whatever... I'm sure there's a list a mile long of things that could be used to force non-raid players actually grouping where they should be.  All the effort is on the raid tuning even though many never make it over the hill.</p>

[Kahling]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>For Clarification the ability of a Paladin to heal and ward is one the main defensive capabilities we have.  Prior to Sentinels Fate these were pretty poor, when you are tanking you get interrupted half the time trying to cast them.  When your not main tanking they come in handy as utlity.</p><p>Sentinels fate brought these in line with other tanks temporary mit increases etc and made them viable to cast even if you were interruped half the time as above, and they aforded Paladins utility.</p><p>THIS IS A HUGE NERF!  It is going to stop demonstration of faith being a hugely worthwile spell.  It will stop our only lifesave healing for as much as it does now (Divine Favour), it will cut our already crappy utility down as spot heals are good for any group/raid.</p><p>Paladins heals are in balance with other tanks mit increases now, prior to Sentinels fate they were not.</p><p>You really need to sit down and work out in PVE if this change is actually necessary, you need to understand that this is a huge nerf for some tanks and small one for others, and that it is mainly going to hit Paladins.  And you need to understand that if your offering nothing in return then allot of Paladins will be done when LU57 hits and that's paying customers you are going to loose cos some of us don't want to play any other class.</p><p>This needs a rethink and fast, I understand test is for testing, and hopefully you will find this is totally wrong and hit's mainly one class.</p><p>I don't see the point in Sentinels fate actually making the heals viable and then 6 months later they are taken down again?</p><p>Totally livid right now at this debacle, removing the most striking class feature of a Paladin is not a good idea, period.</p><p>Kah</p>

[Shotneedle]

<p>Hi guys. Dirge here. When is my ability to crit with spells being removed?</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Kahling@Kithicor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>For Clarification the ability of a Paladin to heal and ward is one the main defensive capabilities we have.  Prior to Sentinels Fate these were pretty poor, when you are tanking you get interrupted half the time trying to cast them.  When your not main tanking they come in handy as utlity.</p><p>Sentinels fate brought these in line with other tanks temporary mit increases etc and made them viable to cast even if you were interruped half the time as above, and they aforded Paladins utility.</p><p>THIS IS A HUGE NERF!  It is going to stop demonstration of faith being a hugely worthwile spell.  It will stop our only lifesave healing for as much as it does now (Divine Favour), it will cut our already crappy utility down as spot heals are good for any group/raid.</p><p>Paladins heals are in balance with other tanks mit increases now, prior to Sentinels fate they were not.</p><p>You really need to sit down and work out in PVE if this change is actually necessary, you need to understand that this is a huge nerf for some tanks and small one for others, and that it is mainly going to hit Paladins.  And you need to understand that if your offering nothing in return then allot of Paladins will be done when LU57 hits and that's paying customers you are going to loose cos some of us don't want to play any other class.</p><p>This needs a rethink and fast, I understand test is for testing, and hopefully you will find this is totally wrong and hit's mainly one class.</p><p>I don't see the point in Sentinels fate actually making the heals viable and then 6 months later they are taken down again?</p><p>Totally livid right now at this debacle, removing the most striking class feature of a Paladin is not a good idea, period.</p><p>Kah</p></blockquote><p>Well said!</p><p>And as someone else already said. The SK's will stay overpowered and get away with it, as their heals are spell crit based, not heal crit based.  And us Paladins will be hit the hardest, while totally unecessary!</p><p>As we weren't overpowered at all. Our DPS sucks compaired to other fighters, our tanking is average and the healing is our main utility we had! As we are called a hybrid class for a reason!! And now they gonna nerf our main utility into oblivion!</p><p>And seriously!! How can they say this was not PVP / Battlegrounds driven?? While everything points exactly to that!</p><p>The dev has absolutely NO CLUE whatsoever what a MAJOR NEGATIVE and DEVASTATING effect this nerf has to the PVE for Paladins!! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" /></p><p>So I am absolutely not fooled at all! And keep saying that this nerf is PVP driven!! Period!!</p><p>I sincerly hope they gonna take this RIDICULOUS nerf back to the drawing board and NOT push it live in it's current form!</p>

[Jonaroth]

<p>oh man this is really gonna nerf my paly <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Well guardians should be happier that they're gonna be the best tank around</p>

[LardLord]

<p>This change is important, and I hope they're able to stick with it despite the complaints.  Fighter heals have been pretty ridiculous since the expansion. </p><p>One example is the Paladin reactive heal on their mythical.  The 10% damage reduction + 10% heal was arguably overpowered in TSO, but once we started seeing the heal portion crit so that it was making damage feel a full 30% less significant...that's just ridiculous, and there's nothing Guardians or any other tank can do to match that survivability.  I mean, at least when it was only 20% there was some argument that maybe somehow Adrenaline kinda balanced with it, but at 30% even that argument can't hold up.</p>

[seamus]

<p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Here's the good news.</p><p>Starcraft 2 hits today.</p><p>Final Fantasy 14 is due to hit Sept 14.</p></blockquote><p>Sad thing is, I wouldn't be surprised if this factored in the timing of this. A large portion of folks are about to go on a long break <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Ultimately this is an itemization problem, not a class or archtype problem, and they can't fix that, before the expansion in any case. So they go with the quick fix and hope that in a month or so folks won't care.</p><p>And to the folks worrited about SK's. I gotta believe this change is going to effect the lifetaps and that is my assumption.</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This change is important, and I hope they're able to stick with it despite the complaints.  Fighter heals have been pretty ridiculous since the expansion. </p><p>One example is the Paladin reactive heal on their mythical.  The 10% damage reduction + 10% heal was arguably overpowered in TSO, but once we started seeing the heal portion crit so that it was making damage feel a full 30% less significant...that's just ridiculous, and there's nothing Guardians or any other tank can do to match that survivability.  I mean, at least when it was only 20% there was some argument that maybe somehow Adrenaline kinda balanced with it, but at 30% even that argument can't hold up.</p></blockquote><p>And how many players are actually able to achieve that huh??  How many??  Just a very tiny fraction of the playerbase!</p><p>The vast majority of us will never be able to achieve this, as we don't RAID and will never see this top gear! Ever!</p><p>So why do ALL of us non-RAIDER's have to be punished ?? Why can't they "<em><strong>adjust</strong></em>" the gear that creates this so called "overpoweredness" instead!!</p><p>And what about SK's huh??  They are overpowered across the board for quite some time now and are much much more powerful than we Paladins ever hope to be! (both PVE as PVP).  And guess what??  They will be totally unaffected by this nerf!!</p><p>This nerf will hit Paladin players (like me) in the lvl 1-90 range the most!  As the people in TOP RAID gear will suck it up, laugh at it, as they are overpowered in BG's and most of the game's PVE content anyway and will stay that way, regardless of this nerf.</p><p>So it's the 99,5% of the playerbase that has to suffer from this, because of the top 0,5% running around in Overpowered RAID gear!  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" />    Absolutely ridicilous!!</p>

[Xelgad]

<p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p>

[Theren]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This change is important, and I hope they're able to stick with it despite the complaints.  Fighter heals have been pretty ridiculous since the expansion. </p><p>One example is the Paladin reactive heal on their mythical.  The 10% damage reduction + 10% heal was arguably overpowered in TSO, but once we started seeing the heal portion crit so that it was making damage feel a full 30% less significant...that's just ridiculous, and there's nothing Guardians or any other tank can do to match that survivability.  I mean, at least when it was only 20% there was some argument that maybe somehow Adrenaline kinda balanced with it, but at 30% even that argument can't hold up.</p></blockquote><p>marr's favor (paladin reactive myth heal) doesn't crit by the way. give guards an until cancelled stoneskin buff and call it even. stop nerfing other classes to make 1 seem better.</p>

[Cusashorn]

<p>nm.</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>Those are legitimate concerns, but this is the wrong solution. Rather, you should be looking to improve the effectiveness of the various stoneskin-type abilities rather than nerfing fighters as a whole (and paladins in particular). Further, I think you may be downplaying the effectiveness of stoneskin abilities - thay tend to have longer reuse speeds, so they benefit more from reuse buffs, and incoming damage tends to increase dramatically at higher levels.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Ryou@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>marr's favor (paladin reactive myth heal) doesn't crit by the way. give guards an until cancelled stoneskin buff and call it even. stop nerfing other classes to make 1 seem better.</p></blockquote><p>I have logs that show the opposite.  Not sure why you would be seeing it not critting.</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>You should have thought about that BEFOREHAND!!  One more PERFECT example in how stat consilidation was a BAD idea for us HYBRID classes!</p><p>You are only talking about Guardian and Berserker self heals!! ffs!!</p><p>But what about us Paladins huh??  Healing is our MAIN utility for crying out loud! We are HYBRID class for a reason! We DEPEND on our heals!!</p><p>Why don't you nerf the stupid TOP RAID gear instead?? stuff only a tiny fraction of the playerbase can get anyway!</p><p>Why do all the rest of us have to suffer and be punished for something we will never be able to achieve ??</p><p>I rather have the old stat system back, then you now ruining the ONLY class I trully enjoy! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Davngr1]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>  i'm sure this is not the case but necromancer lifetaps will still crit, correct?</p><p>  the classes survivability is all ready low in BG's and such.</p>

[Hamervelder]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Tanks are not healers, and tanks should not zw heal for more than a healer.</p><p>IMO, further nerfing of fighter generated heals is still needed, but this is a step in a positive direction.</p></blockquote><p>I completely and utterly disagree.  As a paladin, I often depend on my ability to heal myself.  This is a stupid, and ill-thought change.  If you think that healers should be parsing more than fighters ZW, then find healers that don't suck.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Those are legitimate concerns, but this is the wrong solution. Rather, you should be looking to improve the effectiveness of the various stoneskin-type abilities rather than nerfing fighters as a whole (and paladins in particular). Further, I think you may be downplaying the effectiveness of stoneskin abilities - thay tend to have longer reuse speeds, so they benefit more from reuse buffs, and incoming damage tends to increase dramatically at higher levels.</p></blockquote><p>Considering how tanks can go through a lot of heroic content without a healer, and how raid mobs (much less other content) can rarely ever kill an MT without a script or something weird, I don't think the "buff up" method would work here.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Those are legitimate concerns, but this is the wrong solution. Rather, you should be looking to improve the effectiveness of the various stoneskin-type abilities rather than nerfing fighters as a whole (and paladins in particular). Further, I think you may be downplaying the effectiveness of stoneskin abilities - thay tend to have longer reuse speeds, so they benefit more from reuse buffs, and incoming damage tends to increase dramatically at higher levels.</p></blockquote><p>Considering how tanks can go through a lot of heroic content without a healer, and how raid mobs (much less other content) can rarely ever kill an MT without a script or something weird, I don't think the "buff up" method would work here.</p></blockquote><p>I'd love to see tanks do that, I guess it must be a Crusader thing. Considering how healers can go through heroic content then, I expect the next update to remove spell and melee crit from healers.</p><p>lollipop said it best before editing the post. I'm out too.</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Those are legitimate concerns, but this is the wrong solution. Rather, you should be looking to improve the effectiveness of the various stoneskin-type abilities rather than nerfing fighters as a whole (and paladins in particular). Further, I think you may be downplaying the effectiveness of stoneskin abilities - thay tend to have longer reuse speeds, so they benefit more from reuse buffs, and incoming damage tends to increase dramatically at higher levels.</p></blockquote><p>Considering how tanks can go through a lot of heroic content without a healer, and how raid mobs (much less other content) can rarely ever kill an MT without a script or something weird, I don't think the "buff up" method would work here.</p></blockquote><p>Perhaps, but that's an even larger structural issue. Rather than applying these band-aids that only serve to upset people, the devs should be focusing on fixing the underlying issues.</p><p>There doesn't seem to be any overall objective the devs are trying to accomplish here, just haphazard, reactionary nerfs. While i do not expect the devs to provide us with a roadmap of what they hope to accomplish, I would expect their actions would reflect that such a plan exists internally. Right now, I am not at all confident there is any such planning being done, nor do i beleive the devs really have any idea how to solve the problems.</p>

[Irgun]

<p>@Xelgad</p><p>Then lower the numbers of heals by about 25-33% and let them still crit and get benefit from critbonus.</p><p>Percentage-based heals are a different story, there you should make sure they really heal for appropriate amount.</p><p>But just to skip critchance for heals is unfair - plain and simple - I dont want to get discriminated, sorry.</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Those are legitimate concerns, but this is the wrong solution. Rather, you should be looking to improve the effectiveness of the various stoneskin-type abilities rather than nerfing fighters as a whole (and paladins in particular). Further, I think you may be downplaying the effectiveness of stoneskin abilities - thay tend to have longer reuse speeds, so they benefit more from reuse buffs, and incoming damage tends to increase dramatically at higher levels.</p></blockquote><p>Considering how tanks can go through a lot of heroic content without a healer, and how raid mobs (much less other content) can rarely ever kill an MT without a script or something weird, I don't think the "buff up" method would work here.</p></blockquote><p>Perhaps, but that's an even larger structural issue. Rather than applying these band-aids that only serve to upset people, the devs should be focusing on fixing the underlying issues.</p><p>There doesn't seem to be any overall objective the devs are trying to accomplish here, just haphazard, reactionary nerfs. While i do not expect the devs to provide us with a roadmap of what they hope to accomplish, I would expect their actions would reflect that such a plan exists internally. Right now, I am not at all confident there is any such planning being done, nor do i beleive the devs really have any idea how to solve the problems.</p></blockquote><p>They only thing they FIX, is the top 0,5% of the players (the top RAID'ers), while 99.5% of the playerbase is left with a ruined class!</p><p>And I am getting TOTALLY SICK of this crap!</p>

[Theren]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ryou@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>marr's favor (paladin reactive myth heal) doesn't crit by the way. give guards an until cancelled stoneskin buff and call it even. stop nerfing other classes to make 1 seem better.</p></blockquote><p>I have logs that show the opposite.  Not sure why you would be seeing it not critting.</p></blockquote><p>i'd very much like to see the logs then. a screenshot or something that show marr's favor critting.</p><p>looking at my logs from toxx i'm showing over 800 procs of Marr's Favor and not a single critical. It isn't effected by criticals or by bonus/potency. My last hit of it shows a heal for 832 hp. looking into the logs, the dmg that triggered the heal was 8,316 slashing damage. looks to be working as intended. healing for EXACTLY 10% of physical hits.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>They only thing they FIX, is the top 0,5% of the top RAID'ers, while 99.5% of the playerbase is left with a ruined class!</p><p>And I am getting TOTALLY SICK of this crap!</p></blockquote><p>Ruined class? You realize your heals still get ability mod (not just +toheals) and potency (not just base healing), so your heals are likely still stronger relative to other classes/abilities than they were before stat consolidation, right?</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Those are legitimate concerns, but this is the wrong solution. Rather, you should be looking to improve the effectiveness of the various stoneskin-type abilities rather than nerfing fighters as a whole (and paladins in particular). Further, I think you may be downplaying the effectiveness of stoneskin abilities - thay tend to have longer reuse speeds, so they benefit more from reuse buffs, and incoming damage tends to increase dramatically at higher levels.</p></blockquote><p>Considering how tanks can go through a lot of heroic content without a healer, and how raid mobs (much less other content) can rarely ever kill an MT without a script or something weird, I don't think the "buff up" method would work here.</p></blockquote><p>Perhaps, but that's an even larger structural issue. Rather than applying these band-aids that only serve to upset people, the devs should be focusing on fixing the underlying issues.</p><p>There doesn't seem to be any overall objective the devs are trying to accomplish here, just haphazard, reactionary nerfs. While i do not expect the devs to provide us with a roadmap of what they hope to accomplish, I would expect their actions would reflect that such a plan exists internally. Right now, I am not at all confident there is any such planning being done, nor do i beleive the devs really have any idea how to solve the problems.</p></blockquote><p>They only thing they FIX, is the top 0,5% of the top RAID'ers, while 99.5% of the playerbase is left with a ruined class!</p><p>And I am getting TOTALLY SICK of this crap!</p></blockquote><p>That's a big part of the problem. The disparity in class ability based on gear and buff stacking is huge and getting wider. If you look at what the top end raid guilds can parse compared to what your average group will parse, the gap is astounding, and getitng wider with each expansion.</p><p>The impact of multiple tiers of play - solo to raid - is something EQ2 has never handled well, and has proven to be a constant source of tension both among the players and in terms of game mechanics. It's like trying to support everyone from your JV teams up through professional athletes in one league. It just won't work.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Ryou@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>i'd very much like to see the logs then. a screenshot or something that show marr's favor critting.</p><p>looking at my logs from toxx i'm showing over 800 procs of Marr's Favor and not a single critical. It isn't effected by criticals or by bonus/potency. My last hit of it shows a heal for 832 hp. looking into the logs, the dmg that triggered the heal was 8,316 slashing damage. looks to be working as intended. healing for EXACTLY 10% of physical hits.</p></blockquote><p>That's odd indeed.</p><p><img src="http://i573.photobucket.com/albums/ss175/TheOtherDude/MarrsFavor.jpg" /></p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>Unfortunately, Nerfing skill heals will only impact undergeared players. Parse out heroic content. A single stonewill 3 ring will parse 10-15% of incoming heals on a fighter. Blood ritual will parse another 5%. Add in stacking Stonewill 1 and 2 procs, fatal lifetap, etc. You STILL have the exact same problems as before.</p><p>I understand your intention here Xelgad, but it won't fix the problem at all. Zerkers still have % based heals, thats where the power comes from. You can nerf all you like, but all you are going to accomplish is [Removed for Content] off the player base.</p><p>Removing the heal crits from a paladin/zerker will <em>not</em> affect a high end player like you want. It will totally frustrate a long time casual player and create an even larger disparity between raid/BG geared people and the rest of the player base. I have been playing both sides for a while now, and I know this will make completing the vast majority of heroic content extremely difficult for most casual players. All this does is make the gear even <em>more</em> important, which hurts only those unable to obtain it.</p><p>Unfortunately, in the crit system change, the far-reaching implications weren't known until months into the expansion pack. There is no way to fix this in the current expansion, the entire high-end gear system negates the difficulty of 90% of the content. That is the reality of a gear driven system, and nerfing skills will not do anything to fix the problems that have existed since the launch of sentinel's fate.</p><p>I am already seeing extended break/away from game messages come from <em>casual</em> players over this, because a lot of people are becoming disillusioned. Add in the fact that eq2extended is sounding the death knell for server populations on live(no new people will subscribe to the existing live servers unless they already know someone there.) and eq2 is heading distinctly south. I was hopeful that SoE might be turning around a downward trend. No longer.</p>

[Aral]

