Cleric AA - Sacrifice

[Antryg Mistrose]

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Defilers received a serious lack of love this expansion and I am just trying to make an effort to avoid being the Templar's personal support healer as well. If Sacrifice is going to take from group wards, either my partner Templar isn't going to cast it, or I'm going to stop group warding to let them know the consequences of something called "Sacrifice".

Now thats a more honest sentiment.  Not nice, just honest.

[Estean1]

Defiler's Shroud of Armor absorbs 395 points of damage from being done to YOU.YOUR Hateshield absorbs 1397 points of damage from being done to YOURSELF.YOUR Shelter absorbs 279 points of damage from being done to YOURSELF.YOUR Sacrifice hits YOURSELF for 1749 heat damage.YOUR Supplicant's Prayer critically heals YOU for 1371 hit points.YOUR Sacrifice heals Guardian for 9225 hit points.

This is VERY misleading.  Shroud of Armor is our regenerating ward buff. Its not even a castable ward.  If our group buff was up it most definitely would have shown up here.  Depending on when it was cast in relation to the shelter and hateshield proc it could have been drained first.  In the end though it doesn't matter.  Sacrifice shouldn't be draining its damage from hateshield, shelter, shroud of armor, OR group wards.

[Cragger]

Nor should it be triggering reactives.

They coded the way the damage was applied all wrong. You'd think after just fixing Jewel of animosity to no longer be mitigatable they would have caught this.

Soul ward doesn't damage a defiler with some sort of mitigatable damage. It just straight consumes the health just like our heals consume health. Sacrifice should do exactly what Soul Ward does and consume health down to 5% transfering it to the target until either 5% is hit or the target it at max HP.

So either someone majorily bungled and doesn't know enough about game mechanics. Or it was intentional, you decide.

I doubt it would have been that hard since the only changes needed from Soul Ward to for it in code was have it applied as a heal to get the base functionality to work. Then additional checks for max HP and changing the max consumption to 5%.

[Serica]

It appears depressing for defilers this expansion so far, I simply believe that Sacrifice should work the same as Soul Ward.

[Tehom]

More to the point, a heal that knocks down a MT's group ward is not particularly useful. Yeah, you could work around it with a warden group ward, high heat resist, etc, but still.

[meaogre]

dont know if this was posted but inquizitors get it as well.  And we needed a new ability like this. there are probly 20 templars to every inquizitor on my server.  Far as templars I dont play one However they must be superior in the healing department with the  huge amounts of them vs inquizitors.  If for some reason this is nerfed they shouldnt nerf it for inquizitors.

[Antryg Mistrose]

Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:

More to the point, a heal that knocks down a MT's group ward is not particularly useful. Yeah, you could work around it with a warden group ward, high heat resist, etc, but still.

True, but the only reason to cast this is that the group ward is already down, thats why in my logs I don't see ANY group wards being used up.  It wouldn't take the whole ward anyway, as the most i've seen it hit for is around 4k, and my heat resists aren't crash hot.

A "Nice" fix would be to prevent stoneskin, reactives and wards from interferring, but keep the heat mitigation AND do the same for soul ward.  That might however overpower soul ward, because as defilers are at pains to gloss over, that is a WARD, and is so infinitely more useful.

[ChrissyFaey]

This entire time it reads as though there is a great deal of animosity between defilers and templars. I do not particularly understand the reasoning behind it - do you all play shamans to know how their mechanics function, or is your bitterness a sole result of the parse viewing wards as the highest parsing factor? Wards count first, it is true, but templars bring a great deal more that never appears on the parse. Stone-skin, shield ally, and so forth. The Templar Class has moved beyond the defiler class in power this expansion and it's extremely noticable to anyone actually playing a defiler.

Regardless, I just do not want this ability to knock down wards. No other healer should be choosing when my group ward goes down. Sometimes it lands a second before Sacrifice - my partner can by no means predict when my ward is going to land. At that moment it is entirely wasted and the group is vulnerable to AE's.

[Filroden]

I think there are some people missing the point about what Sacrifice is supposed to do. It's an emergency heal intended to save the life of someone that would otherwise die - a noble sacrifice of one's own health to save another. It's been a key ability of clerics in EQ2 and in EQ1 through the Divine Arbitration ability and this gives us a single target "version".

