Planes of Prophecy Profession Abilities: Priest - Page 3

11-01-2017, 02:30 PM

Healing balance will remain a mess until the game is balanced properly with respect to player HP vs Heal amounts vs mob DPS. Here are some examples.

Example 1 - Heal amounts vs Player HP

When the game was originally created, and for quite some time thereafter, there were basically a handful of tools that all priests had: small single direct heal, large single direct heal, group direct heal, single target specialty heal and group specialty heal. Some priest classes had a few added tools on top of that, but those basic tools existed.

The small direct heal was just that, it would heal a small bit of health back, usually 25% of player HP or less. This is where it's easiest to see the problem now. This small direct heal now is effectively a complete heal in most cases. That's a problem! It shows that heal amounts have grown way, way out of proportion to player HP pools.

Example 2 - Heal amounts vs mob DPS

The easiest way to see this imbalance is to look at reactive heals. When things were balanced properly, a reactive trigger was more or less equivalent to an average hit from a mob. If a big named mob was beating on your tank while reactives were up, his HP would usually be decreasing, requiring additional healing by direct means, or perhaps using a group reactive in conjunction with a single reactive to recover HP.

Now, a reactive just doesn't cut it.

Example 3 - Player HP vs mob DPS

This is also pretty easy to see. In most cases, when a mob hits a player, the player is either dead, or nearly dead, on the first hit. This is a problem, since both reactives and HoT's are designed to slow that process down. Mobs shouldn't be one shotting players, probably even raid mobs.

Every single bit of this is an imbalance, and a great deal of it is because Wards are a problem. I say this as a player who rolled a Mystic on launch day (technically, I rolled a Priest-Shaman-Mystic) and played one through raiding on nearly every tier up to Altar of Malice. Wards created a situation where in order to allow mobs a chance to kill players, Devs needed those mobs to hit so hard that they broke the wards and actually got into the HP pools.

The worst part then came when SOE / DBG doubled down on Wards by giving everyone their own personal wards via AA. For example, my Wizard alt, who is in Panda gear, has 2.75 million HP. Fine, it's just a number. However, his effective HP is actually 12.54 million HP! WTF!?!?!

He has his own HP pool, as stated at 2.75. He then has Magi's Shielding offering him a 5.31 million HP, *regenerating* ward. Oh, and then 4.48 million of *regenerating* ward from Scaled Protection. And that's just against all damage. He gets another 7 million against all magical damage from Ward of Sages. It would take a 16 million HP spell just to eat through all his Wards, let alone get to his HP.

Now what happens if you've got a Shaman in the group? Madness.

The healing vs mob DPS vs player HP equation is wildly out of balance right now. I'm not sure DBG has the resources to address it, and the circumstantial evidence indicates the same. I'm sure they'd *like* to, because anyone can see it's a problem. I think we'd all feel better if they'd just come out and say for the record "Yes, we know it's a problem and we'd like to address it but our resources simply won't allow for it". At least we could understand that. I do find the silence frustrating.

Mermut · 11-01-2017, 06:25 PM

The same would apply to wardens and furies.

Mermut · 11-01-2017, 06:32 PM

Agreed. Even in KA, potency has become worthless to non-warding healers since our base skills heal for waaaaaay more then people's max health.
As a warden I can heal anybody.. I may not be able to keep them ALIVE however. That's how it is for wardens, druids and inquisitors... those classes can heal anybody who survives the hit.. but the number of times my tank has gone from full to dead because they had a hole in their rotation, there was a lag spike, whatever is depressing.
I agree, that while the healing imbalance is frustrating, the silence about the imbalance is worse. And please, please, please do NOT make bleedthrough worse. That doesn't solve anything. It just makes healing more painful for everybody.. it doesn't fix the fundamental imbalances Sudedor described in his post.
As long as every heal is a full heal and a large number of the hits are at or above max health, the healing mechanics will be broken.

11-01-2017, 06:39 PM

You bring up another good point that I had forgotten, in that tanks are now being asked to rely heavily on death saves and things of that nature to survive. It's really a symptom of the healing imbalance rearing it's head in other areas. Death saves should be last ditch things a tank uses when a healer gets whacked, not something he uses while his healer is alive and working hard.

In my opinion, surviveability should be something a tank does pre-encounter. Stances, gear, AA, etc. Survival should be planned ahead of time. During an encounter, a tank should be managing aggro and mob positioning. His survival at that point should under most circumstances be the responsibility of the healer.

11-03-2017, 12:07 AM

If wards remain unlimited in growth due to potency/CB inflation, there has to be a hefty bleedthrough component or it nullifies the need for any other priest class in a raid/group setting.

Mermut · 11-03-2017, 01:12 AM

Bleedthrough is a horrid mechanic.. I say this as a warden. It has never, ever, HELPED any healer.. all it does is hurt wards... all wards.. cast by all classes. This actually hurts the non-warding healers more, as their smaller wards effectively become too small to prevent one-shots.
I agree something needs to change to deal with the healing issues, but from experience in KA, bleedthrough doesn't really solve the problem. Since the hits are so big, wards are still required.. It just puts mystics at a severe disadvantage compared to templars and defilers.. and allows inqies and druids to 'pick up the trash' behind warders. It doesn't allow non-shaman to heal any better. All healer classes should be useful in and of themselves.. not merely be there to pick up the proverbial trash bleedthrough generates to make them 'look' and 'feel' useful.