<p>(sorry for the slight derail bu this is the first time I've seen a dev acknowledge the issue of crit bonus widening previous gaps)</p><p>Xelgad, can you please take that same thinking you just demonstrated and apply it to swarm pets?  Fixing that disparity is long overdue, and more obvious a fix than this carpet bombing fighter nerf.  Any non-critting ability which was implemented / balanced prior to SF has fallen far behind with the 1.5 base multipliers and large amount of crit bonus available via gear and aa, yet the obvious problem of swarm pets being unaffected by any of the new uncapped mods is yet unaddressed.</p><p>Derail off.</p><p>Some factors that are not being considered here:</p><p>1. Paladins take the lion's share of this nerf.  Some paladins enjoy playing the role of secondary healer or protecting another tank well - but non-critting heals are useless and not worth casting since their size is so far out of proportion to the incoming damage on individuals and groups, the casting  time is better used doing something else due to opportunity cost.  This nerf may seem necessary for balance for the paladin SELF heal abilities, such as the mythical effect, but the heals used on groups and others should NOT be reduced. If anything, they are too small.</p><p>Suggestion: Nerf specific self-heal abilities at the base level, rather than simply removing crit ability. For example, reduce the base heal size of the paladin mythical effect or devout sacrament, but leave their direct heals as is.  Reduce the base % of Reaver but leave the active / cast required Tap veins as is. A full removal of all crit ability is akin to carpet bombing a neighborhood to take out a meth lab.  Have you seriously thought through how large an impact this is on direct heals? Not critting amounts to a drop from an average player 2.0 multiplier to a 1.0 multiplier, a halving of heal size. This is NOT back to TSO level, and mobs are not hitting at TSO levels either.</p><p>2. Several folks keep talking about the heal parses being out of hand. If you break down the data you'll see most of this is Stonewill, leftover Deadly Repulsion, etc. Take out the equipment procs and it's rare to see fighter heals go above 200-400 HPS.  This is not competing with real healers.  This change will exacerbate the problem of overpowered warding procs on equipment, as those without will suffer a larger decrease in self healing.</p><p>If the problem you are trying to solve is fighters soloing / duoing heroic instances, then you missed 70% of the problem by focusing on spell / CA heals.  This "problem" is primarily a trivialization of content via gear, including proc gear mentioned above.  Congrats on making paladins less able to heal up a <em>group</em> in the attempt to keep them from <em>soloing</em> library. Brilliant.</p><p>If the problem you are trying to solve is making guardians more viable tanks relative to the other tanks, I have a feeling the guardians themselves have plenty of smarter options for you to consider as fixes, rather than a shotgun blast to the other 3 plate tanks.  However, specific reductions to abilities like Battle Frenzy, Reaver, paladin mythical may be in order. Fix the specific problems.</p><p>Specific nerfs to specific overpowered abilities are not difficult, and don't cause collateral damage to abilities that were not at all overpowered, and beloved by players.  Stick to these please- and FFS make swarm pets crittable / potency-affected dot spells with an animation already. </p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>They only thing they FIX, is the top 0,5% of the top RAID'ers, while 99.5% of the playerbase is left with a ruined class!</p><p>And I am getting TOTALLY SICK of this crap!</p></blockquote><p>Ruined class? You realize your heals still get ability mod (not just +toheals) and potency (not just base healing), so your heals are likely still stronger relative to other classes/abilities than they were before stat consolidation, right?</p></blockquote><p>You again talk about top RAID gear that give ridiculous amount of  bonusses!</p><p>For the average player with our average gear. Our ability modifer and our crit % isn't so high at all. But just enough to really matter and help us through some of the more challenging content and give us enjoyment!</p><p>Now removing an entire mechanic (this case heal crit) from a class his/her MAIN utility has a BIG impact for the average player!</p><p>The 0,5% of the playerbase with Overpowered RAID gear, for wich this nerf is OBVIOUSLY intended, will hardly notice anything. Other than that they go from ridiculous Overpowered to still being Overpowered.</p><p>So what does it solve in the end? Absolutely NOTHING! Other than [Removed for Content] off all the rest of us and ruin our beloved class we have been enjoying for such a long time!</p>

[lollipop]

<p>The only thing and feedback that Sony will listen to is money. This change screwed palys. Cancel your acct and show them. Show them how you feel by hitting thier bottom line. When mine and my signifficant others game cards run out..they will lose 6 accounts. Well 7 accually but we only have that one active random times.</p><p>Also SC we spend...no more. I used to change my race once every month....Buy potions for alts. No more. Hit em where it hurts. Money</p>

[Aule]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>Was your design team somehow kept entirely in the dark and completely unaware that 70 crit bonus was going to be laughably easy to obtain?</p><p>If that's actually true then I'm insulted at how incompetent the design team is this go around.</p><p>Though we are seeing a common trend that's been occurring since Avatars were introduced into EOF.  Namely, the itemization is completely out of hand and has trickle down effects that damage the rest of the gameplay.  You need to fire Monty Haul and bring in an item design lead with a statistics background who can do an actual analysis.  Then you need to impose rules and <em>actually follow them.</em></p><p>I mean seriously, almost the first thing that occurred to me when you announced crit consolidation was "oh hey, my bruiser's going to be able to save some aa's because my self heal will heal 100% regardless of if I put any points in there or not".</p><p>Do what other people have said, leave normal heals alone but make percentage based heals a strict percentage.  Or make fighters heal crit base be 1.0, go improve it with gear.  Or a step further and 1.0 base, and also give it the half benefit that wards give.</p><p>Don't just look like you people don't know what you're doing by consolidating crits and 6 mo's later going "uh, we had no idea this would happen".</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>lollipop wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The only thing and feedback that Sony will listen to is money. This change screwed palys. Cancel your acct and show them. Show them how you feel by hitting thier bottom line. When mine and my signifficant others game cards run out..they will lose 6 accounts. Well 7 accually but we only have that one active random times.</p><p>Also SC we spend...no more. I used to change my race once every month....Buy potions for alts. No more. Hit em where it hurts. Money</p></blockquote><p>+2 (accounts)</p><p>Your posts in this thread all spot on. Didn't just screw Paladins though.</p><p>If instead of altering game mechanics just to get a couple abilities in line would make % based abilities unaffected by crit & potency it would make a lot more sense IMO, and they probably always should have been that way. That would probably [Removed for Content] more people off though. Oh well.</p>

[S_M_I_T_E]

<p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The <strong>impact of multiple tiers of play - solo to raid - is something EQ2 has never handled well</strong>, and has proven to be a constant source of tension both among the players and in terms of game mechanics. It's like trying to support everyone from your JV teams up through professional athletes in one league. It just won't work.</p></blockquote><p><strong>I agree.</strong>  Unfortunately, in long hot threads ppl just don't read other posters before they add to the caboose.  Shame there isn't a class defining spell that every class has that has conditional modifiers:</p><p>if in <em>group</em> toggled zone then obtain buff/debuff/fast casting/etc. to make you T1/T2/T3 whatever dps/hate/heal</p><p>if in <em>raid </em>toggled zone then obtain buff/debuff/fast casting/etc. to makey ou T1/T2/T3 whatever dps/hate/heal</p><p>if not group or raid toggled zone then no change</p><p>Yeah it's a shame <em>there isn't 24 unique class definining spells</em> built into the game they couldn't add conditional modifiers to fix the 2-6 group game.</p>

[Kahling]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>Stoneskin abilities > Heal abilites though!</p><p>If your HP's go lower than 100% then you are at the very end of your possibilty of staying alive.  Wards, stoneskins, damage reducers are much more potent than a direct heal.</p><p>Good groups or raids will say the tank's hp never go below green, why? Because they are warded, they are stoneskinned, they are protected before their HP even get touched.</p><p>I'm sorry but I can't see how you can compare the stuff that goes on before you even go below 100% hp to direct heals.</p><p>When way over half the heals you cast are wasted due to what goes on before you go below 100% This is a sledgehammer in my opinion.</p><p>Kah</p>

[Grumble69]

<p>Why not just cap the crit [on heals]?  Problem solved without whacking the solo/group players?</p>

[Crazysmurf]

<p>I play a MT paladin in a casual raiding guild and this change to ONE ARCHETYPE's ability mechanics is upsetting for several reasons to me.</p><p>1) The raid fighter gear atleast in T1 and T2 has two versions, defensive, and dps.  The defensive gear has very little crit bonus and very little potency, what it does have is a TON of crit chance. When tanking I am forced to use the defensive gear. The ability to crit heal with low potency and low crit bonus is the only reason i have any utility over another tanking class.  The dps gear while having crit bonus and average potency has no defensive stats and with this change only helps very little in teh way of boosting heals (potency). Sure i can supplement the lack of heals support with my jewelery, but i need most of those slots for stoneskin, aggro control procs. Having neither one of these sets of gear have high amounts of reuse, ability mod, casting speed or any other worthwhile stats that would boost my heals in this new system. My question is in order for my heals to become effective do the game designers want me to take all the plate healer gear with casting speed, ability mod, and reuse? If thats whats expected I don't believe my plate healers will be very happy consdering the drop rate is already skewed towards fighter gear.  S my only recourse is to do one of two things, betray to shadowknight where heals are less important. or never touch my heal buttons ever again essentially turning myself into a very boring / no utility meat shield.</p><p>2) If this nerf was intended to stop my ability to survive soloing heroic content , or doing some of it with very little healing this does neither, and fighters aren't even the most effective people to be able to solo in the current environment (inquisitors are very adept at this as an example),  I don't actually click my heals all that often other than when my healer falls asleep, or i don't know them.  When attempting to solo easier heroic content I ussually only pull what my prorcs can keep me alive with, the reason being when im healing im not DPSing, and when I'm not casting dammage spells or CAs im not procing my power procs.  My heals are not what makes it possible for me to solo content.  Items that were in the game in T8 which were not overpowered than are what keep my power up, and stoneskin / lifetap procs are what keep my hp high (stonewill procs are still procing PvP values in PvE zones, on PvP servers btw which still hasn't been fixed after many months of this expansion) What this nerf does is stop my utility, I LOVE being able to help healing, warding the squishier new members in my raid is a fun and challenging role, and this nerf doenst really change my survivability (except divine favor not critting) all that much, what it does do is stop my aiblity to help the raid with heals.</p><p>3)  If this change was intended to help with PvP balance, when is the healer nuke crit coming? when is toughness based on types of armor (was toughness supposed to allow leather healers to be able to survive w/o losing power against an assassin or wizard),  I play a few different pvp classes and yes some fighter heals needed a nerf, but these changes should have been targeted and narrow in their focus.  (easiest way is to use the CURRENT PVP ability system of having different values in pvp than in PvE)  One example would be to nerf the effectiveness of holy aid in pvp to a 1/3 of its listed ability.  Changes such as that would balance what the designers care to balance while leaving game mechanics in tact and not drastically changed hurting some classes more than others.  If you take away crit heals i can guarantee you there will be even more SKs than their are now.</p>

[TheLopper]

<p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If I have a good healer in the group, in an easy instance, I don't heal. I ward on the pull and cure myself but that's it. It is doing PUGs with crappy healers where we got used to healing ourselves like mad.</p><p>That's where the blame (if any needs to be placed) belongs and not on the fighters.</p><p>Now lets discuss the hard SF instances I doubt you will find any healers complaining that they have nothing to do. And if you are in groups that are able to do the harder content then more than likely you all have gear that turns the easy zones into snooze fests.</p><p>Its call progression...</p></blockquote><p>So . . .the problem isn't that you were capable of filling in for the healer, whilst simultaneously tanking?<span style="font-size: 11.6667px;">Yeah, that wasn't the problem at all.--------------</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 11.6667px;">General response to the thread:</span></p><p>Take away a shiny toy and the baby will cry.  You SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO HEAL YOURSELF.  Ok?  Unless you're an SK or a Pal (as an SK or Pal, you should be able to put out bursts of 1/3ish a decent healer's capability), you shouldn't be able to heal yourself with anything even approaching the efficacy of a healer, via gear or otherwise.</p><p>I don't know when everyone got it in their minds that tanks should be able to heal at all.  If the content is too difficult to run without being able to heal yourself, you should either run easier content, or bring a second healer.If you can't tank the difficult content . . .guess what?  You need to progress a little more in easier content.  Is that such an extraordinary concept, that you shouldn't be able to just skip to the top?  Everyone just wants to do everything nowadays, huh?  Ask for balanced content and classes, not OP abilities that trivialize most of the game.  <span style="color: #ff0000;">I'd like someone to point to me a place that any class- ANY CLASS- cannot solo in solo content equivalent to the level of the character playing through it.  Show me some.  Please.  This isn't about people "losing the ability to solo," it's about people trying to make up silly justifications for maintaining their potential OPness.</span></p>

[Ayaka]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul></blockquote><p>I don't understand - Fighters can't CRIT on heals now but you still say CRIT BONUS will still help? Don't you have to actually critical for crit bonus to be taken into account?</p><p>I really hate it that every class has to be played the way SOE wants them to be played - Paladins now, especially. One of their best utilities is being a back up healer for their raid group. Now SOE takes that utility away from them now. Sigh...  Customization has been fading every update...</p><p>Now that Pally's heals will be decreased by what seems more than half.. Why play them over a much higher parsing SK?  bleh</p>

[TheLopper]

<p><cite>Ayaka wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul></blockquote><p>I don't understand - Fighters can't CRIT on heals now but you still say CRIT BONUS will still help? Don't you have to actually critical for crit bonus to be taken into account?</p><p>I really hate it that every class has to be played the way SOE wants them to be played - Paladins now, especially. One of their best utilities is being a back up healer for their raid group. Now SOE takes that utility away from them now. Sigh...  Customization has been fading every update...</p></blockquote><p>Misread.  I think he was tlaking about healing abilities in general.</p>

[Callim]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>Poorly thought out, you are nerfing 6 classes to help balance guardians and zerkers?  Paladins and SK's have always been able to max out heal crits, SK's through spell crit, and paladins via old int line.  Stat consolidation made 0 difference in how often crusaders were critting.</p><p>Crit bonus may be an issue, but not crit ability.  The crusader archetype has been balanced around near max heal critting for 4 teirs worth of expansions, this is a horrible change.</p><p>Did you consider secondary repercussions?  SK mythical converts 300 percent of heal amount into hate, you just cut heals by more then half, will you make up the loss in aoe agro at all?  Will you nerf the zerker mythical so that half its hate is reduced since its based on dmg output not heal output?  Silly, just silly.</p><p>You screwed the pooch when it came to guardians, try not to plant your head even firmer up there in your attempts to bring them up to balance.</p><p>And honestly, who puts in stuff like blood ritual, symphonic allure, deadly lifetaps on every piece, and stonewill items...only to then decide those folks heal too much.</p><p>Lunacy, seriously.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Ayaka wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I really hate it that every class has to be played the way SOE wants them to be played - Paladins now, especially. One of their best utilities is being a back up healer for their raid group. Now SOE takes that utility away from them now. Sigh...  Customization has been fading every update...</p></blockquote><p>If you could play that way prior to SF, you should be able to play that way after this patch.  It's not like the patch is removing your ability to heal.</p>

[Wurm]

<p><cite>TheLopper wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If I have a good healer in the group, in an easy instance, I don't heal. I ward on the pull and cure myself but that's it. It is doing PUGs with crappy healers where we got used to healing ourselves like mad.</p><p>That's where the blame (if any needs to be placed) belongs and not on the fighters.</p><p>Now lets discuss the hard SF instances I doubt you will find any healers complaining that they have nothing to do. And if you are in groups that are able to do the harder content then more than likely you all have gear that turns the easy zones into snooze fests.</p><p>Its call progression...</p></blockquote><p>So . . .the problem isn't that you were capable of filling in for the healer, whilst simultaneously tanking?<span style="font-size: 11.6667px;">Yeah, that wasn't the problem at all.--------------</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 11.6667px;">General response to the thread:</span></p><p>Take away a shiny toy and the baby will cry.  You SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO HEAL YOURSELF.  Ok?  Unless you're an SK or a Pal (as an SK or Pal, you should be able to put out bursts of 1/3ish a decent healer's capability), you shouldn't be able to heal yourself with anything even approaching the efficacy of a healer, via gear or otherwise.</p><p>I don't know when everyone got it in their minds that tanks should be able to heal at all.  If the content is too difficult to run without being able to heal yourself, you should either run easier content, or bring a second healer.If you can't tank the difficult content . . .guess what?  You need to progress a little more in easier content.  Is that such an extraordinary concept, that you shouldn't be able to just skip to the top?  Everyone just wants to do everything nowadays, huh?  Ask for balanced content and classes, not OP abilities that trivialize most of the game.  <span style="color: #ff0000;">I'd like someone to point to me a place that any class- ANY CLASS- cannot solo in solo content equivalent to the level of the character playing through it.  Show me some.  Please.  This isn't about people "losing the ability to solo," it's about people trying to make up silly justifications for maintaining their potential OPness.</span></p></blockquote><p>Don't know what you are smoking but I never said that I could run library not needing any heals at all... Paladin's go OOP faster than any other class when forced to heal themselves. No tank goes into a full group instance without a healer unless they have OP gear.</p><p>The rest of your post is also full of fail, it sounds like you have no idea how Paladins work at all. Once again if the fighter is out healing the healer, the healer sucks.</p><p>And yeah soloing ONLY solo content, horray to going back to the snooze fest that was post LU13...</p>

[Bruener]

<p>Maybe its not all heals that should be changed to this, just the ones that are a % base passive heal.</p><p>Example, Reaver has never been affected by Crit.  The reasoning for that is because it is a % based heal and it was understood that an ability like that also being able to crit would be too much healing.  The Pally myth buff ability should be treated the same way along with basically any % based heal ability of any fighter.</p><p>Just making it so ALL heals can't crit is a sad change and really takes away the whole goal of the consolidation.  Really it is not like a fighter is even coming close to HPS of what a healer is doing.  Last night we were pullin the trio in wing 1 of UD and something happened to the other 2 tanks and I ended up tanking all 3 mobs for a while.  The Fury and Mystic in the group were spiking HPS of close to 15k EACH while I was hitting a whopping 1k HPS if I was lucky.</p><p>Some people complain about over-geared tanks than being able to solo tough stuff, or do more with no healer.  But lets talk about the fact that healers because of their massive HPS and doing good DPS can actually solo harder content and an over-geared healer can keep up even a mage through-out content.</p><p>For some reason it is wrong one way but not wrong the other?</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Maybe its not all heals that should be changed to this, just the ones that are a % base passive heal.</p><p>Example, Reaver has never been affected by Crit.  The reasoning for that is because it is a % based heal and it was understood that an ability like that also being able to crit would be too much healing.  The Pally myth buff ability should be treated the same way along with basically any % based heal ability of any fighter.</p><p>Just making it so ALL heals can't crit is a sad change and really takes away the whole goal of the consolidation.  Really it is not like a fighter is even coming close to HPS of what a healer is doing.  Last night we were pullin the trio in wing 1 of UD and something happened to the other 2 tanks and I ended up tanking all 3 mobs for a while.  The Fury and Mystic in the group were spiking HPS of close to 15k EACH while I was hitting a whopping 1k HPS if I was lucky.</p><p>Some people complain about over-geared tanks than being able to solo tough stuff, or do more with no healer.  But lets talk about the fact that healers because of their massive HPS and doing good DPS can actually solo harder content and an over-geared healer can keep up even a mage through-out content.</p><p>For some reason it is wrong one way but not wrong the other?</p></blockquote><p>I was surprised to find out that the % based heals were critting anyway back in the beta. I don't think they ever should, and that goes for ANY % based ability. That's why it's % based instead of being an amount, isn't it? Seems self-evident. Guess not.</p><p>I can solo more with my crap-geared Shaman that I no longer play than I can with my raid-geared Berserker that I will no longer play after this. It's bogus reasoning, a bogus solution, and if it's not being done for PVP reasons then it's all in the name of Guardians.</p>

[Dimgl]