For those shaman saying they will "not allow" "their" main tank templars to use this ability - are you really saying you would rather see your tank die? Sacrifice is only going to be used on the tank when it looks like they are about to die. If it eats through "your" ward, it still saves the tank.

Remember the days when healers worked as a team, which each backing up the other? Since when did it become so personal that one healer has certain rights over another? When did rules becme introduced so say when healer type a could heal and when they couldn't because that might upset healer type b. Perhaps the MT should have three health pools so you can all play on your own?

I love working with my shaman and druid colleagues. We take pride in keeping our tank and squishies alive, watching each other's backs and having secret fun such as how often we can let that ranja die before they realise we are not really trying to save them.

I do agree the sacrifice shouldn't be mitigated by resists (e.g. make it focus damage) but its mechanic is one of taking damage to provide a heal - it should otherwise act like normal damage and normal heals.

[ChrissyFaey]

Filroden wrote:

For those shaman saying they will "not allow" "their" main tank templars to use this ability - are you really saying you would rather see your tank die? Sacrifice is only going to be used on the tank when it looks like they are about to die. If it eats through "your" ward, it still saves the tank.

....If there is a ward on the tank, then there is time enough to cast a different heal. What you posted just made little sense on saving the tank. I wouldn't use Soul Ward nearly so readily if it messed up my partner healer like Sacrifice does. Just like I don't cast Invective on scouts because it will break their stealth combos with untimely procs. Bad mechanics will ruin the use of an ability.

[Cragger]

Antryg Mistrose wrote:

A "Nice" fix would be to prevent stoneskin, reactives and wards from interferring, but keep the heat mitigation AND do the same for soul ward.  That might however overpower soul ward, because as defilers are at pains to gloss over, that is a WARD, and is so infinitely more useful.

I do not understand why some others that do not play shamans thing wards are 'infinitely more useful.' A ward in EQ2 is nothing more then extra hitpoints given to a target. Each point of a ward acts exactly as if the target had that point more in hitpoints. Wards can be stacked up on a tank for the pull yes, just as reactives and hots can be put up and ready to go. But in a raid enouncter this tier wards do not stand long and serve to act as what they are, buffers that help stabilize the target's hitpoints so other priests heals are more effective.

Soul Ward can not be precast, its resitricted to in combat only. In TSO raid encounters you aren't going to cast it as soon as you have entered combat because 99% of the time said defiler will then die to an AoE. So since it cannot be precast, and because it leaves the Defiler so vunerable it is synonymis to a direct heal for the application it is used in which is an emergency.

The only disadvantage Sacrifice has if you are one of those that wrongly believe a heal parse is everything is that the target may recieve other heals before it lands thus reducing its amount. BUT that has already been factored into the ablity and compenstated for because it only takes in HP in that which is replaces on the target, its not a fixed 95%

Sacrifice needs to act just like soulward and be non mitigatable hitpoint loss to the cleric, just like its ability reads, OR our Soulward needs to be changed to be mitigatable as well. Do I wish that stoneskin could absorb Soul Wards hit for me.

[Rorasis]

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Filroden wrote:

For those shaman saying they will "not allow" "their" main tank templars to use this ability - are you really saying you would rather see your tank die? Sacrifice is only going to be used on the tank when it looks like they are about to die. If it eats through "your" ward, it still saves the tank.

....If there is a ward on the tank, then there is time enough to cast a different heal. What you posted just made little sense on saving the tank. I wouldn't use Soul Ward nearly so readily if it messed up my partner healer like Sacrifice does. Just like I don't cast Invective on scouts because it will break their stealth combos with untimely procs. Bad mechanics will ruin the use of an ability.

I can't wait to use sacrifice to annoy uppity shamans ^_^.

[ChrissyFaey]

Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:

I can't wait to use sacrifice to annoy uppity shamans ^_^.

Isn't that a bit uncalled for? We just want this fixed. If I had any ability that hindered a Templar's job, I'd not use it.

[Rorasis]

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:

I can't wait to use sacrifice to annoy uppity shamans ^_^.

Isn't that a bit uncalled for? We just want this fixed. If I had any ability that hindered a Templar's job, I'd not use it.