They need to deal with the rations between healing power, health pools and incoming damage. Right now ALL of those ratios are out of whack. If health pools are increased enough that direct heals, HoT ticks and reactives aren't always full heals, it mean that incoming damage could be big enough to take a meaningful chunk out of wards without resulting in one-shots without wards. It would also allow potency to be useful for ALL kinds of heals.. instead of how it is right now.. where potency really only helps wards.. since other heals can't actually make use of the added potency (due to health pools being so, relatively, small).

11-03-2017, 03:13 AM

I just don't see them buffing HP any more than they have...that leaves bleedthrough or reducing ward capacity as levers.

Mermut · 11-03-2017, 03:15 AM

Unless they reduce incoming damage, it won't make non-warding healers any more viable.. it will just let them show up on the parse by picking up the trash that leaks through wards...
Showing up on the parse behind a warder and being a viable healer in their own right are two very different things. If they're not going to do that later, the former is is a sop.. mere window dressing.

11-03-2017, 04:42 AM

Well, a lot of the HP issue can be fixed by proper gearing. My Fury has over 45M hp and the tanks can get much higher.

Those of us that play non-shaman in raid are just nervous that we're no longer going to have a role since wards are near perfect.

Mermut · 11-03-2017, 05:24 AM

I play a warden in raids. I understand completely. With the current potency levels, I can pretty much guarantee our HoTs are sill full heals even at 45m hps... and group member health isn't something a healer (well aside from inqies) have any real control over. It's still a matter of the gear the non-warding healer has absolutely no impact on their ability to keep their group alive. Confused

11-03-2017, 12:26 PM

I'm surprised so few people care about healing being broken for several expansions. I could understand if it was just for a year, but we are closing in on 4 years with healing not being looked at.

Why do so few people care?

11-03-2017, 01:00 PM

I don't think that a lack of caring on the part of players is to blame, and to be clear, I don't think a lack of caring on the part of developers is to blame either. I would like to see an official statement from the developers acknowledging that these things are a problem. The first step in fixing a problem is to acknowledge that it exists right?

I think that everyone is scared of the problem, because while we talk about it here in very simple terms, the problem is incredibly deep and complex. You cannot balance any one aspect of the overall problem in a vacuum. You cannot adjust player health and leave everything else the same. You can't adjust mob DPS and leave everything else the same. You can't balance heal amounts and leave everything else the same.

It all has to happen at once, and that's a big, big deal.

11-03-2017, 02:50 PM

The thing is, it's not going to be able to happen all at once and a huge change would require rebalancing nearly all raid content.

Bleedthrough is an easy lever because it doesn't require much in the way of retuning encounters.

My personal suggestion would be to bring down ward scaling so that they actually consistently break on heroic encounters.

11-03-2017, 02:57 PM

Another option would be to cap wards at 100% of player hp.

11-03-2017, 03:41 PM

I think you and I largely agree - something needs to happen.

While Bleed might be an easy lever, it isn't a good lever at all unfortunately. It "kind of" fixes things when two priests are in the group, because in theory it allows the non-Shaman priest to get some healing in. Unfortunately, that second priest isn't going to do anything the Shaman couldn't do on his own.

Think about it. If the second Priest was doing something the Shaman couldn't do on his own, you've basically made Shaman either required, or irrelevant. You've said there is so much bleed that the Shaman can't heal it all. Ok, why have the Shaman at all? Is it because every other Priest is incapable of healing without a Shaman? That sucks for every other healer. Is it because the Shaman is such a poor healer he can't heal alone? That's a pretty crappy solution. Frown

Scaling down Wards to break in Heroic encounters or to cap at a given value is not a solution either, because the raid level repercussions would be so damaging as to be broken completely. Keep in mind that Wards aren't just a Priest / Shaman problem either. Everyone has personal Wards available via AA. So which Wards do you cap? Do you assume everyone took the AA, making them mandatory, or assume no one took them?

I know it sucks, but half solutions won't fix it. There is a massive rebalance that needs to happen or we just have to accept that the status quo is as good as it can ever get. Getting a developer acknowledgment would be great, as we could then start talking about what it will really take to fix the problem.

It's easy to focus on Wards as "the" problem, but they aren't. They are only part of the problem. What if Wards went away tomorrow? All Shaman disappeared, all Ward abilities vanished. I'd argue that the game would be broken, badly. Looking at things from that perspective, you could say that Wards are the only thing that are keeping the game from being completely broken. In fact, I'd probably say that Wards have been hiding this problem for a long time now, artificially inflating player HP pools.

I do like the idea of getting it fixed, and I like the open exchange of ideas on how to get it done.

11-03-2017, 03:53 PM

This is good dialogue, but if we want anything done in the next couple of months, it will have to be quick and dirty.

And tbh, I have no qualms making Shaman require a backup healer. They still offer enough benefit to feel useful and it wouldn't relegate all other priests to 2nd tier.

Right now, an incompetent shaman can keep a group alive easier than nearly all other priests.

11-03-2017, 04:24 PM

Agree, good dialog.

I am curious what benefits you see Shaman offering outside of Wards. I do have some serious qualms about making any Priest require a backup / second healer in general content. I really feel that ANY Priest should be able to do the job on their own in most content.