<p>I will unsubscribe over this.</p><p>So will my 4 friends who don't play healers and rely on my Paladin to main heal us through zones like Library, ERH, etc.</p><p>I rolled Paladin specifically to have the dual role of either tank (when needed) or healer (when needed.)</p><p>I have a crit bonus of nearly 90%. By removing my ability to crit I will be losing a 90% bonus.</p><p>90/190 = 47%. You will be reducing my healing power by 47%.</p><p>And yet while you pull this atrocity off you are doing nothing to fix:</p><p>Devout Sacrament's cast time and fragility making it the single most unreliable tank timer in the game. What good is a big heal if it takes 4-5 seconds to cast due to interruptions and setbacks? Most of the time I try to cast this ability I either die or heal myself for zero because it took so long I got healed by my priest. Furthermore it is self only so it is only useful while tanking, and usually only used in an emergency, meaning it is INCREDIBLY likely to be chain interrupted.</p><p>Holy Avenger: The Paladin mythical clicky. Supposed to be a semi-decent aoe damage and aoe heal. Instead it is resisted more than 50% of the time it is used, the little knight frequently kills himself by being riposted once, and his accuracy is lucky to be in the teens. How about changing this into a legitimate aoe drain/raid heal like it is "intended to be" instead of a crappy dice roll pet that takes 10-15 seconds to cast due to resists?</p><p>Arch Heal, the Paladin healing endline AA. It costs nearly twice as much power as Holy Aid, has twice the recast of Holy Aid, has twice the cast time of Holy Aid, and heals for 90% of Holy Aid? How about replacing this AA with a legitimate healing option like a real arcing heal, like a chain heal. Or if you're convinced you should carry out this nerf then replace the paladin healing endline with the ability to critical heal. That way Paladins who are serious about healing can take this AA and not be gutted by this nerf.</p><p>That's all I have to say. I will unsubscribe if this nerf goes in.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>TheLopper wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">I'd like someone to point to me a place that any class- ANY CLASS- cannot solo in solo content equivalent to the level of the character playing through it.  Show me some.  Please.  This isn't about people "losing the ability to solo," it's about people trying to make up silly justifications for maintaining their potential OPness.</span></p></blockquote><p>If you had read any of the post from high-end geared players you would understand that they aren't worried about this. This affects the casual player far more than a tricked out raid char. The item procs are what are causing the huge disparity in heals, not the heal crits. Get a level 90 char fully outfitted in fabled gear and go run around in some groups, you'll find you <em>don't heal yourself</em>. Because you don't need to. Because stonewill and blood ritual have got your back yo. Guess how often I cast my single target heal as a paladin in groups. Almost never. I cast the group heal because it helps recover from AoEs that mobs cast. Guess I won't be doing that anymore, since there's no point.</p><p>Losing heal crits does not mean I won't be able to solo what I was doing before. It means my paladin won't be able to cover the rest of the group as well, and won't be able to take an undergeared/inexperienced healer into something that might be a little over his head. This in turn means he won't be able to get the gear he needs in order to actually be able to perform as he should.</p><p>Unfortunately, having had some time to think about it, I think this change will actually end up hurting every other class more than tanks, since they will have to deal with not getting heals from the healer as much as before, and certain tanks not being able to provide support in tough fights. Again, this is about balancing heroic content, and basically its screwing over the casual player in a [Removed for Content]-poor attempt to balance high-end players. I know my paladin won't be able to take questionably geared players into instances as much as before, which hurts them more than me. I have 85% of the gear that I want already for my paladin. I know a lot of other players that don't though, and it is going to make it even harder for them to get it. It is going to limit pugs to accepting known players rather than questionable ones. The tanks endline abilities aren't changing.</p><p>Furthermore, this doesn't do a thing to even come close to balancing tanks. Guardian aggro continues to be broken, and as long as guardians can't maintain it, they can't tank. Zerkers have aggro locks and huge survivability due to % based heals and 100% AoE attack. Brawlers are avoidance tanks, and if you've ever played one, you can solo crazy stuff in them because your avoidance is through the roof. Paladins and SKs will still out-DPS half the group, since this doesn't address that at all.</p><p>Ultimately, there isn't a good solution at the moment, because this is a gear driven game. This only serves to further reliance on "ultimate" gear, further differentiating the haves and have-nots. So, instead of working out a real solution, this blanket nerf comes out, which only serves to hurt the game as a whole. Paladins will have a ton of useless spells that never get cast now, since there is no point. It simply won't be worth the power cost, when I can use a CA instead to try to get a proc (Which can have an even greater effect. Blood ritual can heal anyone that hits the mob.) This is a nerf that won't solve anything, except to [Removed for Content] off a large % of the casual player population, and annoy raiders, since now they will need to swap gear around slightly(That they already have.)</p><p>Welcome to the new eq2, where gear is everything and only your ability to deal damage matters for anything. Welcome to TSO2.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ayaka wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I really hate it that every class has to be played the way SOE wants them to be played - Paladins now, especially. One of their best utilities is being a back up healer for their raid group. Now SOE takes that utility away from them now. Sigh...  Customization has been fading every update...</p></blockquote><p>If you could play that way prior to SF, you should be able to play that way after this patch.  It's not like the patch is removing your ability to heal.</p></blockquote><p>Yes it is. There is no point to casting a group heal that won't crit. It simply won't be worth the power cost. The HP pools are too high to really have any impact in any level 90 content, and won't be able to even make a dent in some of the damage that most 90+ mobs put out.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Some people complain about over-geared tanks than being able to solo tough stuff, or do more with no healer.  But lets talk about the fact that healers because of their massive HPS and doing good DPS can actually solo harder content and an over-geared healer can keep up even a mage through-out content.</p></blockquote><p>Exactly, its not tanks soloing epicx4 guards because they can, its raid furies and mystics, which, with the right power gear, can outlast anything. It might take a long time, but as long as they don't run out of power(which is easier than you might think) they can kill almost anything.</p>

[Lazzlo]

<p>I don't understand why fighter heals are getting nerfed because they are "getting out of hand".  By that logic, priest DPS, bard DPS, DPS in general this expansion, has got out of hand.  When crits were consolidated, this should have been thought of.  Fighter heals may have huge bonuses, but so do other classes that did not used to be "dps" classes.  By using this logic, DPS and healing as a whole, is out of hand, not just fighters.  Nerfing fighters is a lose-lose situation for everyone and should seriously be reconsidered. </p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite> </cite></p><p>I can solo more with my crap-geared Shaman that I no longer play than I can with my raid-geared Berserker that I will no longer play after this. It's bogus reasoning, a bogus solution, and if it's not being done for PVP reasons then it's all in the name of Guardians.</p></blockquote><p>Funny thing, this won't help guardians at all. They still won't be able to hold aggro without a coercer using shout on them constantly.</p>

[kiku]

<p>Please remove all melee and spell crit from Healers.</p><p>I mean really if you are going to do something lets go all the way,</p><p>+1 cancel!</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>kiku wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Please remove all melee and spell crit from Healers.</p><p>I mean really if you are going to do something lets go all the way,</p><p>+1 cancel!</p></blockquote><p>Hey wait, I have an idea. Maybe... maybe this whole consolidated crit thing was a terrible idea. Maybe we didn't consider how powerful it would make everyone.</p><p>Can we just take back the last xpack?</p><p>/sarcasm off</p><p>Seriously though. Maybe... you should <em>stick</em> with a system, and instead of trying to take 3 steps backwards, just let it be. People have fun. People are supposed to become overpowered when they spend <em>weeks</em> hunting raid content for gear. Time Vs Reward. If people are spending <em>weeks</em> trying to become overpowered, good for them. Don't punish the casual player as a result of poor understanding of mechanics changes. Instead... focus on the next Xpac, where you can fix everything and make it so people aren't overpowered(Because people are happier when effort is more evident in new content, and keep subscribing for more.)</p><p>Just Sayin.</p>

[Aull]

<p><cite>Lazzlo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I don't understand why fighter heals are getting nerfed because they are "getting out of hand".  By that logic, priest DPS, bard DPS, DPS in general this expansion, has got out of hand.  When crits were consolidated, this should have been thought of.  Fighter heals may have huge bonuses, but so do other classes that did not used to be "dps" classes.  By using this logic, DPS and healing as a whole, is out of hand, not just fighters.  Nerfing fighters is a lose-lose situation for everyone and should seriously be reconsidered. </p></blockquote><p>This is exactly what I was thinking as I have read through the pages here tonight.</p><p>So now how will SOE "fix" classes that should not be having dps that is out of bounds.</p><p>Next thread. "Healers melee and damage spells can no longer critically hit". Lets see how that goes over.</p><p>I still want to know why my zerker got heals and wards? Didn't have them when the game first launched so why now?</p><p>To the quote above....good post.</p>

[Megavolt]

<p>wow. just wow.</p><p>At this point I just give up.</p><p>How about this idea SOE...</p><p>If you want all the tanks to be played the same why don't you just consolidate all the fighters into one class and call them Warrior. And give us just one taunt and kick. That way you don't have to hurt your brains worrying about all this "game mechanics" stuff and can go onto making more neat things for the marketplace.</p><p>The brawler endline AA that was only half functional as it was just had it's small usefulness sucked completely out of it. Our only heal has been knocked back to the level it was 50 levels ago because no upgrades have been provided since then. Our self magical ward is now useless in a raid setting.</p><p>You've had 2 complete expansions that brawlers have had heal crits, thanks to sharing leather set choices between druids and brawlers and didn't have a problem with it until the other tank classes started critting their heals. Now you knock us back to RoK mend and now we're suppossed to sit there and take it. Rediculous.</p><p>If it stays +4 station access accounts to that list of cancelations</p>

[Zaldor]

<p>After today and other recent changes, I no longer really care about the state of this game or its future.</p><p>It was a fun hobby while it lasted.  Just wish the people running the show cared about it as much as the players did.</p>

[Jeal]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ryou@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>i'd very much like to see the logs then. a screenshot or something that show marr's favor critting.</p><p>looking at my logs from toxx i'm showing over 800 procs of Marr's Favor and not a single critical. It isn't effected by criticals or by bonus/potency. My last hit of it shows a heal for 832 hp. looking into the logs, the dmg that triggered the heal was 8,316 slashing damage. looks to be working as intended. healing for EXACTLY 10% of physical hits.</p></blockquote><p>That's odd indeed.</p><p><img src="http://i573.photobucket.com/albums/ss175/TheOtherDude/MarrsFavor.jpg" /></p></blockquote><p>this is incorrect info quabi.. or something that is bugged it has never ever crit for me ever.. i'm curious about these logs :/</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Jeal@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>this is incorrect info quabi.. or something that is bugged it has never ever crit for me ever.. i'm curious about these logs :/</p></blockquote><p>Oh, you're right...must have bugged on the few logs I looked at because I looked at a bunch of others and it's not critting for him on those.</p>

[Ryai]

<p>For all those wondering why this is happening:</p><p>Its part of the guardian revamp. Instead of bringing them up to par, they are nerfing everyone else. Doubt it? Check Xelgad's post tracker.</p><p>Here's a convenient link:</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/search/userSearch.m?clean=1&sortBy=time&sortDir=DESC&userId=414759" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...p;userId=414759</a></p><p>Peace. Subscription cancelled.</p>

[Kunaak]

<p>this is the kinda stuff that makes me wonder why I even try to play this game any more.</p><p>they give us tons of skills and make them nearly useless, and act like they are doing you a favor. a tank is already a painfully slow class to play, with low DPS and little in the way of run speed, till way later in the game... the only thing we offer a new player, is we can survive alot.</p><p>now they want to take that away from tanks too?</p><p>I bet you this is all cause of people whinning in battlegrounds too.....</p><p>god I hate battlegrounds. one of the worst things they ever allowed into the game.... now no one groups, guild halls are dead, and everyone wants BG gear cause its easy to get, and requires no skill, then whine cause they cant kill someone, so they want everyone nerfed.... and the [Removed for Content] devs do it.</p>

[Nakash]

<p>Some people cryed for nerfs over and over, now there are nerfs, i dont think they will like them.</p><p>selfowned imho</p>

[Jaudark]

<p><cite>Kunaak wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>this is the kinda stuff that makes me wonder why I even try to play this game any more.</p><p>they give us tons of skills and make them nearly useless, and act like they are doing you a favor. a tank is already a painfully slow class to play, with low DPS and little in the way of run speed, till way later in the game... the only thing we offer a new player, is we can survive alot.</p><p>now they want to take that away from tanks too?</p><p>I bet you this is all cause of people whinning in battlegrounds too.....</p><p>god I hate battlegrounds. one of the worst things they ever allowed into the game.... now no one groups, guild halls are dead, and everyone wants BG gear cause its easy to get, and requires no skill, then whine cause they cant kill someone, so they want everyone nerfed.... and the [Removed for Content] devs do it.</p></blockquote><p>welcome to 3 years ago, in a different game. and that is exactly why i did like a couple of the BG when they came out, saw the problems emerging in the horizon and boycotted it.</p><p>Nerfing every [Removed for Content] OTHER class instead of fixing the one class that got problem, now that's efficient.In real life, for exemple, a bank didn't consider factor X in their calculation and a selection of their customer gets to rake a lot of money due to it. The bank will go and penalise ALL it's customer instead of going to go see the client that shouldn't have profited from it.</p><p>Plus if the non-Guardians fighters are so overpowered in BG/PvP, why aren't you limiting their heals in PvP situation. I wish i could quote it but i do remember something about "PvP will never affect the PvE aspect of the game".</p>

[CYR3Z]

<p>I smell trouble and alot of people going to leave the game! Ill be totally honest i cant play very well in pvp and as a Shadowknight with PVP armor and no pvp jewelry i cant stay up longer than 20 seconds in a fight.</p><p>Ok so there are people out there who know their stuff! and others who are ok like my self and others who suck big time.  where is the support for players who dont have PvP armor? Jewelry their getting killed as it is way to easy not alone screw over the crit heals!</p><p>dont take them away as suggested but just cut back on how much it heals for ffs.  I was going to start a secondary account to run a brig or bruiser!  BUT something tells me forget it and i cant see my self playing much longer either dun screw this up lol</p>

[Drumstix]

<p>This change is poorly thought out. If there's going to be 6 different tank classes in the game, they need to keep their differences. Balance isn't achieved by making them all the same darn thing...</p><p>If you're gonna make it so easy to cap out crit chance, and throw Crit Bonus on all the gear and have it uncapped, then the solution is not removing the ability to crit heal across the board! If certain spells are hitting too high, change them from a flippin percentage based number to something else.</p>

[guillero]

<p>Seriously,</p><p>This idiotic change together with the Free2Play debacle on the horizon instantly killed my enjoyment in this whole game!</p><p>All the good devs seem to have been laid off. And all that's left are a bunch of clueless devs destroying the game. /facepalm !</p><p>It's all too obvious now that this game has run it's course. Top RAID gear has gotten out of hand. Something only 0,5% of the entire population will ever able to get.</p><p>And all the rest of us (99,5%) are constantly screwed over by these ridiculous nerfs because of it!</p><p>+2 canceled here too!  It's a shame. But the game is just done for. Too bad.</p>

[Terron]

<p><cite>Vortexelemental@The Bazaar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite>And totally changes the game for the tanks who aren't geared. I am low geared and now I probably will have to be cautious of trying to tank any of the easy instances without a good healer now, my tank is an alt. He only has a couple of pieces of instance gear. His heals critting was a major step in his survivability.</p></blockquote><p>That makes this sound like an excellent change. You <strong>should</strong> have be at least "cautious" when tanking any instance without a healer, especially when "low geared".</p><p>Personnally I think that group heals should be excluded from this.</p>

[TheGeneral]

<p>The post says "Without a GOOD healer".  It doesn't say anything about no healer.  Regardless, I guess its a good thing some other games are coming out.</p>

[TumpieBrell]

<p>Your messed up game mechanics and/or lack of foresight allow raiders to become like gods in Heroic and BG content.</p><p>Fix that.</p><p>Dont' nerf it for everyone else. My poorly geared Zerker is quite fun to play. There is absolutely no reason he needs to be nerfed because some raiders are too tough in BG's or whatever.</p><p>And your argument about Stoneskins and Heals having different ways of scaling are pretty weak. A Stoneskin can block a 20,000 hit. Blood Rage heals for 600. One seems great in raids, one seems great for solo content. Why are you nerfing Blood Rage for the average player?</p><p>Getting nerfed for the wrong reason makes the game less fun. If the game is no longer fun to play, I no longer pay for a sub, simple as that.</p><p>I realize that raid geared tanks heal too well. Fix the "why". Don't just nerf the classes for everyone.</p>

[isest]

<p>I dont get this change, fix the tanks that cant heal instead of  nerfing the ones who can.  That would be a more viable option.</p><p>It makes it easier on the healer for me to get crit heals on my sk, now thats going to be messed up and cause the healer to work harder.</p><p>I feel sorry for the paly as there not going to be allowed to tank any more, this will affect them more than us sk's as thats why folks want them tanking in the first place due to all the healing they can do.</p>

[Magnis]

<p>Everybody here needs to relax, its unbelievable your all crying about your ability to heal yourselves as tanks.  You'll all recover after this.  It was very obvious that the fighter archetype was way OP in comparison to the others for this Xpac.  I have a pally and a monk and im very casual.  I can heal for 40k+ on a minute long fight on my monk, nothing less on my pally.  Its all cause of crit bonus.  You'll all recover.  It hurt when I read what they will do, but it is out of hand. </p>

[Grumble69]

<p>There are a lot of ways to handle it without completely removing crit heals.  Change % to fixed, or capping heal amounts, or capping the crit % on heals.  This is just too heavy handed.  They are fixing one problem and causing several others.</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Magnis@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Everybody here needs to relax, its unbelievable your all crying about your ability to heal yourselves as tanks.  You'll all recover after this.  It was very obvious that the fighter archetype was way OP in comparison to the others for this Xpac.  I have a pally and a monk and im very casual.  I can heal for 40k+ on a minute long fight on my monk, nothing less on my pally.  Its all cause of crit bonus.  You'll all recover.  It hurt when I read what they will do, but it is out of hand. </p></blockquote><p>The thing is, how much of that healing is coming from procs and other passive sources (which generally don't crit) as opposed to direct heals which do crit? If a paladin is casting their heal spells that much while tanking, then the healer is doing something wrong.</p><p>What I am still trying to figure out is what this change is hopeing to acocmplish. It just seems so nonsensical. It isn't targetting one overpowered ability, nor does it really impact all the passive heal procs tanks can equip, since those don't crit to begin with. Rather, it only targets the various heals, lifetaps and other spells/CAs with heal components. On all but Paladins and SKs, these are a minor part of what the tank can do, and even for crusaders, they are more to supplement healers and help with solo/small group encounters. Thus, this change will hurt people on the lower end of the power scale far more than it will the upper end - as a raider, this change has virtually no impact on me. I almost never use my heal spells in a raid situation anyway, crit or no. On the other hand, a paladin in say a mix of MC and solo-legendary gear will be much more impacted by this change, as they likely use their heals.</p>

[Seolta]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>The vast majority of complaints re: tank solo survivability came from PVP-BGs. To claim that this had no influence on the nerf is an insult to our intelligence.</p>

[Novusod]

<p><cite>Brickfist wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The brawler endline AA that was only half functional as it was just had it's small usefulness sucked completely out of it. Our only heal has been knocked back to the level it was 50 levels ago because no upgrades have been provided since then. Our self magical ward is now useless in a raid setting.</p></blockquote><p>Pretty much what I am thinking. I normally box my dirge through zones like library and Vasty deep and rely on my fighter heals to keep me alive. +1</p>

[Seolta]