If I were to choose between saving the tank, or letting him die just to keep you and your wards happy, I'd save the tank.  Sorry.

[ChrissyFaey]

Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:

If I were to choose between saving the tank, or letting him die just to keep you and your wards happy, I'd save the tank.  Sorry.

...If the tank has wards, the tank isn't going to die.

[Rorasis]

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:

If I were to choose between saving the tank, or letting him die just to keep you and your wards happy, I'd save the tank.  Sorry.

...If the tank has wards, the tank isn't going to die.

I'd rather have him healed instead of relying on wards to keep him alive.

[ChrissyFaey]

No matter the argument - I've pointed out a bug in this thread and I hope measures are taken to fix it. I do not care to delve into discussing Cleric versus Shaman.

[Estean1]

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:

If I were to choose between saving the tank, or letting him die just to keep you and your wards happy, I'd save the tank.  Sorry.

...If the tank has wards, the tank isn't going to die.

Ok to simplify things.  Hypothetically say the tank has lost 5k in hitpoints.  The shaman has a 5k group ward up.  The cleric casts sacrifice to heal the tank for 5k.  It steals all of the group ward to make this happen.  NOW -has any extra healing been created?  All you have done is stolen from Heals that are allready there.  For all you people saying everyone should work together as a team, this does NOT help the group!  Sucking Healing from wards and turning it into a direct heal does not create more healing, it just converts the KIND of healing.

[Dreyco]

I compare this to say: having Decapitate randomly not working if Fusion has been cast within the last bit of time.  What's the point?  One of us doesn't get to use a class defining technique? Seems kind of silly to me.  I know big question marks would be going up if my Execute was completely and totally absorbed, smacking myself in the forehead realizing that the wizard might have nuked with his uber class nuke of doom.

It could of course be avoided if there's enough communication, but in a pinch, such as a raid situation, when you're using these abilities to keep the tank alive and stop the raid from wiping, communication becomes an afterthought, and saving the raid is on top of the list.

There really is no point to have one over-ride the other.  I would say that they don't need to stack, but perhaps only allow one healer "Rescue" on them at a time in this case.  This way, it's a "Clue in" to the shaman, who doesn't have to eat his or her HP, and can focus on doing other things, knowing that the tank is alive.  Same with the Cleric Ability if Soul Ward was up.

Neither class should be punished.  Both should get to use their special AA abilities.  Keeping in mind that Soulward eats a shaman down to 10% of their HP with an uber long recast, that's quite a punch in the face to all of a sudden have it wiped out in a pinch of a situation.

[Myster]

After reading through the thread, it really does sound like Sacrifice needs to be fixed so that the damage dealt is similar to the way Soul Ward's damage is done, not draining wards to do its job. It seems counter-intuitive to drain one form of healing just to convert it to another, as others have said.

And the person that said that the wording could be misleading because it says "Down to" seems to just mean that it won't do more damage than it heals.

I do hope this gets fixed and the healers can work in harmony once again!

[Antryg Mistrose]

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:

If I were to choose between saving the tank, or letting him die just to keep you and your wards happy, I'd save the tank.  Sorry.

...If the tank has wards, the tank isn't going to die.

Ok to simplify things.  Hypothetically say the tank has lost 5k in hitpoints.  The shaman has a 5k group ward up.  The cleric casts sacrifice to heal the tank for 5k.  It steals all of the group ward to make this happen.  NOW -has any extra healing been created?  All you have done is stolen from Heals that are allready there.  For all you people saying everyone should work together as a team, this does NOT help the group!  Sucking Healing from wards and turning it into a direct heal does not create more healing, it just converts the KIND of healing.

Your hypothetical is just plain wrong.

With a 5k group ward, cleric uses up maybe worst case 4k, tank gets healed for more like 10k.

And how? (one must ask) did the tank get to orange/red if this hypotheical group ward was up, hmm? 

Group ward takes, what 5sec? to cast.  Quit pretending its actually up in the circumstance where a cleric casts sacrifice.  My logs show otherwise.

[EvilKyo]

You math shows the brokennes of sacrifice.