(Full disclosure, I have three fully leveled Priests: Mystic, Fury and Inquisitor). I don't disagree that Shaman are super easy to play. That wasn't always the case, but I think it is right now. An average Shaman is probably more valuable than a good Druid in most instances. I don't think that's a good thing for the health of the game.

11-03-2017, 04:26 PM

I feel like if i reversed this statement, there would be absolute outrage. "And tbh, I have no qualms making Non-Shaman require a backup healer. They still offer enough benefit to feel useful and it wouldn't relegate them 2nd tier." So if you're not OK with that, dont be trying to put chain healers in that position.

Maybe i just dont understand the problem here, but once again, for this entire xpac, including T4, including the summoned ones, we have run a raid that had 5 healers, having 3 of the 4 groups being solo healed by a non shaman healer...

Clint you have solo healed G4 for a long time, you have also solo healed them for our flawless achievements.... so I dont see what the problem is.

11-03-2017, 04:42 PM

I think we should talk about the fact that Shaman only have 1 group cure..... or that Furys have a raid wide cure... that sounds OP..... Both Furys and Wardens have pretty nice cloaks...

Outside of wards......... Defilers have a nice power feed that is up 30% of the time... but Wardens have their tree... so there is that.... Defilers also have a DP they can put on a tank, but it comes at a coost of their own max HP pool, and many other healers also have DPs as well. yeah i cant think of anything truly important outside of wards that they bring to the table.

11-03-2017, 04:45 PM

Who cares about "incompetent shaman"? why is that the bar for comparing classes?

I can tell you from personal experience that an incompetent player can make any class look like ****, vs a player that knows what they are doing. I have seen you put many healers to shame, and you're not a shammy.

Mermut · 11-03-2017, 05:18 PM

The warden class cloak adornment is pretty useless. It gives raid-wide block/parry/deflect.. and gives the raid 5k ab mod.. that is it.
The prestige buffs to sandstorm are NOT made raid-wide by the cloak. it might not be the most worthless, but it's in the running

In my opinion the biggest issues right now are
1) Every single heal is a full heal.. even the smallest heal
1a) This means gear improvements do not make non-warding shaman any better at their job... a healer getting better gear does nothing to help them keep their group alive
note: Yes OTHER people having better gear (read more hitpoints) can make it possible for a non-warder to keep that person alive, but nothing the HEALER does and no gear the HEALER gets affects that.

2) Incoming damage on tank is such that, without wards, the tank has a good chance of going from full health to dead if they don't hae a death save/prevent/reflect/stoneskin up... and not just in raids
2a) this means the non-warding healer isn't keeping the tank alive, the tank is keeping the tank alive and the non-warder is just 'picking up the trash' like they do behind a shaman/templar on heavy bleedthrough fights.

3) Potency ability mod (and cb to a smaller extent) have increased exponentially over the last few expansions and health pools, in comparison, have barely moved.
3a) This means that if the hits are small, wards never get used up and if the hits are big, no tank can survive without wards (or a death save of some flavor
Note: Bleedthrough doesn't help. It doesn't make healers without wards any more viable. It allows their heals to 'show up' on the parse behind the wards, but do anything to change the fact they can heal people, but not keep them alive.
Additionaly note: Except perhaps with mystics, bleedthrough doesn't make warding healers less capable of solo healing. It just makes them work slightly harder for it. Templars have reactives to back up their wards and repent seems immune to bleedthrough Defilers have plenty of ways to heal their group in addition to their group heal (malesstrom, nightmares, etc) Also bleedthrough actually HURTS non-warding healers more.. as they small wards they CAN proc are less likely to be sufficient to blunt that big hit enough for the person to survive to BE healed.

Bottom line. Until the ratios between health pools and potency/ab mod/cb and incoming damage are such that not every heal is a full heal and incoming damge that exceeds health pools is uncommon and/or predictable, healing will be 'messed up'.

11-03-2017, 06:20 PM

The only fixes I can think off just right of my head is:

1) Make wards less potent.
2) Reduce tank saves timers, and require co-ordination with things like true faith, divine guidance, thorns etc etc.
3) Making mobs swing more often for less.

4) Go back to +Attack or +Heal on gear, would make make balancing each class a whole lot easier.

Mermut · 11-03-2017, 06:28 PM

Having more stats does not make balance easier.. it makes it HARDER because there are more stats...
Also, healer death saves, etc.. healers have fewer of them then tanks do AND healer death saves have longer reuse the tank death saves. consequently they can't be used 'in a rotation'

Why isn't making hitpoints keep up with the other stats even on the table for you?

11-03-2017, 06:28 PM

I can't argue about my awesomeness...

Furies are in a pretty good spot in KA and Beta for a number of reasons so this isnt really about them. Though I would trade the raid wide cure every FIVE minutes for the Defiler group power feed or raid-wide ward any day.

There is a reason multi-boxer groups use Mystic/Defilers for their solo healers. Heroic encounters require healers to deal with incoming damage greater than the health of the tank and only a few priest's signature heal ability addresses that need. While those of us that really know our classes can adjust, it's absolutely not ideal.

TBH, I know I will be fine with however healing shakes out, but I know many others that are disheartened by the current beta's bias towards ward healing.