<p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For all those wondering why this is happening:</p><p>Its part of the guardian revamp. Instead of bringing them up to par, they are nerfing everyone else. Doubt it? Check Xelgad's post tracker.</p><p>Here's a convenient link:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/search/userSearch.m?clean=1&sortBy=time&sortDir=DESC&userId=414759" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...p;userId=414759</a></p><p>Peace. Subscription cancelled.</p></blockquote><p>QFE</p><p>Also - Note the vocal Guardian support of the nerf. They're defending this nerf like it's the best move SOE ever made. Well, for their class it probably is. p Welcome to the new Guardian Era!</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Seolta@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For all those wondering why this is happening:</p><p>Its part of the guardian revamp. Instead of bringing them up to par, they are nerfing everyone else. Doubt it? Check Xelgad's post tracker.</p><p>Here's a convenient link:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/search/userSearch.m?clean=1&sortBy=time&sortDir=DESC&userId=414759" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...p;userId=414759</a></p><p>Peace. Subscription cancelled.</p></blockquote><p>QFE</p><p>Also - Note the vocal Guardian support of the nerf. They're defending this nerf like it's the best move SOE ever made. Well, for their class it probably is. p Welcome to the new Guardian Era!</p></blockquote><p>Except it won't benefit guardians at all. At the higher end (raiding) this change has virtually no impact on other tanks, nor does it address the issues that guardians need help with, like agro control. This is a pointless change that doesn't serve to correct any actual issue. It seems like either the devs are flailing around trying to do anything to give the appearance of addressing fighter balance issues.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seolta@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For all those wondering why this is happening:</p><p>Its part of the guardian revamp. Instead of bringing them up to par, they are nerfing everyone else. Doubt it? Check Xelgad's post tracker.</p><p>Here's a convenient link:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/search/userSearch.m?clean=1&sortBy=time&sortDir=DESC&userId=414759" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...p;userId=414759</a></p><p>Peace. Subscription cancelled.</p></blockquote><p>QFE</p><p>Also - Note the vocal Guardian support of the nerf. They're defending this nerf like it's the best move SOE ever made. Well, for their class it probably is. p Welcome to the new Guardian Era!</p></blockquote><p>Except it won't benefit guardians at all. At the higher end (raiding) this change has virtually no impact on other tanks, nor does it address the issues that guardians need help with, like agro control. This is a pointless change that doesn't serve to correct any actual issue. It seems like either the devs are flailing around trying to do anything to give the appearance of addressing fighter balance issues.</p></blockquote><p>QFE.</p>

[threat111]

<p>this is a terrible change.  every day this game sucks a little bit more.  We all ready have to deal with so many nerfed or broken mechanics on nagafen now this to.  I dont understand the thinking behind removing all crits.  Why not just adjust the crit bonus.  Cirt bonus has all ready been used to tune priest spells why ot follow the same precident and tune the fighters heal crit bonus.</p><p> edit:  The major issue is people are see'n things incorrectly.  People in BG's are only looking at total healing, not where the heals are coming from.  Its very easy to double or triple the amount of healing you do on a fighter normally with the right items.  People dont see these heals coming from items they are only looking at the end result and making there assumptions on the totals not whats acually happening.</p>

[Undorett]

<p><div><p><cite>Seolta@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For all those wondering why this is happening:</p><p>Its part of the guardian revamp. Instead of bringing them up to par, they are nerfing everyone else. Doubt it? Check Xelgad's post tracker.</p><p>Here's a convenient link:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/search/userSearch.m?clean=1&sortBy=time&sortDir=DESC&userId=414759" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...p;userId=414759</a></p><p>Peace. Subscription cancelled.</p></blockquote><p>QFE</p><p>Also - Note the vocal Guardian support of the nerf. They're defending this nerf like it's the best move SOE ever made. Well, for their class it probably is. p Welcome to the new Guardian Era!</p><div></div></blockquote></div></p><p><-- Guardian</p><p>This is a terrible change brought on by PVP/BG and percentage based heals critting.  Rather than solve the problems a mechanics change is made because it is easier than finding the root problem and fixing it specifically.  This nerf really hits pallys hard who have to actively heal as part of their survivability, now the heals are not worth the power used to cast them.  Bad form SOE.</p>

[Vlahkmaak]

<p><cite>Seolta@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For all those wondering why this is happening:</p><p>Its part of the guardian revamp. Instead of bringing them up to par, they are nerfing everyone else. Doubt it? Check Xelgad's post tracker.</p><p>Here's a convenient link:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/search/userSearch.m?clean=1&sortBy=time&sortDir=DESC&userId=414759" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...p;userId=414759</a></p><p>Peace. Subscription cancelled.</p></blockquote><p>QFE</p><p><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Also - Note the vocal Guardian support of the nerf. They're defending this nerf like it's the best move SOE ever made. Well, for their class it probably is. p Welcome to the new Guardian Era!</span></strong></p></blockquote><p>Double check your sources.  There is no vocal guardian support for nerfing other tanks on the fix guardian feedback thread.  Quite the opposite if you read the thread.  The majority of guardians are requesting that since all other plate tanks can reach max mit and since our temp mit buffs are now useless at end game their is no distinction to our role as a defensive tank.</p><p>Since crusaders will put out better DPS with a sword and board than we can without suffering the guardian ofensive/dual wield survivability penalty  we have been asking for an increase in DPS and an increase in hate.  Most of us have run up a crusader since the last 2 x-pacs and have no desire to see that class nerfed into oblivion. Their is 1 guardian on the thread that has mentioned tank healing being a problem but if you follow the guardian threads you would know that has been his opinion for a long time.  I will let him speak for himself if he so chooses.</p><p>Even were this a PVP issue snce crusaders continue to have heals/wards on demand + the same life tap proc gear I have access too + = mitigation an avoidance this x-pac crusaders, even w/o crit heals will continue to be able to easily win a 1:1 vs a guard as we continue to have no heals on demand and our stone skins reset to slowly to be effective in pvp.</p><p>Non criting tank heals in pvp will most likely be much more welcomed by the predator/rogue/sorcerer community in pvp than the guardian community - it does NOTHING to address guard vs other 3 plate tanks in 1:1 pvp.  Nothing.  Other 3 plate tanks = gear/skill will continue to dominate in a 1v1fight which are far and few between anyhow and def not the norm.  </p><p>Guards actually requested a regenerating ward on our Iron Will buff to try to address inline healing abilities amongst the 4 plate tanks - we NEVER called for nerfing sk or pally heals or disallowing crit heals.  We asked to be brought in line with = aggro potential and DPS since the other 3 plate tanks have = mitigation at end game and = to better survivability when raid buffed due to death save mechanics across the classes and %based heals. </p><p>With all things being relativelly equal now there is no need for a single target defenive tank we are more inclined to seek better aggro/DPS than waste our time seeking to nerf my pallies heals or your sks heals or zerkers BF.</p>

[ruthlessG619]

<p>Do fighters actually wear defense gear nowadays with how heals currently work (aka stonewill proc gear etc) ? Maybe this will force tanks to actually worry about tanking gear instead of picking up all offense gear and never using defensive stances but I have a feeling SoE is gonna screw this up and go overboard. </p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>ruthlessG619 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Do fighters actually wear defense gear nowadays with how heals currently work (aka stonewill proc gear etc) ? Maybe this will force tanks to actually worry about tanking gear instead of picking up all offense gear and never using defensive stances but I have a feeling SoE is gonna screw this up and go overboard. </p></blockquote><p>No. Most tank healing at the raid level comes from healers (who are unaffected) or from proc gear (which never critted in SF).</p>

[aias]

<p>Since this change is meant to address issues in PvP and BGs I have to ask the obvious question.  Why don't they just make the change affect PvP and BG only?</p><p>And if the issue was because these tanks were unkillable in PvP, well, I've come across several other non-fighter classes that were even more unkillable.</p>

[Darkonx]

<p><a href="http://i28.tinypic.com/dqgqav.jpg">http://i28.tinypic.com/dqgqav.jpg</a></p><p>There is the direct link to my HPS on a hardmode mob tonight, Vaclaz Released in the Underfoot Depths. The spells that you are changing include Voracious Soul (57.51 HPS), Caress Feedback (37.98 HPS) ((Only heals at all because I have a red adorn devoted to it)), Devour Vitae (17.95 HPS), and Grim Strike (15.19 HPS). Total of 128.63 HPS incoming, from me, that this nerf will modify.</p><p><a href="http://i27.tinypic.com/2dliqu9.jpg">http://i27.tinypic.com/2dliqu9.jpg</a></p><p>There is a direct link to the total incoming HPS on me, on that encounter. 8479.25 healed, per second. Of that, I did 128.63 that will be nerfed by this change. I am doing less than two percent of my own incoming heals. You want to nerf those, by 100% (assuming I have 100 CB, and I always crit). That will lower my incoming heals by 1%. My only incoming ability resultant from me, that was greater than 0%, was my reactive heal, the rest were less than half a percent each. What are you trying to accomplish with this nerf other than to make people angry? It won't make people want Guardians in raids any more than they are desired right now. It won't change your end-game mechanics at all, except to limit soloability on certain classes, once they're geared with ALL of the gear this game has to offer. The ONLY result of this broad nerf will to be upset your playerbase. It's a bad choice to try to balance classes like this. Please, look at percentage based abilitys, and change THOSE, do not change ALL healing abilitys.</p><p>Saying fighters shouldn't heal themselves is akin to saying priests shouldn't DPS, or mages shouldn't melee, and I don't see you removing priests ability to crit on DPS abilitys, or mages ability to crit on melee abilitys. Or scouts ability to critically heal either, for that matter. Don't go back on crit consolidation as a panic-button for fixing a few broken percentage based abilitys, please.</p><p>I provided you parses much like you were looking for in your thread about different classes DPS capabilitys. Hopefully seeing the factual numbers will prompt you to rethink this nerf.</p>

[Irgun]

<p>Suggestion:</p><p>- dont make this nerf go live</p><p>- boost guardians, I dont care how, just boost them enough being equal</p><p>And if you`re still unsatisfied with fighters healing too much:</p><p>- make harder content - no wonder some fighters can negate incoming damage if its this low - at least nameds should hit twice as hard as trash - and I`m talking about heroic content here - give me some challenge without cutting my capabilities</p><p>thx</p>

[Kahling]

<p>I have a feeling this won't go live, 10 pages and I have read 1 post saying it should go live, the rest from all classes viewpoints it seems people don't like it and don't think its a good idea, this is what test is about I suppose.</p><p>Also I thought Guardians were getting a needed boost LU57 seperate to this anyhow.</p>

[Darkonx]

<p>Add another stoneskin to TOStone. Add a small reactive heal when damaged (Similar to the SK Caress red adorn) after TOS or block is cast. There are a thousand things you can do that will help guardians in heroic content that will not nerf people. Add a regenerating ward that lasts 20 seconds after Last Man Standing is cast. If you need help with ideas on how to add some flavor to the heroic Guardian, I'm sure the community would be more than happy to provide you with a ton of ideas.</p><p>Removing crit's from fighter heals all together is not a good idea. Please to not push this change to live.</p>

[EQVet32]

<p>Being a bruiser and a zerker on a pvp server and seeing the Wardens and Inq's just be almost unkillable this seems like a silly fix when they should be fixing the ultra crit/bonus/potency/da they gave everyone. I love this game and have been playing for almost 6 years daily. I take the nerfs in stride. However this is going to make Nagafen a dead server. If everyone has to have a good healer to go do something this server will die quickly.</p><p>Ps. 60 seconds on preserverance? and I lose crit heals and dont have castable ones??</p><p>I swear soe wants everyone to roll SK's and wardens.</p><p>Dear fighters please leave your testicles in the jar on the table and your 15dollars has already been charged. Ty soe mgmt.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p>I think its a needed change, but it does mean that they'll need to look a little bit more closely at how things are balanced.  For example, it might be time to push through that change to meditative mending that was planned with the fighter revamp. </p>

[Loxus]

<p>I have to admit this is a first. </p><p>In the past they would try to fix class balancing issues with equipment itemization. </p><p>NOW</p><p>they are trying to fix equipment itemization with Class balancing!</p><p>It's so sad it's laughable, except, no one's laughing.</p>

[Gungo]

<p>Honestly this nerf needs a bigger adjustment. This only partially fices the issue.</p><p>ALL FIGHTER % based heals need to NOT be effected by crit OR POTENCY. The issue with % based heals exponentially growing and uncapped potency will make current % based heals overpowered as fighters gain more and more potency (200-300). What will SOE do when reaver and rage once again are healign for 5-10% on each hit. They will nerf them again. Honestly % based heals already scale with gear and buffs since they are balanced ased on the % value. There is not need to make these abilites grow on an exponential level when they already have a linaer growth path. So my suggestion is they make all % based heals gain zero benefit from crit or potency. My other suggestion is all fighters # based heals should behave exactly like wards and only benefit from 1/3 of your crit bonus and potency. This would allow heals to still scale although at a greatly reduced rate.</p><p>Bottom line what I am stating is a bigger nerf then the current changes on test. Mostly because the change does not solve the issue of % based heals and massive itemization based heals through uncapped stats and conslidated stats.</p>

[JoarAddam]

<p>they already removed the effect of potency on % based heals.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>JoarAddam wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>they already removed the effect of potency on % based heals.</p></blockquote><p>No they didnt.</p>

[aias]

<p>Who's idea was it to have fighters heal themselves in the first place.  Just revamp the whole system of fighters.  It's been meddled with so much it looks like a patchwork of insanity.  Merge the fighter classes and be done with it.  Warrior, Brawler and Crusader.  Fewer fighter classes to work on and figure out and each one will have the best of their opposite.</p>

[Felshades]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Wurm wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If any tank is healing better than your healer, then I'm sorry, your healer sucks.</p></blockquote><p>No really, in some cases the tank is able to heal themselves faster than the healer could. </p><p>I think perhaps if you've not been with geared tanks demonstrating how little they actually require a healer, you probably don't have perspective to just how bad the issue is.</p></blockquote><p>Then nerf the gear instead of nerfing abilities that these classes require while levelling and before they get said gear?</p><p>They nerf my heals I'm going to be severely gimped right now, being that I'm lvl 60 and have enough of a problem as it is right now compared to say, shadowknights.</p><p>Guardians I just feel bad about. Zerks, no comment.</p>

[Irgun]

<p>@Gungo:</p><p>the only % based heal I got is my deathsave every 5mins, if its needed, that is.</p><p>I dont think this is enough to justify your argument this nerf is needed so badly because of this - especially if any other heals, which are not percentage based, will be affected as well.</p><p>I dont know much about other fighter class healing abilities, I have to admit that.</p><p>But if there are any issues with a handful of spells/abilities, you could change these individualy instead of punching everyone straight into the face with preventing these to crit.</p><p>Worst solution ever</p>

[Madmonte]

<blockquote><p>Also - Note the vocal Guardian support of the nerf. They're defending this nerf like it's the best move SOE ever made. Well, for their class it probably is. p Welcome to the new Guardian Era!</p></blockquote><p>I am a guardian and I do not support this change....my idea was to give guardians some form of passive heal, reflect, or stoneskin to match (which they may yet do...6-8 weeks from now)</p><p>If you actually read the guardian thread, it was said many times not to nerf the other fighter classes to try and create guardian class balance, just boost the guards to match...some of the suggestions were too extreme, some were dead on target, but I wasn't hearing the majority on the 26 page long thread clamoring for something like this...</p><p>It doesn't affect guardians as much, so we aren't AS vocal about it as you are, but I for one agree that it's not a great move...and in fact, I feel especially sorry for paladins who were FINALLY, after YEARS of complaining getting a usable class, and now boom their utility (heals) are cut to 60%.  Makes no sense. </p><p>I do agree that the self heal ability of some of the plate tanks IS a little much, though, but to flat cut them like that...well you're just making guys like pallies who play their class part utility suffer when only SOME of the stuff could have in theory used a nerf.</p><p>Xelgad referred to Last Man Standing vs Battle frenzy...how last man standing doesn't gain anything from gear, while stuff like battle frenzy does...very good point, and it's solid of him to admit that SOE didn't take that into consideration.  But to cut ALL the heals flat out?  Using Paladin as the example again, all other healers still get to use their crit bonus and crit chance on their heals...now paladin has to have the same cast times on heals that are now a LOT more useless.</p><p>In essence, the heal side of paladin, which is part of why people enjoy that class, becomes incredibly and unfairly screwed with this change, and I for one don't think that's what you (SOE) intend, but that's what you are offering.</p><p>The proper solution then, is to just take a look at EACH heal EACH class gets individually...and change the max and mins to what WAS intitally intended while factoring in what crit bonus each class has.  The paladin single target and group heals and single ward shouldn't be effected for example because that class WAS intended to offer those kinds of heals, AND at the same strength as the other healers. </p><p>Put a little more effort into this than just flat cutting fighter heal crit...that solution and too mickey mouse, and doesn't work to offer the class balance which you are trying to bring to guardian.</p>

[Brugg]

<p>this is very obviously a change made because of BG. I cant believe they can sit there and say it is not. I play a bruiser and this will affect me a little bit, but I am good with it because crusaders/zerkers are just too over powered as they are. It will be interesting to see how this all goes down. You just cant have a few classes that are invincible in pvp. The developers have read the BG posts and have run toons thru the content and they can plainly see that crusaders/zerkers are too tough to kill. ( a times two group should be able to kill a SK or zerker ). Just please dont insult us and say that this is not BG driven because anyone who knows anything knows that it is. What do you intend to do about rangers and assassins? Ill bet they are next. Also, why can healers crit their offensive spells?</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Irgin@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>@Gungo:</p><p>the only % based heal I got is my deathsave every 5mins, if its needed, that is.</p><p>I dont think this is enough to justify your argument this nerf is needed so badly because of this - especially if any other heals, which are not percentage based, will be affected as well.</p><p>I dont know much about other fighter class healing abilities, I have to admit that.</p><p>But if there are any issues with a handful of spells/abilities, you could change these individualy instead of punching everyone straight into the face with preventing these to crit.</p><p>Worst solution ever</p></blockquote><p>If you only have a % death save then you are a paladin or guardian, either way you failed to read my post which stated that % based heals should be the only heals without benefit from potency or crit. If heals from fighters by other means are causing issues then they should not remove crit from all heals but reduce it akin to the ward balancing and just make potency and crit bonus only 1/3 s effective.</p>

[MoeSizlak]

<p>Since my heals aren't going to be able to crit anymore does this mean I can finally have the 1.5x crit melee modifier like all the other fighter archetypes already have?</p><p>Regards,</p><p>Crusaders</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Satyrna@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>They nerf my heals I'm going to be severely gimped right now, being that I'm lvl 60 and have enough of a problem as it is right now compared to say, shadowknights.</p></blockquote><p>How much crit chance do you have at level 60 anyway? Around 20%? Even less? </p><p>If you want to improve your heals, use ability mod instead of crit chance after the change.  It's not like 20% crit chance with a 1.3 crit multiplier is doing much for you anyway.</p><p>I think this is a positive change overall, and quite a few others agree with me...just we get tired of arguing about it, while the people who hate the change have no problem complaining endlessly.  Percent based heals should not  improve with potency (those that still do), since your max health improves proportionally with the damage the mobs deal (so those heals will scale at a balanced rate with damage absorbtion and damage prevention abilities, using the otherwise sound logic Xelgad presented in this thread).  However, even non-percent-based heals should not crit, since they will still scale at a rate far beyond damage absorbtion abilities if they're allowed to crit.  Yes, they could crit before SF, but crit bonus was far less prevalent then.  Crit chance was the way to improve fighter heals pre-SF, and potency and ability mod will be the way to improve fighter heals post-57.   </p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Pandarus@Kithicor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Who's idea was it to have fighters heal themselves in the first place.  Just revamp the whole system of fighters.  It's been meddled with so much it looks like a patchwork of insanity.  Merge the fighter classes and be done with it.  Warrior, Brawler and Crusader.  Fewer fighter classes to work on and figure out and each one will have the best of their opposite.</p></blockquote><p>Paladins have had healing spells since launch, and the fantasy lore (ie, D&D) generally portrays paladins as fighters with some healing capability.</p>