Cleric with 10k hp casts Sacrifice: Heals for 9.5k and takes 9.5k damage. If you are seeing 10k+ heals means  the heal part is critting for 1.3x9.5k = 12.35k. You takes 9.5k damaged, that would be less than 5k when mitigated and before applying wards and other procs. Result: you heal for 12k and consume less than 5k health, less than that with wards, can you spell broken?

The part about how the tank can get to red or orange and have a group ward on made me laugh, seriously. Could it be the mobs continue hitting the tank while i cast my group ward? Nah, can't be. Monsters usually wait till my wards are up to beat the tank .

Group ward is in the heal rotation, it can be up or not but stop pretending that when the tank goes to red there's nothing else to cast but sacrifice. Death prevention, stoneskin and 10k+ wards can be on him, in it's current broken status as noted above it could be a good trade-off but don't rely too much on it or you'll be hurt by the fix hammer.

[Estean1]

Antryg Mistrose wrote:

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Riliszkas@Splitpaw wrote:

If I were to choose between saving the tank, or letting him die just to keep you and your wards happy, I'd save the tank.  Sorry.

...If the tank has wards, the tank isn't going to die.

Ok to simplify things.  Hypothetically say the tank has lost 5k in hitpoints.  The shaman has a 5k group ward up.  The cleric casts sacrifice to heal the tank for 5k.  It steals all of the group ward to make this happen.  NOW -has any extra healing been created?  All you have done is stolen from Heals that are allready there.  For all you people saying everyone should work together as a team, this does NOT help the group!  Sucking Healing from wards and turning it into a direct heal does not create more healing, it just converts the KIND of healing.

Your hypothetical is just plain wrong.

With a 5k group ward, cleric uses up maybe worst case 4k, tank gets healed for more like 10k.

And how? (one must ask) did the tank get to orange/red if this hypotheical group ward was up, hmm? 

Group ward takes, what 5sec? to cast.  Quit pretending its actually up in the circumstance where a cleric casts sacrifice.  My logs show otherwise.

Convenient to change all the numbers in a hypo, including the damage the tank has taken and then say the hypo is wrong.  It would work exactly as I said in my hypo. Depending on when the group ward lands it will drain that ward completely before it moves on to other things, saving the clerics hp for last. Please show me a log where it only drains a percentage of a ward then moves on to other things.

And how do you know wards won't be up when sacrifice is cast?  Saying its a 5 second cast time is irrelevant. Wards can and DO land quite often right before sacrifice is cast.  Its the timing of when it lands not how long the spell takes to cast.  You know how many times I've watched the "race" between my group ward and the tanks falling health?  Sometimes you have to interrupt the ward but most of the time that ward hits right before the tank goes down. Yeap right during the time sacrifice would normally be cast

For the sake of argument, however,  even saying your slant on that hypo is right (which it isn't), Even taking all you said as true, it is still taking 4k of the defilers wards and it shouldn't be doing that.

[Yimway]

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Convenient to change all the numbers in a hypo, including the damage the tank has taken and then say the hypo is wrong.  It would work exactly as I said in my hypo. Depending on when the group ward or single target ward lands it will drain that ward completely before it moves on to other things, saving the clerics hp for last. Please show me a log where it only drains a percentage of a ward then moves on to other things.

I checked 3 nights of raid logs on this one for you.

Not once, ever did the templar get hit with enough damage to completly deplete the defiler group ward, however only 18% of the times sacrafice was used was the group ward even up.  Fact is, the group ward is consumed 90% of the time in a single hit to the MT.  Thinking of it as anything other than a large ward for the tank is a phalacy. It is true, that sacrafice will consume it if it happens to be up at that exact moment, but the highest hit to the templar I found was 3853, still not nearly enough to completly consume carrion ward.

[Filroden]

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Antryg Mistrose wrote:

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Ok to simplify things.  Hypothetically say the tank has lost 5k in hitpoints.  The shaman has a 5k group ward up.  The cleric casts sacrifice to heal the tank for 5k.  It steals all of the group ward to make this happen.  NOW -has any extra healing been created?  All you have done is stolen from Heals that are allready there.  For all you people saying everyone should work together as a team, this does NOT help the group!  Sucking Healing from wards and turning it into a direct heal does not create more healing, it just converts the KIND of healing.