11-03-2017, 06:38 PM

These "disheartened" people are the ones that started crying like 3 minutes into our first beta raid. That's a pretty small sample size to be basing conclusions off of, especially when you are calling for another heal class to be nerfed into the ground.

As far as hitpoints scaling, going into T3 raid, I had something like 230-250 mil HP, so that's approximately a 400% increase compared to what i have now on live, or a 600% increase from the beta equivalent. From what I saw in the same zone, my potency only increased by approximately 100% (I was at about 93k). So yes, the HP pools ARE growing significantly faster than potency. Combine that wit h the fact that the CB cap is not going up, and you have you "healer balance".

Can't wait to hear shammys cry because BT on certain raid encounters is at 80%+ per ward layer, or because there is so much focus damage, that is only mitigated by DRs or DPs that effectively makes them useless.

11-03-2017, 06:42 PM

Because I much rather they did an item squish, reducing main stats/health/power and removed stats (especially auto attack stats) and replacing it with +attack/heal like we had back in the day. I dont like big numbers and I know most of people raiding on the TLE server feel the same, its one of many reasons why those players prefer that server.

Keep:
Mainstats
Stamina
Magic Resistance
Mitigation
Block Chance/Parry/DeflectionRiposte
Critical Chance
Critical Bonus
Hate Mod
Reuse Speed
Casting Speed
Recovery Speed
Doublecast
Fighting Skills (Crushing, Piercing, Ranged, Aggression & Slashing)
Casting skills (Disruption, Ministration, Ordination & Subjegation)
Weapon/Spell Damage Bonus
AE Auto Attack
Haste (Effect)
Strikethrough
Accuracy

Remove:
Ability Mod
Potency
Resolve
Ability Modifier
DPS
Attack Speed
Multi Attack
Flurry

"New" stat:
+Attack/heal

This wont work though if we keep getting 148% re use speed of one item though, like you can get in the beta. Its ******** and reforging is such a effortless "fix"

Mermut · 11-03-2017, 06:43 PM

ugh... I hate mechanics that are designed to penalize specific classes Frown

11-03-2017, 06:56 PM

Nero, I'm also basing my observations on the solo/heroic encounters.

Maybe I am not into hard enough encounters yet but I am not seeing any appreciable bleedthrough and even my super small Fury wards have scaled very high.

Maybe we are getting excited over nothing, but it currently looks a lot like the way KA was at expansion launch and that was really rough on non-warders. Though, arguably it made me a better healer.

Vunder · 11-03-2017, 07:07 PM

Nerf this....Nerf that...

I remember that about channelers 3 xpacs ago (including beta)

We got nerfed all the heck....got crappy epic spells and adorns and still one of the most powerful heals in game....RL's just don't know how to use them. Pair us up with a druid for best results...but not required.

11-03-2017, 09:07 PM

I think one of the things that bothers me most about Wards in general is the really unclear nature of them. For example:

Let's say a character has 5 million "natural" hit points. He then has the Dragon AA which gives him another 5 million HP of personal, regenerating Ward. He's with a healer who then drops another 10 million HP worth of Ward on him. Effectively, this character has 20 million HP, right?

As a Healer, I don't really know - certainly not with any ease - exactly how close this guy is to death. By the time he starts taking damage, he's already lost 75% of his effective HP. I should have started healing him long ago. It would be immensely helpful if we had some sort of gauge on this. I mean, obviously the server knows what his effective HP are, it knows everything.

I would love to see a multi - level health bar. For instance, in my UI at least, health bars are green. What if instead they were red. Then, over top the red bar, a green bar that represents the current ward amount. This way, I can see how close to breaking all the Wards are, even if they aren't mine as a Priest. As the Wards go away, the red bar is revealed, as the red bar goes down, you get black and die at zero.

The problem with this of course is that the green bar would need to be partially transparent so that I could see if someone needed actual health under their Wards.

Even a separate bar for Wards would help. Anything that lets a Priest know what his situation is before it gets to the "OH (@&*#" stage.

11-01-2017, 06:25 PM	#62
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Gossling said: ↑ “I was not discussing for a Templar only i was mentioning because inquisitors have no wards. As a result the information I linked cleared indicated I was saying I have a grand total of three skills to cast that actually land due to the not "needed" aspect, which I also noted that this is what it appeared to be. My concern was more for inquisitors that have nothing available in their arsenal of heals to address this and this makes certain classes more / less viable as an option in raiding. I am trying to figure out if this was intended or a by product of over/under tuning of bleedthrough and wards.” The same would apply to wardens and furies.

11-01-2017, 06:32 PM	#63
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Sudedor said: ↑ “ The healing vs mob DPS vs player HP equation is wildly out of balance right now. I'm not sure DBG has the resources to address it, and the circumstantial evidence indicates the same. I'm sure they'd like to, because anyone can see it's a problem. I think we'd all feel better if they'd just come out and say for the record "Yes, we know it's a problem and we'd like to address it but our resources simply won't allow for it". At least we could understand that. I do find the silence frustrating.” Agreed. Even in KA, potency has become worthless to non-warding healers since our base skills heal for waaaaaay more then people's max health. As a warden I can heal anybody.. I may not be able to keep them ALIVE however. That's how it is for wardens, druids and inquisitors... those classes can heal anybody who survives the hit.. but the number of times my tank has gone from full to dead because they had a hole in their rotation, there was a lag spike, whatever is depressing. I agree, that while the healing imbalance is frustrating, the silence about the imbalance is worse. And please, please, please do NOT make bleedthrough worse. That doesn't solve anything. It just makes healing more painful for everybody.. it doesn't fix the fundamental imbalances Sudedor described in his post. As long as every heal is a full heal and a large number of the hits are at or above max health, the healing mechanics will be broken.