[Darkonx]

<p>You also have to take into account the fact that SK's use a ton of power, and much of it is regenerated by Mana Sieve. If you make it so replenishment spells won't crit, you'll also have to do something about power consumption, since we've been relying on a critical mana sieve since level 60. A broad sweeping change like this has to many negative effects, just change the % based abilitys that needed nerfed, and let it stay at that. Don't go through with this change, and lose all these subs, your game can't afford the player base drop.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If you only have a % death save then you are a paladin or guardian, either way you failed to read my post which stated that % based heals should be the only heals without benefit from potency or crit. If heals from fighters by other means are causing issues then they should not remove crit from all heals <strong>but reduce it akin to the ward balancing and just make potency and crit bonus only 1/3 s effective.</strong></p></blockquote><p>The only way you can come to that conclusion logically (that I see) is if the effect of potency and ability mod on non-percent-based heals is not enough to scale with the damage mobs are dealing.  I guess you could be right about that, since I honestly don't know how much potency fighters are getting this expac.</p><p>It might be best from a long term balance perspective if all fighter heals become percent based, since that method of scaling is pretty much perfect (provided they don't crit and aren't affected by potency), but it has the downside of a more bland progression (just improving health vs. getting AAs, potency gear, and ability mod gear...skill upgrades also might not work).</p>

[Madmonte]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If you only have a % death save then you are a paladin or guardian, either way you failed to read my post which stated that % based heals should be the only heals without benefit from potency or crit. If heals from fighters by other means are causing issues then they should not remove crit from all heals but reduce it akin to the ward balancing and just make potency and crit bonus only 1/3 s effective.</p></blockquote><p>I agree with your theory behind that, read my post above, it says the same thing.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>Paladins were grossly overhealing, even for being a healer fighter.</p><p>Thier amount of healing will simply return to a level around pre-SF, and I'm failing to see how that level of healing isn't sufficient.</p><p>All other fighters need to quit the QQing and just bring a healer that presses heal buttons now.</p>

[Thor71457]

<p>Hello</p><p>A test done today compared  live server to test copy (same toon )</p><p>Bind wound  ( an Racial Trait ) heal for 2% of max health out of combat</p><p>Test copy  316 at 50% health</p><p>Live server 512 at 50% health</p><p>Diff= 196 Crits do make an difference</p><p>For the player that solo's and plays when he or she can this will make it harder to do the tougher things in this game..</p>

[Magnis]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Paladins were grossly overhealing, even for being a healer fighter.</p><p>Thier amount of healing will simply return to a level around pre-SF, and I'm failing to see how that level of healing isn't sufficient.</p><p>All other fighters need to quit the QQing and just bring a healer that presses heal buttons now.</p></blockquote><p>Ill have to side on this one, I don't see the paladin class' heals becoming obsolete.  Solo shouldn't be a problem either, with the amount of DPS that all the fighters (complaining)are putting out even with quested gear, no solo content will be a problem. </p>

[Madmonte]

<p>I'm not calling them obsolete, I'm just saying those ones were intended to work like other healers' heals, and they still should  And atan, a lot of the paladin's OP overheal ability is coming from passive, that's the parts SOE should focus on for class balance...things that actually take cast time shouldn't...</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Pandarus@Kithicor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Who's idea was it to have fighters heal themselves in the first place.  Just revamp the whole system of fighters.  It's been meddled with so much it looks like a patchwork of insanity.  Merge the fighter classes and be done with it.  Warrior, Brawler and Crusader.  Fewer fighter classes to work on and figure out and each one will have the best of their opposite.</p></blockquote><p>I don't mind they try to fix<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> fighters </span>!</p><p>But a Paladin isn't a fighter like the others. It's a hybrid class!  We <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>depend</strong></span> on our healing !  It's our PRIMARY utility !! </p><p>People saying this is a needed a change. You should try play a Paladin yourself first!! Then we talk again.</p><p>The vast majority of people (like me) wear a combination of MC and/or Legendary gear.  And that's all we will ever see!</p><p>That a tiny fraction of the population is able to get the Top RAID gear and then goes into Heroic dungeons destroying it and farming thousands of plat.  And going into PVP and Battlegrounds and being unkillable!</p><p>That's NOT MY PROBLEM!  I SHOULD NOT (together with the vast majority) be punished for that and get my favorite class destroyed!! All because a few have /beat the game and got the top RAID Gear!</p><p>This whole change (read outright stupid NERF) needs to get canned! And fast! Pretend it never existed on even the drawing board.</p><p>People here have mentioned much much better solutions, like putting a cap on %crit !  Instead of just completely removing it.</p><p>Or just FIXING the Top RAID gear itself and adjust the ridiculous bonusses !</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Paladins were grossly overhealing, even for being a healer fighter.</p><p>Thier amount of healing will simply return to a level around pre-SF, and I'm failing to see how that level of healing isn't sufficient.</p><p>All other fighters need to quit the QQing and just bring a healer that presses heal buttons now.</p></blockquote><p>But have Paladins really been pro-actively healing in this expansion? I'm still getting back into things, but from what I can tell our heals are still extremely inefficient. What you're talking about may be factually true, but in any practical sense does it make a difference? Unlike WoW, a Paladin in EQ2 has never actually had a bona fide healing spec (one that would make sense to actually use in any case) and I just don't see Paladin tanks focused on healing anyone, themselves included, when they're an MT/OT.</p><p>What I'm getting at here is, is this an actual problem that manifests itself (outside of PvP), or is this more one of those conceptual issues about balance rather than something that has a practical impact on day-to-day gameplay? Or to put it another way, if Paladin healing is "better than intended" but rarely used, is it really an issue? Or more specifically, is addressing it something that should be taking precedence over other class balance issues?</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>People saying this is a needed a change. You should try play a Paladin yourself first!! Then we talk again.</p></blockquote><p>I have a paladin, been playing it for 5 years on and off, raided, solo, group.</p><p>The removal of criting heals only nerfs him to 20% more heals than he had before SF released.  Yes, only 20% MORE than before this expansion.</p><p>Potency still effects heals after this change, we didn't have 50+ base heal modifier before SF, we certainly don't require 50+ base modifier, 100%crit chance and 50+ crit multiplier on our heals in order for them to be useful.</p><p>The amounts of our heals were balanced around them not having base, CB, and 100% crit chance, it is not surprising some of these modifiers have been removed, cause honestly, we could heal way beyond our archtype reasonably should.</p>

[Madmonte]

<p>I still think that it's mostly the passive heals causing the issue, not active heals.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>But have Paladins really been pro-actively healing in this expansion?</p></blockquote><p>Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro.</p><p>They are soloing level 90 heroic instances.</p><p>How much healing do they need?</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>But have Paladins really been pro-actively healing in this expansion?</p></blockquote><p>Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro.</p><p>They are soloing level 90 heroic instances.</p><p>How much healing do they need?</p></blockquote><p>And who are those people??  Just a handful with top End RAID gear !  You can't compaire that to the rest of the playerbase that walks around in just legendary / MC gear and don't even come close to the amount of crit% and bonusses those handful people have!</p><p>This nerf is NOT a solution !  It only hurts the average player !  Not the Top End RAID'er. As their gear is so OP, they won't hardly even notice it.</p><p>So again!  The ones that should be affected hardly get hurt. And all the rest of us get our beloved class nerfed into Oblivion for NO REASON !!</p>

[Thor71457]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>But have Paladins really been pro-actively healing in this expansion?</p></blockquote><p>Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro.</p><p>They are soloing level 90 heroic instances.</p><p>How much healing do they need?</p></blockquote><p>Yes but but in Raid Gear...</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro.<p>They are soloing level 90 heroic instances.</p><p>How much healing do they need?</p></blockquote><p>I'm presuming that by "Paladins", you're talking about those who are completely geared/mastered out. So how many are we really talking about here? A handful on each server? My point being, is this a change that's being made to all Paladins as a result of the capabilities of top 1% of them game-wide? It's kind of hard for me to imagine that a typical player is capable of what you're describing.</p><p>From what I've read, I'd have to agree that it seems much more likely this is a change being brought about as the result of PvP imbalances, not that a few Paladins can solo Crane from content that's over 2 years old (or even solo current heroic content).</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>But have Paladins really been pro-actively healing in this expansion?</p></blockquote><p>Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro.</p><p>They are soloing level 90 heroic instances.</p><p>How much healing do they need?</p></blockquote><p>How much do they rely on the heals that would be impacted by this nerf?</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Thor71457 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>But have Paladins really been pro-actively healing in this expansion?</p></blockquote><p>Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro.</p><p>They are soloing level 90 heroic instances.</p><p>How much healing do they need?</p></blockquote><p>Yes but but in Raid Gear...</p></blockquote><p>And if that is such a big problem appearently. Then they can just put a gear check on those Heroic instances and not allow people to enter with RAID gear nor switch to it when inside!</p><p>Then for PVP, they can put a CAP on crit%. Just like they already adjust other stats automatically for PVP.</p><p>Problem solved!  Much better solution, without having to nerf a whole class into oblivion for the average player!</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>How much do they rely on the heals that would be impacted by this nerf?</p></blockquote><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=483427">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=483427</a></p><p>Berserker heal parses in that thread.</p>

[Dimgl]

<p> said I wouldn't write anymore, but this concept just disgusts me far too much.</p><p>For all of you people saying that Paladin healing is too much:</p><p>Paladins have no debuffs. Our only debuff is a reduction to arcane mitigation which is attached to our taunt. We have to heal to make up for the most basic innate damage reduction BUILT INTO other classes.</p><p>To simply touch examples from two classes:</p><p>Berserkers have: Mutilate: 15% base attack speed debuff. Can spec it to 25%. It can be red adorned to become an encounter wide ability, dropping an entire encounter's dps. Maul: A melee skill debuff that can be specced to around 30 skills down, improving their evasion.</p><p>Guardians have:Ruin: A melee skill debuff that is basically equal to Maul, can be specced just the same, improving evasion. Sever: 25.2% dps debuff. Can be specced to 35.2%. Concussion: 39.8 casting skills debuff, can be specced to ~60 casting skills debuff. Significantly improving resistance chance.</p><p>If a mob was doing 1000 dps and you were to slap a 25% debuff onto it then you'd be taking 750 dps.</p><p>Over a 20s period, the duration of one of those basic debuffs, you're saving yourself from 250*20 = 5000 damage.</p><p>Now start adding in improved evasion from those skill debuffs. Maybe you save yourself another 250dps.</p><p>Another 5000 damage over 20s for example.</p><p>Paladins have to soak that damage, and the only way to make up that difference is through healing.</p><p>So instead of debuffing enemies, or using short term mit buffs, etc, a Paladin is -ENTIRELY- based around being able to soak and heal to make up for it. That 10,000 damage more that we take in theory is covered up by 2 5000 point heals.</p><p>Paladins do not have:</p><p>Debuffs: OF ANY KIND except our taunt. We do not reduce enemy offense like warriors in order to mitigate damage, nor do we significantly reduce enemy defense like brawlers which helps reduce the amount of time the fight goes on. Instead we have to soak everything and heal through it. That means we're most likely to be hit by status effects, most likely to run ourselves or our healers out of power, etc.</p><p>Mit timers: This should be self explanatory, if they are not functioning correctly then FIX mit timers. Remove the mit modifications, add a 5-10% total damage reduction like the ones that exist on mythicals. Very simple fix.</p><p>Our heals make up for both of those mechanics put together, and nerfing them is the same as nerfing both mechanics for other classes.</p><p>And I still think this is beyond intolerable when Devout Sacrament is the most unreliable tank timer in the game, and Paladin's Arch Heal (healing endline AA) ability heals for less, costs more power, has more recast, has more cast time and is all in all worse in every way than the most basic of basic paladin heals after AAs.</p><p>If anything you should be IMPROVING Paladin heals so all of our options are balanced. Make arch heal a chain heal or otherwise unique option so Paladins who CHOOSE to spec maximal healing have something to show for it. Take the exact same spell as it is and have it intelligently bounce to two other nearby targets. Or make it into an actual GTAOE or PBAOE Heal. Let us place a real "circle of healing" that fits lore with all of the other Paladin moves such as Consecrate, Holy Ground, etc. Either option would give heal specced Paladins in raids a unique/mechanic role they desperately need due to their -complete lack of debuffs.- Again, if you feel you must go through with this awful nerf then make Arch Heal an option to let Paladins continue healing at full crit bonus.</p><p>And make Devout Sacrament into a half-life saver and reduce the casting time or make it cast like a CA. Make it a 10s buff that if the Paladin is at or drops below 50% health it triggers. If it doesn't trigger within 10s have it fire off anyway.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Problem solved!  Much better solution, without having to nerf a whole class into oblivion for the average player!</p></blockquote><p>What part of, your heals are still more powerful than they were in last expansion is hard to understand.  How can they still be improved from TSO and be 'nerfed into oblivion'.</p>

[TheGeneral]

<p>Something tells me this is one of those things they are going to change no matter what the player base thinks.</p>

[Crazysmurf]

<p>People arguing for this nerf are using feats such as soloing last tier raid content, or soloing heroic content don't understand what makes those feats possible.  If a paladin is spam healing himself using his "broken powerful heals" keeping them alive they are doing NO dps and draining power very quickly.  What makes those feats possible is gear and procs.  It is an itemization problem and not really "proof" that our heals our over powered.  For example proof that a paladin's heals being overpowered would be a paladin being used to solo heal hard heroic content in place of a priest class.  Or a paladin solo healing groups in raids.  Even with full T2 raid gear specced completely into heals, im pretty sure my entire group would get annihilated by AoEs in easy mode content. What nerfing fighter heals is going to do is limit the fighters utility to the group.  I can't speak for other fighters, but i use my prayer of healign spell to heal my groups in raids (avg parse is somewhere between 100hps-300hps for prayer of healing for an encounter) and hitting holy aid / demonstration of faith on the extra squishy people.  If topping off my groups health, putting a stoneskin on squishy people is overpowered at this time I have yet to hear anyone say that. Simply taking less dammage or using procs such as stonewill, lifetap, or stoneskins is not fixed by this nerf, which is the only reason fighters are able to do the "things they shouldnt be able to do being overpowered" arent gonna be fixed and the more casual raiding utility of a paladin's heals is gonna be taken away. Awesome... guess ill betray to SK.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Problem solved!  Much better solution, without having to nerf a whole class into oblivion for the average player!</p></blockquote><p>What part of, your heals are still more powerful than they were in last expansion is hard to understand.  How can they still be improved from TSO and be 'nerfed into oblivion'.</p></blockquote><p>They were more powerful in TSO, because you could spec them to crit more. The Healadin was a totally valid spec in TSO. When SF was released those AA's got shifted because there was no longer any point in raising heal crit chance.</p><p>If you look back far enough, the entire <em>design</em> of the paladin class is to allow them to be able to heal, even fairly effectively on a group scale. Thats the whole <em>point</em> of them being a hybrid tank. Something inbetween a cleric and a tank.</p><p>This change would invalidate an entire aspect of the design of a paladin, since HP pools have gone up exponentially, along with damage and everything else. Crits are needed now so that heals actually do something, not just heal 2% of a paladin's health per cast. Increasing potency on it will do nothing in terms of utility, since the only reason to increase potency on something is so that the crit is that much higher.</p><p>In conclusion, you are completely wrong when it comes to understanding of the paladin class. Heal crits have become necessary for survivability for them, due to the scaling of mobs. Survivability is not an issue for a person in full fabled gear at all, even after this change. It is a huge problem for your average person in mastercrafted/Treasured gear that casually plays, and likes being able to support their friends in a <em>casual</em> setting.</p><p>Balancing should not occur based on high end parses from raiders. You shouldn't be basing class design on manipulation of gear/min maxing. That makes the game <em>not fun. Every</em> raid geared character who knows what they are doing are saying the <em>exact</em> same thing. Go look at the thread on eq2flames. They are all saying, "So what. No biggie. Sucks for the non-geared player though." Because they know exactly what is upping their survivability. Item procs.</p><p>If this change does go through, massive changes to the paladin skill set will need to occur to compensate for the fact that heals will not crit anymore. Not for the raider, but for the average player simply trying to get through Sentinel's fate content. The person who casually plays their paladin and thinks its fun.</p>

[Laiina]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Paladins were grossly overhealing, even for being a healer fighter.</p><p>Thier amount of healing will simply return to a level around pre-SF, and I'm failing to see how that level of healing isn't sufficient.</p><p>All other fighters need to quit the QQing and just bring a healer that presses heal buttons now.</p></blockquote><p>While I agree that it was probably a bit much to see Pally parses show more healing than the Templar in the group, it seems like SOE has always been fond of going from "way too much" to "way too little". That may or may not be the case here, it depends on if there are any offsetting boosts in other areas.</p><p>But the fact is, especially in SF and with the stats change, some classes got overly unbalanced and some changes are needed.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Arandar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>But have Paladins really been pro-actively healing in this expansion?</p></blockquote><p>Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro.</p><p>They are soloing level 90 heroic instances.</p><p>How much healing do they need?</p></blockquote><p>How much do they rely on the heals that would be impacted by this nerf?</p></blockquote><p>They don't, and thats the entire point. Its enabled by all the stonewill/fatal lifetap/blood ritual gear that is everywhere now.</p>

[kiku]

<p>"<span >Paladins are soloing SoH up to and including Maestro'</span></p><p>I call BS on <span >Maestro</span>. Show the proof.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>They don't, and thats the entire point. Its enabled by all the stonewill/fatal lifetap/blood ritual gear that is everywhere now.</p></blockquote><p>What? Look at the parses posted.  The critable, passive, non-percentage-based Blood Rage is healing that Berserker for 63% of his heals zonewide, 86% on the named parse he posted (nearly 2K HPS there).</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=483427">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=483427</a></p><p>Also, Pallies can still spec for heals.  The SF AA that used to give crit bonus and now gives potency is roughly equal to what 53% heal crit chance was worth in TSO.  At least one other Paladin heal AA was boosted with this patch (used to give potency and crit chance on a spell, now gives more potency).    </p>

[Darkonx]

<p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><a href="http://i28.tinypic.com/dqgqav.jpg">http://i28.tinypic.com/dqgqav.jpg</a></p><p>There is the direct link to my HPS on a hardmode mob tonight, Vaclaz Released in the Underfoot Depths. The spells that you are changing include Voracious Soul (57.51 HPS), Caress Feedback (37.98 HPS) ((Only heals at all because I have a red adorn devoted to it)), Devour Vitae (17.95 HPS), and Grim Strike (15.19 HPS). Total of 128.63 HPS incoming, from me, that this nerf will modify.</p><p><a href="http://i27.tinypic.com/2dliqu9.jpg">http://i27.tinypic.com/2dliqu9.jpg</a></p><p>There is a direct link to the total incoming HPS on me, on that encounter. 8479.25 healed, per second. Of that, I did 128.63 that will be nerfed by this change. I am doing less than two percent of my own incoming heals. You want to nerf those, by 100% (assuming I have 100 CB, and I always crit). That will lower my incoming heals by 1%. My only incoming ability resultant from me, that was greater than 0%, was my reactive heal, the rest were less than half a percent each. What are you trying to accomplish with this nerf other than to make people angry? It won't make people want Guardians in raids any more than they are desired right now. It won't change your end-game mechanics at all, except to limit soloability on certain classes, once they're geared with ALL of the gear this game has to offer. The ONLY result of this broad nerf will to be upset your playerbase. It's a bad choice to try to balance classes like this. Please, look at percentage based abilitys, and change THOSE, do not change ALL healing abilitys.</p><p>Saying fighters shouldn't heal themselves is akin to saying priests shouldn't DPS, or mages shouldn't melee, and I don't see you removing priests ability to crit on DPS abilitys, or mages ability to crit on melee abilitys. Or scouts ability to critically heal either, for that matter. Don't go back on crit consolidation as a panic-button for fixing a few broken percentage based abilitys, please.</p><p>I provided you parses much like you were looking for in your thread about different classes DPS capabilitys. Hopefully seeing the factual numbers will prompt you to rethink this nerf.</p></blockquote><p>Quoting myself. This is one of the most difficult mobs in the game, and not ONE person mentioned the heal parse. I healed for 120 HPS. That's NOTHING. Why are you nerfing what doesn't need to be nerfed, outside of PVP/BG?</p>