Convenient to change all the numbers in a hypo, including the damage the tank has taken and then say the hypo is wrong.  It would work exactly as I said in my hypo. Depending on when the group ward or single target ward lands it will drain that ward completely before it moves on to other things, saving the clerics hp for last. Please show me a log where it only drains a percentage of a ward then moves on to other things.

And how do you know wards won't be up when sacrifice is cast?  Saying its a 5 second cast time is irrelevant. Wards can and DO land quite often right before sacrifice is cast.  Its the timing of when it lands not how long the spell takes to cast.  You know how many times I've watched the "race" between my group ward and the tanks falling health?  Sometimes you have to interrupt the ward but most of the time that ward hits right before the tank goes down. Yeap right during the time sacrifice would normally be cast

For the sake of argument, however,  even saying your slant on that hypo is right (which it isn't), Even taking all you said as true, it is still taking 4k of the defilers wards and it shouldn't be doing that.

The reason for changing the hypotetcial situation is because the one you statred with is one where a cleric would not be using sacrifice. It's a last second emergency and is only going to be used if the tank is red. Can the cleric see your ward is up? Does the cleric have time to ask you? No to both. If a tank is losing heal and is in the red, the real situation when a cleric would use sacrifice, then the ward must be currently down. All healers are going to be doing what they can to get that tank out of the red. If the shaman is already 3 seconds into casting a ward, they will let it land and know they have time to patch up. The cleric will be deciding whether to use divine arbitration, sacrifice or deciding if they can just throw up a patch. A druid will be looking at similar things. It does not matter if one or all of them work. The end result is a tank that doesn't die.

I would rather have a tank at 100% health and no ward than at 5% with the chance of full wards (shaman and templar).

[Estean1]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Convenient to change all the numbers in a hypo, including the damage the tank has taken and then say the hypo is wrong.  It would work exactly as I said in my hypo. Depending on when the group ward or single target ward lands it will drain that ward completely before it moves on to other things, saving the clerics hp for last. Please show me a log where it only drains a percentage of a ward then moves on to other things.

I checked 3 nights of raid logs on this one for you.

Not once, ever did the templar get hit with enough damage to completly deplete the defiler group ward, however only 18% of the times sacrafice was used was the group ward even up. 

Ok so its bugged only 18% of the time.  Thats less than 50%!  Definitely keep the bugged version in game then

Fact is, the group ward is consumed 90% of the time in a single hit to the MT. 

There are very few raid mobs that can 1 shot my group ward.  More mobs can in  TSO with the crits, but its not 90 percent.  This statistic doesn't hold alot of water with me

Thinking of it as anything other than a large ward for the tank is a phalacy.

It is not a large ward for a tank, it is a direct heal that STEALS from large wards for a tank.

It is true, that sacrafice will consume it if it happens to be up at that exact moment, but the highest hit to the templar I found was 3853, still not nearly enough to completly consume carrion ward.

Why are you measuring it by what the templar is hit for?  The templar is hit by the spell AFTER everything has been drained.   Having a lower number on the hit to the templar only reinforces the fact that this spell is in fact, Broken.

[Estean1]

Filroden wrote:

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Antryg Mistrose wrote:

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Ok to simplify things.  Hypothetically say the tank has lost 5k in hitpoints.  The shaman has a 5k group ward up.  The cleric casts sacrifice to heal the tank for 5k.  It steals all of the group ward to make this happen.  NOW -has any extra healing been created?  All you have done is stolen from Heals that are allready there.  For all you people saying everyone should work together as a team, this does NOT help the group!  Sucking Healing from wards and turning it into a direct heal does not create more healing, it just converts the KIND of healing.

Convenient to change all the numbers in a hypo, including the damage the tank has taken and then say the hypo is wrong.  It would work exactly as I said in my hypo. Depending on when the group ward or single target ward lands it will drain that ward completely before it moves on to other things, saving the clerics hp for last. Please show me a log where it only drains a percentage of a ward then moves on to other things.

And how do you know wards won't be up when sacrifice is cast?  Saying its a 5 second cast time is irrelevant. Wards can and DO land quite often right before sacrifice is cast.  Its the timing of when it lands not how long the spell takes to cast.  You know how many times I've watched the "race" between my group ward and the tanks falling health?  Sometimes you have to interrupt the ward but most of the time that ward hits right before the tank goes down. Yeap right during the time sacrifice would normally be cast

For the sake of argument, however,  even saying your slant on that hypo is right (which it isn't), Even taking all you said as true, it is still taking 4k of the defilers wards and it shouldn't be doing that.