11-01-2017, 06:39 PM	#64
Sudedor Active Member Posts: n/a	Mermut said: ↑ “Stuff.” You bring up another good point that I had forgotten, in that tanks are now being asked to rely heavily on death saves and things of that nature to survive. It's really a symptom of the healing imbalance rearing it's head in other areas. Death saves should be last ditch things a tank uses when a healer gets whacked, not something he uses while his healer is alive and working hard. In my opinion, surviveability should be something a tank does pre-encounter. Stances, gear, AA, etc. Survival should be planned ahead of time. During an encounter, a tank should be managing aggro and mob positioning. His survival at that point should under most circumstances be the responsibility of the healer.

11-03-2017, 01:12 AM	#66
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Clintsat said: ↑ “If wards remain unlimited in growth due to potency/CB inflation, there has to be a hefty bleedthrough component or it nullifies the need for any other priest class in a raid/group setting.” Bleedthrough is a horrid mechanic.. I say this as a warden. It has never, ever, HELPED any healer.. all it does is hurt wards... all wards.. cast by all classes. This actually hurts the non-warding healers more, as their smaller wards effectively become too small to prevent one-shots. I agree something needs to change to deal with the healing issues, but from experience in KA, bleedthrough doesn't really solve the problem. Since the hits are so big, wards are still required.. It just puts mystics at a severe disadvantage compared to templars and defilers.. and allows inqies and druids to 'pick up the trash' behind warders. It doesn't allow non-shaman to heal any better. All healer classes should be useful in and of themselves.. not merely be there to pick up the proverbial trash bleedthrough generates to make them 'look' and 'feel' useful. They need to deal with the rations between healing power, health pools and incoming damage. Right now ALL of those ratios are out of whack. If health pools are increased enough that direct heals, HoT ticks and reactives aren't always full heals, it mean that incoming damage could be big enough to take a meaningful chunk out of wards without resulting in one-shots without wards. It would also allow potency to be useful for ALL kinds of heals.. instead of how it is right now.. where potency really only helps wards.. since other heals can't actually make use of the added potency (due to health pools being so, relatively, small).

11-03-2017, 03:15 AM	#68
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Clintsat said: ↑ “I just don't see them buffing HP any more than they have...that leaves bleedthrough or reducing ward capacity as levers.” Unless they reduce incoming damage, it won't make non-warding healers any more viable.. it will just let them show up on the parse by picking up the trash that leaks through wards... Showing up on the parse behind a warder and being a viable healer in their own right are two very different things. If they're not going to do that later, the former is is a sop.. mere window dressing.

11-01-2017, 02:30 PM	#61
Sudedor Active Member Posts: n/a	Healing balance will remain a mess until the game is balanced properly with respect to player HP vs Heal amounts vs mob DPS. Here are some examples. Example 1 - Heal amounts vs Player HP When the game was originally created, and for quite some time thereafter, there were basically a handful of tools that all priests had: small single direct heal, large single direct heal, group direct heal, single target specialty heal and group specialty heal. Some priest classes had a few added tools on top of that, but those basic tools existed. The small direct heal was just that, it would heal a small bit of health back, usually 25% of player HP or less. This is where it's easiest to see the problem now. This small direct heal now is effectively a complete heal in most cases. That's a problem! It shows that heal amounts have grown way, way out of proportion to player HP pools. Example 2 - Heal amounts vs mob DPS The easiest way to see this imbalance is to look at reactive heals. When things were balanced properly, a reactive trigger was more or less equivalent to an average hit from a mob. If a big named mob was beating on your tank while reactives were up, his HP would usually be decreasing, requiring additional healing by direct means, or perhaps using a group reactive in conjunction with a single reactive to recover HP. Now, a reactive just doesn't cut it. Example 3 - Player HP vs mob DPS This is also pretty easy to see. In most cases, when a mob hits a player, the player is either dead, or nearly dead, on the first hit. This is a problem, since both reactives and HoT's are designed to slow that process down. Mobs shouldn't be one shotting players, probably even raid mobs. Every single bit of this is an imbalance, and a great deal of it is because Wards are a problem. I say this as a player who rolled a Mystic on launch day (technically, I rolled a Priest-Shaman-Mystic) and played one through raiding on nearly every tier up to Altar of Malice. Wards created a situation where in order to allow mobs a chance to kill players, Devs needed those mobs to hit so hard that they broke the wards and actually got into the HP pools. The worst part then came when SOE / DBG doubled down on Wards by giving everyone their own personal wards via AA. For example, my Wizard alt, who is in Panda gear, has 2.75 million HP. Fine, it's just a number. However, his effective HP is actually 12.54 million HP! WTF!?!?! He has his own HP pool, as stated at 2.75. He then has Magi's Shielding offering him a 5.31 million HP, regenerating ward. Oh, and then 4.48 million of regenerating ward from Scaled Protection. And that's just against all damage. He gets another 7 million against all magical damage from Ward of Sages. It would take a 16 million HP spell just to eat through all his Wards, let alone get to his HP. Now what happens if you've got a Shaman in the group? Madness. The healing vs mob DPS vs player HP equation is wildly out of balance right now. I'm not sure DBG has the resources to address it, and the circumstantial evidence indicates the same. I'm sure they'd like to, because anyone can see it's a problem. I think we'd all feel better if they'd just come out and say for the record "Yes, we know it's a problem and we'd like to address it but our resources simply won't allow for it". At least we could understand that. I do find the silence frustrating.