[Seomon]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>You fail to mention that Stoneskins are a much stronger and useful ability than heals will ever be. This is a nerf, and an idiotic nerf at best. Paladins could already heal crit almost all the time with the old INT line, and it was never an issue.</p><p>This "change" is like saying that healers can't crit on DPS abilities, or Scouts can't crit on non-Combat Arts/Spells, or that Mages can't crit on autoattack. This "change" is the most poorly thought out "change" and I've seen my fair share for the Paladin class. This seems to be because you want to make Guardians better, which ok, might be a little needed, but nerfing Paladins in your crusade to make Guardians better is not the correct answer.</p>

[Seomon]

<p>With this "change" I think it's only fair that Guardians/Berserkers can't crit on taunts, since they can taunt harder than I can.</p><p>Edit: Just to add, to say that this nerf is not because of the BGs/PvP is laughable. </p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Problem solved!  Much better solution, without having to nerf a whole class into oblivion for the average player!</p></blockquote><p>What part of, your heals are still more powerful than they were in last expansion is hard to understand.  How can they still be improved from TSO and be 'nerfed into oblivion'.</p></blockquote><p>They were more powerful in TSO, because you could spec them to crit more. The Healadin was a totally valid spec in TSO. When SF was released those AA's got shifted because there was no longer any point in raising heal crit chance.</p></blockquote><p>The heal crit you had in TSO is easily made up with +potency in SF.</p>

[Seomon]

<p>No it's not.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No it's not.</p></blockquote><p>Do the math with your current potency and ability mod, compaired to just the HC you had in TSO.</p>

[Aleste]

<p>Personaly I feel this change is unneeded. Stat consolidation has made so many aspects of the game out of control, but to allow other classes to crit on heals/abilities and blanket nerf fighters is just lame. Then again this change could be seen comming from miles away. Nothing in eq2 seems well thought out, Load people up on uber gear with high stats and crazy procs. Consolidate stats then nerf people to where they "should be". Imo alot of abilities could use a nerf in pve/pvp but buffing up the content and the classes who are lacking (summoners/guards) would be a better option.</p><p>Ps. by implimenting stat consolidation you achieved two things.. at least to me.</p><p>1. Removed the means for people to build their toons to their liking and play style. Everything is too cookiecutter now.</p><p>2. Made seemingly OP classes really op when they reach higher teirs of gear.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Aleste wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Personaly I feel this change is unneeded. Stat consolidation has made so many aspects of the game out of control, but to allow other classes to crit on heals/abilities and blanket nerf fighters is just lame. </p></blockquote><p>In their defense, they didn't remove the ability for Fighters to critical heal. Or if they did, they've since retracted that. What they did is remove crits from specific abilities to critically apply. Oh look, it's all the Fighter heals. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> Seriously though it's all the Berserker heals, but that's OK. Battle Frenzy never should have, Vision of Madness never should have. The Zerk ward doesn't really make a difference. Blood Rage gets to be a bit much if you have a bunch of weak adds to grab to keep healing you. </p>

[Aleste]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aleste wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Personaly I feel this change is unneeded. Stat consolidation has made so many aspects of the game out of control, but to allow other classes to crit on heals/abilities and blanket nerf fighters is just lame. </p></blockquote><p>In this post I will both defend SOE and lambast them.</p><p>In their defense, they didn't remove the ability for Fighters to critical heal. Or if they did, they've since retracted that. What they did is remove crits from specific abilities to critically apply. Oh look, it's all the Fighter heals. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> Seriously though it's all the Berserker heals, but that's OK. Battle Frenzy never should have, Vision of Madness never should have. The Zerk ward doesn't really make a difference. Blood Rage gets to be a bit much. But hey, at least potency still applies .............</p><p>In lambasting them, potency no longer applies to any Berserker heals, except for Perseverance which is the lamest of all. Blood Rage et al "cannot be modified except by direct means". So essentially, the nerf is twice what you thought when you first read it. </p><p><strong><em>I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that since this change happened quickly it was a mistake. But that's still /ragequit material right there. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></em></strong></p></blockquote><p>That has allways been the problem. Giving and taking away makes people want to /ragequit. And quite normaly all this give/take could have been avoided with some preemptive thinking on the devs part. Honstly its not very fun to log in one day to find out your toon has been nerfed. It happens way to often. I'm starting to think Soe wants to drive people away from the game. Nerfing 6 classes while leaving the others intact is not fair in the least imo. Not that fair matters. I play on a low pop server which nothing has been done to fix now the nerfs are comming rather than real fixes guess its time to move on. -3 accounts <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Seomon]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No it's not.</p></blockquote><p>Do the math with your current potency and ability mod, compaired to just the HC you had in TSO.</p></blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Aleste wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aleste wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Personaly I feel this change is unneeded. Stat consolidation has made so many aspects of the game out of control, but to allow other classes to crit on heals/abilities and blanket nerf fighters is just lame. </p></blockquote><p>In this post I will both defend SOE and lambast them.</p><p>In their defense, they didn't remove the ability for Fighters to critical heal. Or if they did, they've since retracted that. What they did is remove crits from specific abilities to critically apply. Oh look, it's all the Fighter heals. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> Seriously though it's all the Berserker heals, but that's OK. Battle Frenzy never should have, Vision of Madness never should have. The Zerk ward doesn't really make a difference. Blood Rage gets to be a bit much. But hey, at least potency still applies .............</p><p>In lambasting them, potency no longer applies to any Berserker heals, except for Perseverance which is the lamest of all. Blood Rage et al "cannot be modified except by direct means". So essentially, the nerf is twice what you thought when you first read it. </p><p><strong><em>I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that since this change happened quickly it was a mistake. But that's still /ragequit material right there. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></em></strong></p></blockquote><p>That has allways been the problem. Giving and taking away makes people want to /ragequit. And quite normaly all this give/take could have been avoided with some preemptive thinking on the devs part. Honstly its not very fun to log in one day to find out your toon has been nerfed. It happens way to often. I'm starting to think Soe wants to drive people away from the game. Nerfing 6 classes while leaving the others intact is not fair in the least imo. Not that fair matters. I play on a low pop server which nothing has been done to fix now the nerfs are comming rather than real fixes guess its time to move on. -3 accounts <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>OK, in their defense AGAIN ... the ability in question that I noticed cannot be modified? Blood Rage. Hey, guess what ... it was already that way on Live. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" /></p><p>So ... IMO, it's fine except that they need to compensate by upping VoM. Can't speak for Paladin heals and SK heals, some of which may still crit.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>QFT, man. If I could get SOE to listen to one piece of feedback it would be to please never listen to anything posted or said by 1) That one SK who constantly posts in every fighter board on every beta trying to get every ability every other fighter has nerfed or 2) That one Guardian who thinks Brawlers are OP. </p>

[Aleste]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aleste wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aleste wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Personaly I feel this change is unneeded. Stat consolidation has made so many aspects of the game out of control, but to allow other classes to crit on heals/abilities and blanket nerf fighters is just lame. </p></blockquote><p>In this post I will both defend SOE and lambast them.</p><p>In their defense, they didn't remove the ability for Fighters to critical heal. Or if they did, they've since retracted that. What they did is remove crits from specific abilities to critically apply. Oh look, it's all the Fighter heals. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> Seriously though it's all the Berserker heals, but that's OK. Battle Frenzy never should have, Vision of Madness never should have. The Zerk ward doesn't really make a difference. Blood Rage gets to be a bit much. But hey, at least potency still applies .............</p><p>In lambasting them, potency no longer applies to any Berserker heals, except for Perseverance which is the lamest of all. Blood Rage et al "cannot be modified except by direct means". So essentially, the nerf is twice what you thought when you first read it. </p><p><strong><em>I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that since this change happened quickly it was a mistake. But that's still /ragequit material right there. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></em></strong></p></blockquote><p>That has allways been the problem. Giving and taking away makes people want to /ragequit. And quite normaly all this give/take could have been avoided with some preemptive thinking on the devs part. Honstly its not very fun to log in one day to find out your toon has been nerfed. It happens way to often. I'm starting to think Soe wants to drive people away from the game. Nerfing 6 classes while leaving the others intact is not fair in the least imo. Not that fair matters. I play on a low pop server which nothing has been done to fix now the nerfs are comming rather than real fixes guess its time to move on. -3 accounts <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p><strong>OK, in their defense AGAIN</strong> ... the ability in question that I noticed cannot be modified? <strong>Blood Rage</strong>. Hey, guess what ... it was already that way on Live. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" /></p><p>So ... IMO, it's fine except that they need to compensate by upping VoM. Can't speak for Paladin heals and SK heals, some of which may still crit.</p></blockquote><p>Who says im only talking about Zerkers? I just said blanket nerfs are not the way to fix problems that THEY made. All gamebreaking mechanics (Stat consolidation) changes should be a little better planned and implimented imo. This buff everyone up to knock them down way of balancing really ticks people off. Stat consolidation was a crazy idea to start with. There are heaps and mounds of gear in game with the wrong stats on it that will likely never be fixed and the class balance issues are abundant. Imo its due to Stat consolidation i may be wrong tho.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Aleste wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><blockquote><p>That has allways been the problem. Giving and taking away makes people want to /ragequit. And quite normaly all this give/take could have been avoided with some preemptive thinking on the devs part. Honstly its not very fun to log in one day to find out your toon has been nerfed. It happens way to often. I'm starting to think Soe wants to drive people away from the game. Nerfing 6 classes while leaving the others intact is not fair in the least imo. Not that fair matters. I play on a low pop server which nothing has been done to fix now the nerfs are comming rather than real fixes guess its time to move on. -3 accounts <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p><strong>OK, in their defense AGAIN</strong> ... the ability in question that I noticed cannot be modified? <strong>Blood Rage</strong>. Hey, guess what ... it was already that way on Live. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" /></p><p>So ... IMO, it's fine except that they need to compensate by upping VoM. Can't speak for Paladin heals and SK heals, some of which may still crit.</p></blockquote><p>Who says im only talking about Zerkers? I just said blanket nerfs are not the way to fix problems that THEY made. All gamebreaking mechanics (Stat consolidation) changes should be a little better planned and implimented imo. This buff everyone up to knock them down way of balancing really ticks people off. Stat consolidation was a crazy idea to start with. There are heaps and mounds of gear in game with the wrong stats on it that will likely never be fixed and the class balance issues are abundant. Imo its due to Stat consolidation i may be wrong tho.</p></blockquote><p>Understood ... I can only offer feedback on the Berserker which is why I put it that way. IMO some Paladin heals at least should continue to crit. But the good thing is, the way they've done the change they COULD make some Paladin heals still crit. Heck for all I know they do! </p><p>I agree, it definitely ticks people off. My subscriptions are currently set to expire 8/21 and depending on what changes hit Test between now and then that will be that. Ironically, I canceled BEFORE these changes hit Test and yet still listed my primary reason for canceling as "In order to buff up Guardians you have nerfed the heck out of Berserkers" or something along those lines. I was right; I'm impressed. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Wilin]

<p>Say what you want about it, but it's a nerf and I'm really not in the mood to start taking nerfs at this stage in the game...</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>My cause is balancing tanks.  Sorry reasonable healing from a tank archtype makes you QQ.</p>

[Darkonx]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>My cause is balancing tanks.  Sorry reasonable healing from a tank archtype makes you QQ.</p></blockquote><p>Making a stat not affect an ability in any way is stupid, especially considering how minimal the bonuses are. Look at the parses I posted. If % based abilitys are broken, fix those, do NOT nerf fighter healing abilitys across the board.</p>

[aias]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>My cause is balancing tanks.  Sorry reasonable healing from a tank archtype makes you QQ.</p></blockquote><p>You are the lulz.  Will do zero for balancing.  But i'm sure it gives you satisfaction regardless.  lol</p>

[Peogia]

[Marcusaval]

<p>This is a gross act of stupidity on behalf of the developers and typical of their unthought out devlopment policy.</p><p>We did not alter the crits in the 1 st place and now that some player v player or battle grounds people have cried about tank surviability the solution is to universally nerf tanks across the entire game a sledgehammer to crack a walnut approach.</p><p>It can be hard to get a Tank for group instances as it stands now this is unlikely to improve the situation.</p><p>I have never played player v player ot battlegrounds and have zero interest in it I would suggest the nerf is only applied to the Pvp servers and Battlegrounds zones instead of inflicting misery on the fighter community.</p><p>This is simliar to the last fighter rebalance plans which also caused unnecessary complaints acroos the whole fighter community and many people to leave the game.</p><p>As to the rest of the update woopee a change of coulour sceme and interface will have thousands flocking back to the game; why dont you focus your efforts on actually doing useful updates.</p>

[Buneary]

<p>this change is really silly. me dont even play a Fighter class and me thinks its silly!</p><p>and there is no way this has nothing to do with BGs. now me am getting worried that more PvP oriented nerfs affecting PvE are incoming.</p><p>and, does this change only effect Fighter types? or will other classes with life tap spells (Necromancers) be affected as well? because if so, then bam, this nerf is even MORE silly.</p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Marcusavalon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is a gross act of stupidity on behalf of the developers and typical of their unthought out devlopment policy.</p><p>We did not alter the crits in the 1 st place and now that some player v player or battle grounds people have cried about tank surviability the solution is to universally nerf tanks across the entire game a sledgehammer to crack a walnut approach.</p><p>It can be hard to get a Tank for group instances as it stands now this is unlikely to improve the situation.</p><p>I have never played player v player ot battlegrounds and have zero interest in it I would suggest the nerf is only applied to the Pvp servers and Battlegrounds zones instead of inflicting misery on the fighter community.</p><p>This is simliar to the last fighter rebalance plans which also caused unnecessary complaints acroos the whole fighter community and many people to leave the game.</p><p>As to the rest of the update woopee a change of coulour sceme and interface will have thousands flocking back to the game; why dont you focus your efforts on actually doing useful updates.</p></blockquote><p>$OE devs are again doing what tey do best.  [Removed for Content] off the majority of the community and make people quit, and in the process still FAIL at actually fixing the handful of people that /beat the game and run around in excessive OverPowered Top RAID gear.</p><p>And on top of that, they then also insult our inteligence by saying this NERF was not PVP / Battlegrounds driven.  lol. /facepalm</p>

[EQVet32]

<p><cite>Marcusavalon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is a gross act of stupidity on behalf of the developers and typical of their unthought out devlopment policy.</p><p>We did not alter the crits in the 1 st place and now that some player v player or battle grounds people have cried about tank surviability the solution is to universally nerf tanks across the entire game a sledgehammer to crack a walnut approach.</p><p>It can be hard to get a Tank for group instances as it stands now this is unlikely to improve the situation.</p><p>I have never played player v player ot battlegrounds and have zero interest in it I would suggest the nerf is only applied to the Pvp servers and Battlegrounds zones instead of inflicting misery on the fighter community.</p><p>This is simliar to the last fighter rebalance plans which also caused unnecessary complaints acroos the whole fighter community and many people to leave the game.</p><p>As to the rest of the update woopee a change of coulour sceme and interface will have thousands flocking back to the game; why dont you focus your efforts on actually doing useful updates.</p></blockquote><p>I might be a fighter and on a pvp server but it doesn't mean I don't pve. Apply it to the battlegrounds. Better yet soe go into the start menu and find control panel under there is a option called performance and maintence. Please click this tab and find system restore. Go back around 3 years maybe 4.  I would also ask for the Avatars back.</p>

[Encantador]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>$OE devs are again doing what tey do best.  [Removed for Content] off <strong>the majority of the community</strong> and make people quit, and in the process still FAIL at actually fixing the handful of people that /beat the game and run around in excessive OverPowered Top RAID gear.</p><p>And on top of that, they then also insult our inteligence by saying this NERF was not PVP / Battlegrounds driven.  lol. /facepalm</p></blockquote><p>You have an extremely self-centred way of looking at things if you believe the majority of the community will get [Removed for Content] off by this. The vast majority either do not care or approve of it. This is going to upset a <strong>few</strong> people.</p><p>Even amongst the pallies and zerkers, many will not even notice the change. I know my 2 sons (who are both casuals) won't read the update notes and if they even notice a change will simply shrug their shoulders and keep going (btw one plays a pally and the other a zerker). My partner plays a level 72 monk. I told her about the changes. She wasn't in the least interested. So I checked her character. She has no CB. She won't even notice the change.</p><p>It is also wrong to blame PvP for this. I am NOT a fanboi for PvP or BGs; I do not want anything to do with them. However I would not insult the developers by saying they have made this change because of PvP. With any sensible implementation, making these changes apply only to PvP fights is the work of minutes. So the developers want to nerf the ability of tanks to heal.</p><p>I wish the developers would give a little more detail about what they intended to nerf. My guess is that they want to change the survivability of tanks in the following ways a) No affect<strong> </strong>in raids b) Make tanks in level appropriate group content require a significant amount of healing from healers c) Noticeably reduce the ability of crusaders/zerkers to solo group content.</p><p>Are these changes the best way to do what the developers intend? Will they actually work out as planned? If not what would you do instead?</p><p>One final question: Is this the 'mechanics change' that Xelgad said was coming that would make guardian survivability more valued?</p>

[gundali]