The reason for changing the hypotetcial situation is because the one you statred with is one where a cleric would not be using sacrifice. It's a last second emergency and is only going to be used if the tank is red. Can the cleric see your ward is up? Does the cleric have time to ask you? No to both. If a tank is losing heal and is in the red, the real situation when a cleric would use sacrifice, then the ward must be currently down. All healers are going to be doing what they can to get that tank out of the red. If the shaman is already 3 seconds into casting a ward, they will let it land and know they have time to patch up. The cleric will be deciding whether to use divine arbitration, sacrifice or deciding if they can just throw up a patch. A druid will be looking at similar things. It does not matter if one or all of them work. The end result is a tank that doesn't die.

I would rather have a tank at 100% health and no ward than at 5% with the chance of full wards (shaman and templar).

You just don't get it.  IF the spell were working properly you would have the tank at full health AND a 5k ward stll on him.  This should work like soul ward plain and simple and there should be some risk to casting this powerful spell just like there is on soul ward.

[Yimway]

Estean@Butcherblock wrote:

Why are you measuring it by what the templar is hit for?  The templar is hit by the spell AFTER everything has been drained.   Having a lower number on the hit to the templar only reinforces the fact that this spell is in fact, Broken.

1) learn to box quote.

2) I'm looking at named fights only, cause we don't use sacrafice anywhere on trash.

3) Nameds are autoattacking for 6-11k, criting higher, look again at your carion ward, still say it's lasting for multiple hits or acting as much more than a single target ward on MT?

4) I'm measuring the total hit to the templar included warded and unwarded amounts.  if your templar is causing more damage than this total to wards and health, he seriously needs to check his resists.

I also agree with above posters, when the tank is under 30%, chances are carion ward is not up and has already been depleted, and regardless the heal to damage ratio of taping carion ward compared to the HP restored by sacrifice is well worth it.

Because sacrifice is mitigatable, I'm seeing the average heal/damage ratio of around 7/1.  So, yes, I think tapping your ward for 2k and healing the MT 14k HP is a very worthwhile endeavor, and concidering form our experience only 18% of the time was the ward even up when the cleric took the 2k hit...  using the spell when the MT is under 30% is a no-brainer.

The only arguement I can make is designating when to use Soulward vs Sacrafice, it isn't terribly efficient when both healers hit the oh-crap button at the same time, but this is something we've discussed and are working on a priority assignment for.

[ChrissyFaey]

It is utterly irrelevent to argue the importance of Sacrifice because if the spell worked properly, it would have the merits of any death prevention spell and would be quite valuable and should be used whenever judgment dictates. However, the mechanic IS broken and it takes from your partner healers... To have it remain is a detriment to both healers. Why not have your ability, use it, and let the shaman keep their wards? You've all been validating it's OK to knock down wards when your judgment calls for it - a ridiculous argument considering the original intention of this thread.

You might risk getting one-shot with it working as intended, but many a defiler has weighed that risk and has continued to use Soul Ward in its proper moments for years now. It's worth it and to cling to anything less than the ability using the same mechanics is to foster something altogether a little too one-sided. Anyone who isn't a cleric can look at this and say it's wrong... so just let this thread follow out its intended purpose of getting attention to what has been acknowledged even by the clerics as a bug.

No one here is trying to get the AA removed. Merely fixed. Then it can be used to the heart's suicidal content.

[Filroden]

Ainaree@Antonia Bayle wrote:

so just let this thread follow out its intended purpose of getting attention to what has been acknowledged even by the clerics as a bug.

No, I only agree that the ability to self-mitigate the damage is a bug. I do not agree that the unmitigated damage using wards or triggering reactives, etc is a bug.

Sacrifice is not Soul Ward. It is a completely different mechanism. I am deliberatly and conciously calling down damage on myself as a sacrifice to demonstrate my faith in my diety so that they might empower me to heal my target. The fact that other caring healers around me work to counter my sacrifice shows their strength and commitment to heal all others.