11-03-2017, 12:07 AM	#65
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	If wards remain unlimited in growth due to potency/CB inflation, there has to be a hefty bleedthrough component or it nullifies the need for any other priest class in a raid/group setting.

11-03-2017, 03:13 AM	#67
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	I just don't see them buffing HP any more than they have...that leaves bleedthrough or reducing ward capacity as levers.

11-03-2017, 04:42 AM	#69
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	Well, a lot of the HP issue can be fixed by proper gearing. My Fury has over 45M hp and the tanks can get much higher. Those of us that play non-shaman in raid are just nervous that we're no longer going to have a role since wards are near perfect.

11-03-2017, 05:24 AM	#70
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Clintsat said: ↑ “Well, a lot of the HP issue can be fixed by proper gearing. My Fury has over 45M hp and the tanks can get much higher. Those of us that play non-shaman in raid are just nervous that we're no longer going to have a role since wards are near perfect.” I play a warden in raids. I understand completely. With the current potency levels, I can pretty much guarantee our HoTs are sill full heals even at 45m hps... and group member health isn't something a healer (well aside from inqies) have any real control over. It's still a matter of the gear the non-warding healer has absolutely no impact on their ability to keep their group alive.

11-03-2017, 12:26 PM	#71
dirgenoobforreal Active Member Posts: n/a	I'm surprised so few people care about healing being broken for several expansions. I could understand if it was just for a year, but we are closing in on 4 years with healing not being looked at. Why do so few people care?

11-03-2017, 01:00 PM	#72
Sudedor Active Member Posts: n/a	dirgenoobforreal said: ↑ “I'm surprised so few people care about healing being broken for several expansions. I could understand if it was just for a year, but we are closing in on 4 years with healing not being looked at. Why do so few people care?” I don't think that a lack of caring on the part of players is to blame, and to be clear, I don't think a lack of caring on the part of developers is to blame either. I would like to see an official statement from the developers acknowledging that these things are a problem. The first step in fixing a problem is to acknowledge that it exists right? I think that everyone is scared of the problem, because while we talk about it here in very simple terms, the problem is incredibly deep and complex. You cannot balance any one aspect of the overall problem in a vacuum. You cannot adjust player health and leave everything else the same. You can't adjust mob DPS and leave everything else the same. You can't balance heal amounts and leave everything else the same. It all has to happen at once, and that's a big, big deal.

11-03-2017, 02:50 PM	#73
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	The thing is, it's not going to be able to happen all at once and a huge change would require rebalancing nearly all raid content. Bleedthrough is an easy lever because it doesn't require much in the way of retuning encounters. My personal suggestion would be to bring down ward scaling so that they actually consistently break on heroic encounters.

11-03-2017, 02:57 PM	#74
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	Another option would be to cap wards at 100% of player hp.

11-03-2017, 03:41 PM	#75
Sudedor Active Member Posts: n/a	Clintsat said: ↑ “A couple things.” I think you and I largely agree - something needs to happen. While Bleed might be an easy lever, it isn't a good lever at all unfortunately. It "kind of" fixes things when two priests are in the group, because in theory it allows the non-Shaman priest to get some healing in. Unfortunately, that second priest isn't going to do anything the Shaman couldn't do on his own. Think about it. If the second Priest was doing something the Shaman couldn't do on his own, you've basically made Shaman either required, or irrelevant. You've said there is so much bleed that the Shaman can't heal it all. Ok, why have the Shaman at all? Is it because every other Priest is incapable of healing without a Shaman? That sucks for every other healer. Is it because the Shaman is such a poor healer he can't heal alone? That's a pretty crappy solution. Scaling down Wards to break in Heroic encounters or to cap at a given value is not a solution either, because the raid level repercussions would be so damaging as to be broken completely. Keep in mind that Wards aren't just a Priest / Shaman problem either. Everyone has personal Wards available via AA. So which Wards do you cap? Do you assume everyone took the AA, making them mandatory, or assume no one took them? I know it sucks, but half solutions won't fix it. There is a massive rebalance that needs to happen or we just have to accept that the status quo is as good as it can ever get. Getting a developer acknowledgment would be great, as we could then start talking about what it will really take to fix the problem. It's easy to focus on Wards as "the" problem, but they aren't. They are only part of the problem. What if Wards went away tomorrow? All Shaman disappeared, all Ward abilities vanished. I'd argue that the game would be broken, badly. Looking at things from that perspective, you could say that Wards are the only thing that are keeping the game from being completely broken. In fact, I'd probably say that Wards have been hiding this problem for a long time now, artificially inflating player HP pools. I do like the idea of getting it fixed, and I like the open exchange of ideas on how to get it done.