<p>Gash</p><p>Hai guiz how can we make guadians pwnzor?</p><p>Not a clue, cba, hai let nurf the other guiz!</p><p>Which seems to be the only possible reason they've taken this draconian stance on fighter heals. Berzerker ability to heal for those amounts is down to specific fights and combinations of high content raid items and some poor long term planning in the design stages of SF.</p><p>This change is a band aid in the complete and utter fail that this game finds itself now in.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Encantador wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>One final question: Is this the 'mechanics change' that Xelgad said was coming that would make guardian survivability more valued?</p></blockquote><p>It's a good question. It would be nice to see an official answer but my hunch is "No".</p><p>AFTER these changes went to Test he posted in the Guardian forums that <em>"<span >We do have an additional mechanics change in the works, but we're still not to the point that we can really discuss it yet."</span></em></p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No it's not.</p></blockquote><p>Do the math with your current potency and ability mod, compaired to just the HC you had in TSO.</p></blockquote><p>And then do your math, and realize the HP pools have scaled much higher than the skills base numbers themselves. The potency increase is crap. Also, you could still boost Crit Bonus in TSO. Don't forget that.</p><p>If this change goes live, Paladin skills/Spells/AAs will need to be overhauled. Oh wait, that won't happen, instead we'll just have gimped spells for the next 4 years.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Pandarus@Kithicor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>My cause is balancing tanks.  Sorry reasonable healing from a tank archtype makes you QQ.</p></blockquote><p>You are the lulz.  Will do zero for balancing.  But i'm sure it gives you satisfaction regardless.  lol</p></blockquote><p>QFE.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Encantador wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>$OE devs are again doing what tey do best.  [Removed for Content] off <strong>the majority of the community</strong> and make people quit, and in the process still FAIL at actually fixing the handful of people that /beat the game and run around in excessive OverPowered Top RAID gear.</p><p>And on top of that, they then also insult our inteligence by saying this NERF was not PVP / Battlegrounds driven.  lol. /facepalm</p></blockquote><p>You have an extremely self-centred way of looking at things if you believe the majority of the community will get [Removed for Content] off by this. The vast majority either do not care or approve of it. This is going to upset a <strong>few</strong> people.</p><p>Even amongst the pallies and zerkers, many will not even notice the change. I know my 2 sons (who are both casuals) won't read the update notes and if they even notice a change will simply shrug their shoulders and keep going (btw one plays a pally and the other a zerker). My partner plays a level 72 monk. I told her about the changes. She wasn't in the least interested. So I checked her character. She has no CB. She won't even notice the change.</p><p>It is also wrong to blame PvP for this. I am NOT a fanboi for PvP or BGs; I do not want anything to do with them. However I would not insult the developers by saying they have made this change because of PvP. With any sensible implementation, making these changes apply only to PvP fights is the work of minutes. So the developers want to nerf the ability of tanks to heal.</p><p>I wish the developers would give a little more detail about what they intended to nerf. My guess is that they want to change the survivability of tanks in the following ways a) No affect<strong> </strong>in raids b) Make tanks in level appropriate group content require a significant amount of healing from healers c) Noticeably reduce the ability of crusaders/zerkers to solo group content.</p><p>Are these changes the best way to do what the developers intend? Will they actually work out as planned? If not what would you do instead?</p><p>One final question: Is this the 'mechanics change' that Xelgad said was coming that would make guardian survivability more valued?</p></blockquote><p>This is a major nerf going out. By itself, it is upsetting to people. However, combine a massive nerf bat with EQ2X launching, and you have the recipe for a lot of cancellations. A lot of people care about that. Check the post numbers there if you doubt it. 600+ in the first 18 hours alone. Live server population will see an immediate drop in the influx of new people, its common sense.</p><p>This will affect mostly only level 90 characters. Until you get there, you aren't doing endgame content. The mobs hit harder there, just like it scales up in difficulty as you go from expansion to expansion.</p><p>To address your "guess".</p><p>A) It will have no effect in raids. Since its already all about the healers/stoneskins there.</p><p>B) Most tanks in level appropriate gear (at 90) already require a TON of healing in the SF instances. Healers aren't on easy mode unless oh wait, the tank is tricked out in all the fabled gear already. (Which this will <em>not</em> address at <em>all.</em>) A limited few people are able to tank the higher difficulty zones and still be healed through it. Tank through Palace of el'erad or Cella or any of the vigilants and then tell me healers don't do anything.</p><p>C) Zerkers will heal slightly less, meaning they will need to use their endlines more. % Based heals will still be powerful, by nature. Crusaders that solo don't rely on their skill based heals, because that means they aren't killing things. This will do nothing for that problem either. Like we said countless times, its an itemization problem right now.</p><p>So. If you want everyone except raid geared chars to be affected, thats what you are getting. Add in the fact that they are working on buffing guardians (To make them stoneskin more, which means they will absorb INSANE amounts of damage.) And you have a system that will still be inherently jacked still, and guardians will still be unwanted, because DPS is king.</p><p>Are people going to always be able to solo things? Yes, because this game is <em>HUGE</em> and there will always be a few items which when combined have unforseen results.</p><p>Major mechanic changes are <em>not</em> the way to fix the problems created by the few.</p>

[Brildean]

<p>Up next--- we are removing melee crit's from priests. this is to balance so you can't out dps a guardian.</p>

[Irgun]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Problem solved!  Much better solution, without having to nerf a whole class into oblivion for the average player!</p></blockquote><p>What part of, your heals are still more powerful than they were in last expansion is hard to understand.  How can they still be improved from TSO and be 'nerfed into oblivion'.</p></blockquote><p>Are you so shortsighted and stubborn you miss the point that our heals prior SF were totally underpowered? /fact</p><p>This makes your argument non-existant - our heals should have had a big boost during TSO tbh - which happened with SF - and is going to get ruined again thanks to people who dont understand the concept of a class.</p>

[Gaer]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>Awesome, this is what i wanted to know the reason why. I hope this works out for you, i know i am ready for the change to come, got my 18 points standing by. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> If you don't mind going to copy this post for my fellow paladins to see in our class thread.</p>

[S_M_I_T_E]

<p><cite>Brildean wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Up next--- we are removing <span style="color: #0000ff;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">melee crit's</span> </span>from priests. this is to balance so you can't out dps a guardian.</p></blockquote><p><em><span style="color: #ffffff;">I generally agree this might be looked at depending on what specific mechanics changes Xelgad has in mind for tanks.</span></em></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Point 1</span>:</span> Removal of melee crit alone would not do anything for <span>spell crit style priests' DPS numbers</span> at endgame.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;">      <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Reason 1</span>: Furys can do 16K and solo heal SF easy/moderate zones with the right group, without a T9 weapon and a <em>proc group</em> your Melee priests aren't in that club at the <em>group game</em>. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;"><span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Point 2</span>:</span> I like that tanks can solo now compared to DOF times when playing a gaurd (or other) was painfully slow, but I woudn't be suprised if a [DPS --> Hate] conversion mechanic in defensive stance might actually be around the corner for tanks to drop total group dps in heroic content.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;">      <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Reason 2a</span>: That tanks are usually #1 dps on parse when grouping means that the "tuners" have to up the mobs hp's considerably and it makes their job harder to make content fun for everyone from treasured, mastercrafted, legendary, and fabled as those in lesser gear tend to have even less "ideal" class stacking groups to which to attempt content to begin with.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;">      <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Reason 2b</span>: Tank healing was a nice feature for all levels of gameplay which allowed for duo-trio-wipe/recovery,etc. that everyone enjoyed but at current "super-saiyan" levels <em>at the group game</em> other classes might have /rerolled tanks en-mass as why be x, y, or z when I can do all 3 (tank, heal, dps) as tank x, y, or z.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;">Edited for to remove blue highlights - was terrible on eyes...</span></p>

[guillero]

<p><cite>Encantador wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>$OE devs are again doing what tey do best.  [Removed for Content] off <strong>the majority of the community</strong> and make people quit, and in the process still FAIL at actually fixing the handful of people that /beat the game and run around in excessive OverPowered Top RAID gear.</p><p>And on top of that, they then also insult our inteligence by saying this NERF was not PVP / Battlegrounds driven.  lol. /facepalm</p></blockquote><p>You have an extremely self-centred way of looking at things if you believe the majority of the community will get [Removed for Content] off by this. The vast majority either do not care or approve of it. This is going to upset a <strong>few</strong> people.</p><p>Even amongst the pallies and zerkers, many will not even notice the change. I know my 2 sons (who are both casuals) won't read the update notes and if they even notice a change will simply shrug their shoulders and keep going (btw one plays a pally and the other a zerker). My partner plays a level 72 monk. I told her about the changes. She wasn't in the least interested. So I checked her character. She has no CB. She won't even notice the change.</p></blockquote><p>You appearently have absolutely no clue about the Paladin class at all!</p><p>IT IS the average player who gets hurt by this!  The average player with MC / Legendary gear (wich is the vast majority out there) much more rely on the few bonusses, like %crit.  It has a big impact on their solo'ability and survivability !</p><p>It's a handful of players that have /beat the game, got the Top RAID gear and able to max out their stats, mods and %crit and got extremely overpowered and are so able to destroy Heroic content with it. And becoming unstoppable in Battlegrounds and PVP (wich is more than obvious were the major QQ has been coming from).</p><p>The vast majority of players who run around in MC / Legendary gear have average stats, bonusses and %crit and have a challenge enough already during leveling and at the top end!</p><p>So for the average Paladin (wich is the vast majority of them out there) our healing isn't OverPowered at all. Not even with average %crit. As you run out of Mana so fast with the healing abilities. It's not even funny!  Especially in Battlegrounds where you are constantly stuck in combat and have no way to regen your mana, other than praying you get killed when you run out.</p><p>Our whole survivability, Solo'ability in PVE is totally dependend on our Heals!  That's what the Paladin is all about!  We are a HYBRID class! NOT a pure fighter like the Guardian and the Berserker!! Healing is our PRIMARY utility!</p><p>But whatever!  You NON-Paladin players won't see it nor ever get it anyway! And are the sole reason this is now happening to us and have our beloved class getting destroyed!</p><p>And all that WITHOUT fixing anything!  That is the worst of all!  As the root cause of the problem (top RAID gear that has gotten totally out of hand, stat consolidation, etc) will still remain.</p>

[Seomon]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>My cause is balancing tanks.  Sorry reasonable healing from a tank archtype makes you QQ.</p></blockquote><p>So instead of answering the post, you make an attack. Thanks for proving my point, sir.</p>

[diamondmaker10]

<p><cite>Tubby@Venekor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Fighter heals have gotten a bit out of hand this expansion, and the primary cause has been stat consolidation combined with the high amount of Crit Bonus available.  Most healing abilities are balanced with damage reduction abilities from other classes, and since those abilities have nothing similar to a critical, we end up with a significant problem as players progress their characters. For example, the Guardian Advancement "Last Man Standing" was balanced against the Berserker Advancement "Battle Frenzy."  Those abilities seemed fine at the beginning of the expansion, but when you add 70 additional Crit Bonus to Battle Frenzy with nothing to offset that gain for Last Man Standing, the balance is lost.Stoneskin abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Incoming damage</li></ul><p> Healing abilities can improve with:</p><ul><li>Casting speed</li><li>Reuse speed</li><li>Potency</li><li>Ability Modifier (or Max Health for percentage based heals)</li><li>Crit Bonus</li></ul><p> Potency and Ability Modifier (or max health, if the heal is percentage based) can still be used to improve heals to offset the scaling damage reduction abilities get from increased incoming damage, but critical fighter heals were breaking that balance.  Note that heals should still be at least as powerful for the vast majority of fighters compared to where they would have been if we had not consolidated stats.  We're just correcting a balancing and scaling issue caused by stat consolidation, not reducing the effectiveness of heals beyond that.As far as Lifetap spells, only the heal component is affected by this change. The damage component will still critically hit.</p></blockquote><p>Poorly thought out, you are nerfing 6 classes to help balance guardians and zerkers?  Paladins and SK's have always been able to max out heal crits, SK's through spell crit, and paladins via old int line.  Stat consolidation made 0 difference in how often crusaders were critting.</p><p>Crit bonus may be an issue, but not crit ability.  The crusader archetype has been balanced around near max heal critting for 4 teirs worth of expansions, this is a horrible change.</p><p>Did you consider secondary repercussions?  SK mythical converts 300 percent of heal amount into hate, you just cut heals by more then half, will you make up the loss in aoe agro at all?  Will you nerf the zerker mythical so that half its hate is reduced since its based on dmg output not heal output?  Silly, just silly.</p><p>You screwed the pooch when it came to guardians, try not to plant your head even firmer up there in your attempts to bring them up to balance.</p><p>And honestly, who puts in stuff like blood ritual, symphonic allure, deadly lifetaps on every piece, and stonewill items...only to then decide those folks heal too much.</p><p>Lunacy, seriously.</p></blockquote><p>LMFAO Says the above SK... (SK and pally is about as balanced as an atomic bomb hitting an anthill and anyone who thinks they are well doesnt count because they are playing one) I cant wait for this to hit Pallys and SKs and watch them scatter like roaches.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>IT IS the average player who gets hurt by this!  The average player with MC / Legendary gear (wich is the vast majority out there) much more rely on the few bonusses, like %crit.  It has a big impact on their solo'ability and survivability !</p><p>It's a handful of players that have /beat the game, got the Top RAID gear and able to max out their stats, mods and %crit and got extremely overpowered and are so able to destroy Heroic content with it. And becoming unstoppable in Battlegrounds and PVP (wich is more than obvious were the major QQ has been coming from).</p><p>The vast majority of players who run around in MC / Legendary gear have average stats, bonusses and %crit and have a challenge enough already during leveling and at the top end!</p><p>So for the average Paladin (wich is the vast majority of them out there) our healing isn't OverPowered at all. Not even with average %crit. As you run out of Mana so fast with the healing abilities. It's not even funny!  Especially in Battlegrounds where you are constantly stuck in combat and have no way to regen your mana, other than praying you get killed when you run out.</p><p>Our whole survivability, Solo'ability in PVE is totally dependend on our Heals!  That's what the Paladin is all about!  We are a HYBRID class! NOT a pure fighter like the Guardian and the Berserker!! Healing is our PRIMARY utility!</p><p>But whatever!  You NON-Paladin players won't see it nor ever get it anyway! And are the sole reason this is now happening to us and have our beloved class getting destroyed!</p><p>And all that WITHOUT fixing anything!  That is the worst of all!  As the root cause of the problem (top RAID gear that has gotten totally out of hand, stat consolidation, etc) will still remain.</p></blockquote><p><----Non-Paladin player.</p><p>Paladin heals should still crit. I'd be perfectly fine if all of the Berserker abilities that are heals ceased to crit as long as Vision of Madness and Blood Rage were adjusted. VoM should be a higher percentage - 15-20%. Just the initial heal. Blood Rage should be altered to allow potency and ability modifier to apply since Xelgad stated that they should, but no crits.</p><p>But Paladin heals should continue to crit. As a Warrior, I don't have the DPS potential that a Paladin or SK does, and yet I <em><strong>STILL</strong></em> believe Paladin heals should continue to crit.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>My cause is balancing tanks.  Sorry reasonable healing from a tank archtype makes you QQ.</p></blockquote><p>So instead of answering the post, you make an attack. Thanks for proving my point, sir.</p></blockquote><p>Isn't it clear heals from the fighter archtype were never meant to compound in progression?  That when they did, the amount of potential healing exceeded the archtype's boundaries.</p><p>Crit consolidation, with potency and CB poured all over this expansion has increased healing from the archtype beyond reasonable levels.  I honestly don't know how you can play a crusader at the level of the game that you do and say with a straight face a fighter should heal for as much as you can.</p><p>To others in this thread, I fully understand how much this healing is also attributed to item procs.  I'm not a fool, I've spec'd to it myself on my tanks.   I fully suspect we're going to see the aoe proc chance re-nerfed on these items as well to compensate for them. Remember this was only reverted cause the current proc chance code broke when ae auto attack struck a single target.  Once mechanically they can have the proc chance only factor'd on one hit to the direct target, this nerf will be comming back.  But thats a separate issue/discussion.</p><p>I also expect eventually all % base heals will be eventually made unmodifiable.</p><p>But, I believe Xelgad is of the camp of making one change at a time and observing the change before making the next one.</p><p>In the end, I'll think you'll be lucky and retain the myth in its current form, but I could be wrong.</p><p>BTW, it was you sir who attacked me.  I just pointed it out as QQing.</p>

[Ryai]

<p>It really doesn't matter anymore.</p><p>I have the distinct impression every single Dev who actually cared about the game was laid off in the last batch, because they didn't want to bow to corporate sony's desire to just make more money. EQ2X for example.</p><p>This is the start of a long downhill slope, in which favoritism becomes rampant in a different direction. If you think tanks will ever be balanced in the current SoE environment, you are incredibly naive. All that will change is the flavor of the week. Next week: Guardians. In typical SoE fashion, at the cost of everyone else.</p><p>The gear/soloing exploits will just move over to the new class of the week. Instead of fighters, I suspect priests will become the new soloers. The means are already there.</p><p>This has all happened before. It will all happen again, until everone at SoE takes some game design lessons. Ultimately, SoE broke all the tanks when they made them all the same. Every tank should not have Tsunami, but they do.</p><p>@Atan- Huge nerfs are never a good balancing tool. Ever. Its a quick fix and a kneejerk reaction that often breaks far more than it fixes. This does nothing to balance tanks at all. Does it remove crits from skills that shouldn't have been critting before? Yes. Does it do a whole lot more? Yes. To use a cliche, this is like using an atom-bomb to destroy an anthill.</p><p>The full impact of this can't possibly be known, and how many major game mechanics changes are we really going to go through?</p><p>Is tank healing a bit too much? Yes. But this isn't the proper way to fix it.</p>

[Ragefighter87]

<p><cite>Xelgad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For clarification, this change applies to all fighter heals for all of the fighter classes. Paladin, Shadowknight, Monk, Bruiser, Berserker and even Guardians.</p><p>This change was not influenced by PVP or Battlegrounds.</p></blockquote><p>Although I agree that certain heals needed to be toned down(Simply lower Fighter's heal Crit modifier, or the actual base amount from certain spell) from the tank classes, is there a plan to look at some of zerker and paladin's abilities and make proper adjustment so that some of their abilites are still viable and not irrelevant.</p><p>Secondly, shouldn't this changes be held off till the next expansion and the issue can be further addressed with new AA, Ability etc. This also allow more in-depth testing by players and developers.</p><p>Finally, we are heading towards the end of this expansion, and a huge change to machanics will serverly impact the playing style of many players.  People already planned, geared and developed strategy base on the existing machanics</p><p>I sincerely feel that you will have more success if this change is launched with the new expansion.</p><p>Thanks.</p><p>Mistmoore.Finding</p>

[Domingo]

<p>This nerf is ridiculous. Want to keep % based heal abilities from being overpowered? Stop them from critting. <strong>Them only.</strong>Leave all the other heals alone.</p><p>PvP nerfs should not affect PvE, and solo / group ability of fighters. Not to mention that SK myth generates a lot of hate from lifetaps, so it's not just survivability that is going to be affected by this.</p>

[Darkonx]

<p>Change this to only affect percentage based heals. Stoneskins are INFINITELY more valuable anyways. Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing. The nerf is unnecessary, and is resultant of massive QQ. It's gear that is making these feats of soloability possible, not a classes self-heals. (Other than possibly Berserkers)</p><p>Do not try to fix one or two ability with an archtype-wide revamp. This is NOT the way to fix what you are seeing happening with high end raid gear.</p>

[Seiffil]

<p><cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You appearently have absolutely no clue about the Paladin class at all!</p><p>IT IS the average player who gets hurt by this!  The average player with MC / Legendary gear (wich is the vast majority out there) much more rely on the few bonusses, like %crit.  It has a big impact on their solo'ability and survivability !</p><p>It's a handful of players that have /beat the game, got the Top RAID gear and able to max out their stats, mods and %crit and got extremely overpowered and are so able to destroy Heroic content with it. And becoming unstoppable in Battlegrounds and PVP (wich is more than obvious were the major QQ has been coming from).</p><p>The vast majority of players who run around in MC / Legendary gear have average stats, bonusses and %crit and have a challenge enough already during leveling and at the top end!</p><p>So for the average Paladin (wich is the vast majority of them out there) our healing isn't OverPowered at all. Not even with average %crit. As you run out of Mana so fast with the healing abilities. It's not even funny!  Especially in Battlegrounds where you are constantly stuck in combat and have no way to regen your mana, other than praying you get killed when you run out.</p><p>Our whole survivability, Solo'ability in PVE is totally dependend on our Heals!  That's what the Paladin is all about!  We are a HYBRID class! NOT a pure fighter like the Guardian and the Berserker!! Healing is our PRIMARY utility!</p><p>But whatever!  You NON-Paladin players won't see it nor ever get it anyway! And are the sole reason this is now happening to us and have our beloved class getting destroyed!</p><p>And all that WITHOUT fixing anything!  That is the worst of all!  As the root cause of the problem (top RAID gear that has gotten totally out of hand, stat consolidation, etc) will still remain.</p></blockquote><p>I think you're the one who is over reacting to how much it hurts the paladin, it just hurts how you feel your role as a paladin should be. </p><p>Have you played an actual honest to god healer in any SF instances?  I've healed every type of tank possible with my templar, and there are many zones where the amount of healing I have to cast on a tank is minimal.  This isn't just paladins, sk's, zerkers, guardians, monks, and bruisers in raid gear, this also goes for those same classes wearing primarily instanced legendary gear.</p><p>Your class isn't being destroyed, this isn't destroying your soloability, because newsflash, if you're concerned about not being able to solo heroic anymore just remember those aren't actually supposed to be soloable.  Honestly if anything this gives my healer something to do in groups aside from casting the odd heal for the splash damage on the dps classes, and trying to pretend I can actually dps.</p><p>Since others have brought up BG's, to an extent you could say that BG's did influence this, but not for the reasons most people think.  Do you really care how much your tank is healing during an instance?  Do you really pay attention to the fact that a tank might be doubling the healer's heal parse?  I'll be the first to tell you, I generally don't look at a heal parse during instances.  The first place the healing potential of a fighter class really gets noticed in a big way is from PVP/BG cause that's where people finally do start caring that said tank can heal for 2-5x the amount of a healer.  Just because something isn't being said about it, does NOT mean it's not overpowered.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing.</p></blockquote><p>Your parses are great for showing that the effect of the nerf will be minimal in raiding, at least for SKs. </p><p>However, go run a heroic zone with a healer who pretty much just DPSes.  Then answer the following questions:</p><p>1) Does the healer need to heal you less than he would need to heal a Guardian, which is supposed to be a more defensive tank and has less DPS and worse offensive utility for that extra defensive-ness?</p><p>2) Will this change cause the healer to need to heal you more than he would have had to heal you before the change?</p>

[Darkonx]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing.</p></blockquote><p>Your parses are great for showing that the effect of the nerf will be minimal in raiding, at least for SKs. </p><p>However, go run a heroic zone with a healer who pretty much just DPSes.  Then answer the following questions:</p><p>1) Does the healer need to heal you less than he would need to heal a Guardian, which is supposed to be a more defensive tank and has less DPS and worse offensive utility for that extra defensive-ness?</p><p>2) Will this change cause the healer to need to heal you more than he would have had to heal you before the change?</p></blockquote><p>Any geared tank can limit their incoming damage to almost nil in instances. It's procs that are letting people do this, NOT spells. If you make it so fighter's can't heal, then make it so priests can't critical on damage abilitys, mage's can't critical on power replenishment, or melee attacks, and scouts can't crit on power replenishment or healing abilitys. This change is going to affect much more than I think was originally planned. Please, don't go through with this. Implemenet a change to the percentage based abilitys that are becoming out of hand. Do not disable criticals on heals all together.</p>

[LardLord]

<p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This change is going to affect much more than I think was originally planned.</p></blockquote><p>Like what? You're aware that it's just specific heals that have had their criticals disabled, right? For instance, Mana Sieve still crits.</p>

[Nick2]

<p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Change this to only affect percentage based heals. Stoneskins are INFINITELY more valuable anyways. Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing. The nerf is unnecessary, and is resultant of massive QQ. It's gear that is making these feats of soloability possible, not a classes self-heals. (Other than possibly Berserkers)</p><p>Do not try to fix one or two ability with an archtype-wide revamp. This is NOT the way to fix what you are seeing happening with high end raid gear.</p></blockquote><p>This. Our tank is one of the best geared raiders we have, and healed for 462HPS zone-wide for Lair of the Dragon Queen last night. That put him 9th on the heal parse</p><p>Aura of Leadership off our MT SK did 171HP, (Crusader AA ward that regens about 200 hit points a second it looks like from logs).</p><p>Stonewill was the highest HPS from the SK, doing 94HPS with just a single Stonewill <strong>1</strong> item on.</p><p>Reaver was only giving 56HPS, everything else actually did less HPS individually than Bloodletter did going off once zone-wide...</p><p>Against Haraakat which was the only other mob he tanked last night, 253 of 401HPS (63%) was from stonewill and Aura.</p><p>Seems to me if SK/Pally passive healing is too high there are two easy places to look. Aura of the leadership specifically, and the various procs that were already mentioned; Stonewill 1 being one of the lower level ones, but with a stonewill 1, 2, and 3 Stonewill will be doing 300HPS+, nevermind the life taps or other good items.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing.</p></blockquote><p>Your parses are great for showing that the effect of the nerf will be minimal in raiding, at least for SKs. </p><p>However, go run a heroic zone with a healer who pretty much just DPSes.  Then answer the following questions:</p><p>1) Does the healer need to heal you less than he would need to heal a Guardian, which is supposed to be a more defensive tank and has less DPS and worse offensive utility for that extra defensive-ness?</p><p>2) Will this change cause the healer to need to heal you more than he would have had to heal you before the change?</p></blockquote><p>Any geared tank can limit their incoming damage to almost nil in instances. It's procs that are letting people do this, NOT spells. <strong>If you make it so fighter's can't heal, then make it so priests can't critical on damage abilitys, mage's can't critical on power replenishment, or melee attacks, and scouts can't crit on power replenishment or healing abilitys. </strong>This change is going to affect much more than I think was originally planned. Please, don't go through with this. Implemenet a change to the percentage based abilitys that are becoming out of hand. Do not disable criticals on heals all together.</p></blockquote><p>Anyone that doesn't understand that at least <em><strong>some</strong></em> of these things are going to follow this is in for an unpleasant surprise.</p>

[Darkonx]

<p><cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing.</p></blockquote><p>Your parses are great for showing that the effect of the nerf will be minimal in raiding, at least for SKs. </p><p>However, go run a heroic zone with a healer who pretty much just DPSes.  Then answer the following questions:</p><p>1) Does the healer need to heal you less than he would need to heal a Guardian, which is supposed to be a more defensive tank and has less DPS and worse offensive utility for that extra defensive-ness?</p><p>2) Will this change cause the healer to need to heal you more than he would have had to heal you before the change?</p></blockquote><p>Any geared tank can limit their incoming damage to almost nil in instances. It's procs that are letting people do this, NOT spells. <strong>If you make it so fighter's can't heal, then make it so priests can't critical on damage abilitys, mage's can't critical on power replenishment, or melee attacks, and scouts can't crit on power replenishment or healing abilitys. </strong>This change is going to affect much more than I think was originally planned. Please, don't go through with this. Implemenet a change to the percentage based abilitys that are becoming out of hand. Do not disable criticals on heals all together.</p></blockquote><p>Anyone that doesn't understand that at least <em><strong>some</strong></em> of these things are going to follow this is in for an unpleasant surprise.</p></blockquote><p>This change is so broad it's unbelievable. It needs to be scrapped, and the ABILITYS that are OP need to be fixed. Battle Frenzy, if it's truly that OP, should be made non-modifiable, just like reaver always has been for SK's.</p>

[Aleste]

<p><cite>Peogia wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>pvp ruined game for all pve and had the classes nerfed sense day 1 no suprise</p><p>but only conjurors got it the worst</p></blockquote><p>I've played Pvp since the servers opened.. Please stop the pvp killed pve QQ. Normaly they are two diffrent rulesets. If anything pvpers find exploits faster and get them changed.. other than that we generally dont get things nerfed outside of our ruleset.. This nerf maybe because BG's which most people on pvp servers despise and wish never came into existance <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> (search numerous bg's killed open pvp threads).. (if they still exist). Can't start tossing blame anywhere but where it belongs.. Ill concived horribly implimented mechanics and unwarrented changes on a whim.</p><p>We are a community, as a whole we need to stop the pvp/pve bickering and work together to get things changed for the better.</p>

[stargazer5678]

<p>This is a <strong>great change</strong> that will hopefully make fighters more balanced. Good job Xelgad.</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>stargazer5678 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This is a <strong>great change</strong> that will hopefully make fighters more balanced. Good job Xelgad.</p></blockquote><p>It won't come close to doing that, because fighter heal crits are not the cause of fighter balance issues.</p>

[Seomon]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Seomon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You're not taking natural progression of expansions into account. This is a huge nerf, and you're just backing it up because you think this will help your cause with making Guardians OP again.</p></blockquote><p>My cause is balancing tanks.  Sorry reasonable healing from a tank archtype makes you QQ.</p></blockquote><p>So instead of answering the post, you make an attack. Thanks for proving my point, sir.</p></blockquote><p>Isn't it clear heals from the fighter archtype were never meant to compound in progression?  That when they did, the amount of potential healing exceeded the archtype's boundaries.</p><p>Crit consolidation, with potency and CB poured all over this expansion has increased healing from the archtype beyond reasonable levels.  I honestly don't know how you can play a crusader at the level of the game that you do and say with a straight face a fighter should heal for as much as you can.</p><p>To others in this thread, I fully understand how much this healing is also attributed to item procs.  I'm not a fool, I've spec'd to it myself on my tanks.   I fully suspect we're going to see the aoe proc chance re-nerfed on these items as well to compensate for them. Remember this was only reverted cause the current proc chance code broke when ae auto attack struck a single target.  Once mechanically they can have the proc chance only factor'd on one hit to the direct target, this nerf will be comming back.  But thats a separate issue/discussion.</p><p>I also expect eventually all % base heals will be eventually made unmodifiable.</p><p>But, I believe Xelgad is of the camp of making one change at a time and observing the change before making the next one.</p><p>In the end, I'll think you'll be lucky and retain the myth in its current form, but I could be wrong.</p><p>BTW, it was you sir who attacked me.  I just pointed it out as QQing.</p></blockquote><p>Heals, at least on the Paladin side, have always compounded in progression. We've always gotten AAs for heals and stats on our class-specific armor for heals, like +heal ability, WIS, and heal crit. For you to say that Paladin heals were not meant to compound shows that you just don't understand the Paladin class. That's fine, because you're a Guardian. You should stick with Guardian issues, and not Paladin issues.</p><p>This change also shows that the devs don't understand any fighter issue, and blanket nerf something instead of specifically going after the issue.</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing.</p></blockquote><p>Your parses are great for showing that the effect of the nerf will be minimal in raiding, at least for SKs. </p><p>However, go run a heroic zone with a healer who pretty much just DPSes.  Then answer the following questions:</p><p>1) Does the healer need to heal you less than he would need to heal a Guardian, which is supposed to be a more defensive tank and has less DPS and worse offensive utility for that extra defensive-ness?</p><p>2) Will this change cause the healer to need to heal you more than he would have had to heal you before the change?</p></blockquote><p>1) Crusaders are healed less than guardians trying to put out the same damage output, simply because of AA choices. Crusaders do 2H damage with a sheild equipped. Thus, almost all crusaders always use shields. To do any respectable damage, a guardian has to drop his shield=> Less defensive.</p><p>2) This does nothing to fix the Crusader Vs Guardian rift. Crusaders will still have better survivability while doing more damage and generating more Aggro. Guardians have a faulty class design.</p><p>I have run entire t9 instances with my paladin where the mystic with me has only thrown up wards on nameds, because the mob is <em>never getting through our regenerating wards</em>. Guess what. This change is not affecting my inherent regenerating wards at all. Oh, and stonewill wards are insane. And blood ritual is insane. As long as I'm attacking, I'm self healing because of those. And all of that equipment is obtainable in <em><strong>HEROIC</strong></em> instances.</p><p>If you understand how crusaders work <strong><em>at all</em></strong>, you would know they are engineered to put out damage using a 1h weapon. The simple use of a shield, all the time, is what gives them their increased survivablity, not the self healing. Watch, this change goes live, and <em>absolutely nothing</em> will change in terms of class balance, except zerkers will be in the same boat as guardians(again.)</p><p>Good job.</p>

[Landiin]

<p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing.</p></blockquote><p>Your parses are great for showing that the effect of the nerf will be minimal in raiding, at least for SKs. </p><p>However, go run a heroic zone with a healer who pretty much just DPSes.  Then answer the following questions:</p><p>1) Does the healer need to heal you less than he would need to heal a Guardian, which is supposed to be a more defensive tank and has less DPS and worse offensive utility for that extra defensive-ness?</p><p>2) Will this change cause the healer to need to heal you more than he would have had to heal you before the change?</p></blockquote><p>1) Crusaders are healed less than guardians trying to put out the same damage output, simply because of AA choices. <strong>Crusaders do 2H damage with a sheild equipped</strong>. Thus, almost all crusaders always use shields. To do any respectable damage, a guardian has to drop his shield=> Less defensive.</p></blockquote><p>The bold text is the faulty design my friend...</p>

[Ryai]

<p><cite>Toranx@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Ondten@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Darkonx wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Look at how much HPS all my heals did on the HM mob I posted. 125 HPS. That's nothing.</p></blockquote><p>Your parses are great for showing that the effect of the nerf will be minimal in raiding, at least for SKs. </p><p>However, go run a heroic zone with a healer who pretty much just DPSes.  Then answer the following questions:</p><p>1) Does the healer need to heal you less than he would need to heal a Guardian, which is supposed to be a more defensive tank and has less DPS and worse offensive utility for that extra defensive-ness?</p><p>2) Will this change cause the healer to need to heal you more than he would have had to heal you before the change?</p></blockquote><p>1) Crusaders are healed less than guardians trying to put out the same damage output, simply because of AA choices. <strong>Crusaders do 2H damage with a sheild equipped</strong>. Thus, almost all crusaders always use shields. To do any respectable damage, a guardian has to drop his shield=> Less defensive.</p></blockquote><p>The bold text is the faulty design my friend...</p></blockquote><p>Nope, that brings them in line with brawlers. SO... either brawler design needs to be reworked as well, or Guardians need to be brought into line.</p>

[Telomir]

<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The planned changes have me worried regarding the performance of non-raid Paladin tanks in PVE as well as PVP.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Before jumping to conclusions, I decided to get some numbers to compare Live and Test Server. The numbers were recorded via ACT on Test and Live Server. I engaged a named, timing heals so that the characters health would not be top off with the cast, which would reduce the heal amount. The numbers for the wards were manually. I am aware that this does not constitute a controlled experiment which was not my goal or my job as a player. I am confident however that these numbers show the approx. magnitude of the reduction that will take place should this change go live. If in doubt go and get your own numbers, only takes 30minutes <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The healing relevant character stats for my Paladin (250AA) in full BG armor, jewlery mix & match of instance and BG gear:</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Health 21,723, Str 1152, Crit chance 103.7, Crit Bonus 47.6, Potency 10%, Ability Modifier 494</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In my AA spec I have chosen a significant amount of healing related AA choices (approx. 65 AA), which would be too much to detail out here. The sheer volume of AA choices which are healing related shows what an integral part healing plays for the the Paladin class.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The numbers I got from some quick testing both on Test Server were<span style="color: #ffffff;">:</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><table ><tbody><tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Test</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Live</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Spell/Ability</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Quality</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Casts</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Average</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Casts</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Average</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Reduction</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Direct Heals</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Holy Aid</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Expert</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">38</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">2755</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">53</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">4700</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">41%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Prayer of Healing</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Master</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">32</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">2599</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">39</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">4383</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">41%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Devout Sacrament</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Master</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">7</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">4975</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">11</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">8982</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">45%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Lay on Hands</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Expert</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">3</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">6912</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">4</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">11818</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">42%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Arch Heal</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">AA</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">10</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">5289</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">16</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">5141</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">still crits</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Wards</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Demonstration of Faith</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Master</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">7</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">2841</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">10</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">3832</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">26%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Aura of Leadership</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">AA</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">4</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">621</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">5</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">648</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">4%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Lifetaps</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">0</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Faithful Cry</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">AA</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">66</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">767</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">72</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">1384</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">45%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Faith Strike</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Expert</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">21</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">455</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">19</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">821</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">45%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Marr's Favor</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">Myth</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">289</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">161</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">465</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">173</span></td><td><span style="color: #ffffff;">7%</span></td></tr> <tr><td><span style="color: #ffffff;"> </span></td></tr></tbody></table></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The numbers show that the direct heals and lifetaps (combat heals) are reduced by approx. 40%-45% while our ward get reduced by approx. 25%.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">This significant reduction raises some concerns, which I just wanted to throw out there for consideration:</p> <ul><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Some of the Paladin heals were meant as "OH &$%§" moves after health spikes or other troubles occur (healer death). Among these Lay on Hands and Devout Sacrament. These Heals now restore significant less health (only about 20% to 30% of my health), making the handling of these spikes harder and thereby reducing the amount of effective tools to cope with them. Yet we are not offered any alternate choices to compensate for this.</p></li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Our Group Heal and small heals were part of our utility and how we protect our group. Other fighters receive other tools (e.g. Guardian Sphere, Sentry Watch, Battle Cry). Our tools are now being reduced by 40% effectiveness without providing any alternate choice (increased group mitigation, CC effect immunity, group damage absorbtion, or any other).</p></li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The heal component of our TSO AA endline ability (Faithful Cry) is reduced by nearly half which was one of the great benefits of the ability</p></li><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">A great part of the AA choices for Paladins are centered around improving our heals. With the 40% overall reduction, there is little to no alternate choices to compensate for the healing side not being class relevant anymore (approx. 70-80 AA points revolve around healing / warding). It basically turns about a quarter of our AA choices into non- desirable ones, in addition to the already existing undesirable ones (or lets rather say: not needed for heroic tanks, as they do have uses in raids).</p> </li></ul> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">In PVE I, personally, do not fear the consequences too much, as the proc gear my character already has does more then enough healing. The only personal effect that I see coming is that running harder instances with not so well geared or skilled healers, which was possible as a Paladin before by healing at the expense of dps, will be a thing of the past. Raid Geared Paladins should not feel the effect at all (in non-raid environment) as their procs are even more powerful then the ones available to my character. I do not claim to know how the change will affect raiding, but considering the incoming HPS on raid tanks, I'm guessing the change won't be much noticed except for the lack of one spike handling tool (Lay on Hands).</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">The ones bearing the brunt of the effects of the change in PVE will probably be the lesser geared or casual Paladins that do not have access to a large amount of proc gear yet and actually do rely on their heals.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Regarding PVP on the other hand I am very concerned:</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">For one there is no PVP testing available that I am aware of (is Test Server PVP enabled? it was barren when I got my numbers). This change however will have a very noticeable impact on 5 of 24 classes in PVP and should therefor be tested.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Secondly in my experience at a higher end gear and AA level PVP fights right now are (assuming similar gear, AA & skill, group setup) sort of balanced, to a point where in 1vs1 or a 6vs6 no one gains an upper hand (/gets his fire extinguisher to prevent the flames). I have fought several classes including Predators, Rogues, Sorcerors, Necros and Healers that were similarly geared in never-ending fights that ended in stalemates or only won by whichever side received additional numbers first.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">How will the heal reduction affect the outcome of these fights? I can only guess that one-sidedly reducing heals on the fighter side, will result in these battles being won by the non-fighter sides (in 1vs1), which have self-heals, damage absorbs, etc. at their disposal which will remain unaffected by the change.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">I sincerely hope the proposed change will be revised to a more thoughtful approach, as has been pointed out by several previous posters. I think the game warrants the effort to individually go through the abilites and evaluate them to fix the ones that are causing the most dis-balance. Should this exceed the available resources at this time, I think it should be postponed till more resources can be dedicated to balancing things out. As it seems now it is a half-hearted approach to fix a general problem.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Please note that I am in no way arguing that PVP is balanced at the moment but to fix PVP in general needs a broad approach including gear (insane damage reductions and procs), spells, CAs and AAs from all classes. The general PVP balance will not be fixed by a one sided nerfs to an archetype.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Regards,</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">Telomaer</p>