11-03-2017, 03:53 PM	#76
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	This is good dialogue, but if we want anything done in the next couple of months, it will have to be quick and dirty. And tbh, I have no qualms making Shaman require a backup healer. They still offer enough benefit to feel useful and it wouldn't relegate all other priests to 2nd tier. Right now, an incompetent shaman can keep a group alive easier than nearly all other priests.

11-03-2017, 04:24 PM	#77
Sudedor Active Member Posts: n/a	Clintsat said: ↑ “Stuff.” Agree, good dialog. I am curious what benefits you see Shaman offering outside of Wards. I do have some serious qualms about making any Priest require a backup / second healer in general content. I really feel that ANY Priest should be able to do the job on their own in most content. (Full disclosure, I have three fully leveled Priests: Mystic, Fury and Inquisitor). I don't disagree that Shaman are super easy to play. That wasn't always the case, but I think it is right now. An average Shaman is probably more valuable than a good Druid in most instances. I don't think that's a good thing for the health of the game.

11-03-2017, 04:26 PM	#78
Nero New Member Posts: n/a	Clintsat said: ↑ “And tbh, I have no qualms making Shaman require a backup healer. They still offer enough benefit to feel useful and it wouldn't relegate all other priests to 2nd tier.” I feel like if i reversed this statement, there would be absolute outrage. "And tbh, I have no qualms making Non-Shaman require a backup healer. They still offer enough benefit to feel useful and it wouldn't relegate them 2nd tier." So if you're not OK with that, dont be trying to put chain healers in that position. Maybe i just dont understand the problem here, but once again, for this entire xpac, including T4, including the summoned ones, we have run a raid that had 5 healers, having 3 of the 4 groups being solo healed by a non shaman healer... Clint you have solo healed G4 for a long time, you have also solo healed them for our flawless achievements.... so I dont see what the problem is.

11-03-2017, 04:42 PM	#79
Nero New Member Posts: n/a	Sudedor said: ↑ “Agree, good dialog. I am curious what benefits you see Shaman offering outside of Wards. I do have some serious qualms about making any Priest require a backup / second healer in general content. I really feel that ANY Priest should be able to do the job on their own in most content. (Full disclosure, I have three fully leveled Priests: Mystic, Fury and Inquisitor). I don't disagree that Shaman are super easy to play. That wasn't always the case, but I think it is right now. An average Shaman is probably more valuable than a good Druid in most instances. I don't think that's a good thing for the health of the game.” I think we should talk about the fact that Shaman only have 1 group cure..... or that Furys have a raid wide cure... that sounds OP..... Both Furys and Wardens have pretty nice cloaks... Outside of wards......... Defilers have a nice power feed that is up 30% of the time... but Wardens have their tree... so there is that.... Defilers also have a DP they can put on a tank, but it comes at a coost of their own max HP pool, and many other healers also have DPs as well. yeah i cant think of anything truly important outside of wards that they bring to the table.

11-03-2017, 04:45 PM	#80
Nero New Member Posts: n/a	Clintsat said: ↑ “This is good dialogue, but if we want anything done in the next couple of months, it will have to be quick and dirty. And tbh, I have no qualms making Shaman require a backup healer. They still offer enough benefit to feel useful and it wouldn't relegate all other priests to 2nd tier. Right now, an incompetent shaman can keep a group alive easier than nearly all other priests.” Who cares about "incompetent shaman"? why is that the bar for comparing classes? I can tell you from personal experience that an incompetent player can make any class look like ****, vs a player that knows what they are doing. I have seen you put many healers to shame, and you're not a shammy.

11-03-2017, 05:18 PM	#81
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Nero said: ↑ “I think we should talk about the fact that Shaman only have 1 group cure..... or that Furys have a raid wide cure... that sounds OP..... Both Furys and Wardens have pretty nice cloaks.. ” The warden class cloak adornment is pretty useless. It gives raid-wide block/parry/deflect.. and gives the raid 5k ab mod.. that is it. The prestige buffs to sandstorm are NOT made raid-wide by the cloak. it might not be the most worthless, but it's in the running In my opinion the biggest issues right now are 1) Every single heal is a full heal.. even the smallest heal 1a) This means gear improvements do not make non-warding shaman any better at their job... a healer getting better gear does nothing to help them keep their group alive note: Yes OTHER people having better gear (read more hitpoints) can make it possible for a non-warder to keep that person alive, but nothing the HEALER does and no gear the HEALER gets affects that. 2) Incoming damage on tank is such that, without wards, the tank has a good chance of going from full health to dead if they don't hae a death save/prevent/reflect/stoneskin up... and not just in raids 2a) this means the non-warding healer isn't keeping the tank alive, the tank is keeping the tank alive and the non-warder is just 'picking up the trash' like they do behind a shaman/templar on heavy bleedthrough fights. 3) Potency ability mod (and cb to a smaller extent) have increased exponentially over the last few expansions and health pools, in comparison, have barely moved. 3a) This means that if the hits are small, wards never get used up and if the hits are big, no tank can survive without wards (or a death save of some flavor Note: Bleedthrough doesn't help. It doesn't make healers without wards any more viable. It allows their heals to 'show up' on the parse behind the wards, but do anything to change the fact they can heal people, but not keep them alive. Additionaly note: Except perhaps with mystics, bleedthrough doesn't make warding healers less capable of solo healing. It just makes them work slightly harder for it. Templars have reactives to back up their wards and repent seems immune to bleedthrough Defilers have plenty of ways to heal their group in addition to their group heal (malesstrom, nightmares, etc) Also bleedthrough actually HURTS non-warding healers more.. as they small wards they CAN proc are less likely to be sufficient to blunt that big hit enough for the person to survive to BE healed. Bottom line. Until the ratios between health pools and potency/ab mod/cb and incoming damage are such that not every heal is a full heal and incoming damge that exceeds health pools is uncommon and/or predictable, healing will be 'messed up'.

11-03-2017, 06:20 PM	#82
dirgenoobforreal Active Member Posts: n/a	The only fixes I can think off just right of my head is: 1) Make wards less potent. 2) Reduce tank saves timers, and require co-ordination with things like true faith, divine guidance, thorns etc etc. 3) Making mobs swing more often for less. 4) Go back to +Attack or +Heal on gear, would make make balancing each class a whole lot easier.

11-03-2017, 06:28 PM	#83
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	dirgenoobforreal said: ↑ “The only fixes I can think off just right of my head is: 1) Make wards less potent. 2) Reduce tank saves timers, and require co-ordination with things like true faith, divine guidance, thorns etc etc. 3) Making mobs swing more often for less. 4) Go back to +Attack or +Heal on gear, would make make balancing each class a whole lot easier.” Having more stats does not make balance easier.. it makes it HARDER because there are more stats... Also, healer death saves, etc.. healers have fewer of them then tanks do AND healer death saves have longer reuse the tank death saves. consequently they can't be used 'in a rotation' Why isn't making hitpoints keep up with the other stats even on the table for you?

11-03-2017, 06:28 PM	#84
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	Nero said: ↑ “Who cares about "incompetent shaman"? why is that the bar for comparing classes? I can tell you from personal experience that an incompetent player can make any class look like ****, vs a player that knows what they are doing. I have seen you put many healers to shame, and you're not a shammy.” I can't argue about my awesomeness... Furies are in a pretty good spot in KA and Beta for a number of reasons so this isnt really about them. Though I would trade the raid wide cure every FIVE minutes for the Defiler group power feed or raid-wide ward any day. There is a reason multi-boxer groups use Mystic/Defilers for their solo healers. Heroic encounters require healers to deal with incoming damage greater than the health of the tank and only a few priest's signature heal ability addresses that need. While those of us that really know our classes can adjust, it's absolutely not ideal. TBH, I know I will be fine with however healing shakes out, but I know many others that are disheartened by the current beta's bias towards ward healing.

11-03-2017, 06:38 PM	#85
Nero New Member Posts: n/a	Clintsat said: ↑ “I can't argue about my awesomeness... Furies are in a pretty good spot in KA and Beta for a number of reasons so this isnt really about them. Though I would trade the raid wide cure every FIVE minutes for the Defiler group power feed or raid-wide ward any day. There is a reason multi-boxer groups use Mystic/Defilers for their solo healers. Heroic encounters require healers to deal with incoming damage greater than the health of the tank and only a few priest's signature heal ability addresses that need. While those of us that really know our classes can adjust, it's absolutely not ideal. TBH, I know I will be fine with however healing shakes out, but I know many others that are disheartened by the current beta's bias towards ward healing.” These "disheartened" people are the ones that started crying like 3 minutes into our first beta raid. That's a pretty small sample size to be basing conclusions off of, especially when you are calling for another heal class to be nerfed into the ground. As far as hitpoints scaling, going into T3 raid, I had something like 230-250 mil HP, so that's approximately a 400% increase compared to what i have now on live, or a 600% increase from the beta equivalent. From what I saw in the same zone, my potency only increased by approximately 100% (I was at about 93k). So yes, the HP pools ARE growing significantly faster than potency. Combine that wit h the fact that the CB cap is not going up, and you have you "healer balance". Can't wait to hear shammys cry because BT on certain raid encounters is at 80%+ per ward layer, or because there is so much focus damage, that is only mitigated by DRs or DPs that effectively makes them useless.

11-03-2017, 06:42 PM	#86
dirgenoobforreal Active Member Posts: n/a	Mermut said: ↑ “Why isn't making hitpoints keep up with the other stats even on the table for you?” Because I much rather they did an item squish, reducing main stats/health/power and removed stats (especially auto attack stats) and replacing it with +attack/heal like we had back in the day. I dont like big numbers and I know most of people raiding on the TLE server feel the same, its one of many reasons why those players prefer that server. Keep: Mainstats Stamina Magic Resistance Mitigation Block Chance/Parry/DeflectionRiposte Critical Chance Critical Bonus Hate Mod Reuse Speed Casting Speed Recovery Speed Doublecast Fighting Skills (Crushing, Piercing, Ranged, Aggression & Slashing) Casting skills (Disruption, Ministration, Ordination & Subjegation) Weapon/Spell Damage Bonus AE Auto Attack Haste (Effect) Strikethrough Accuracy Remove: Ability Mod Potency Resolve Ability Modifier DPS Attack Speed Multi Attack Flurry "New" stat: +Attack/heal This wont work though if we keep getting 148% re use speed of one item though, like you can get in the beta. Its ******** and reforging is such a effortless "fix"

11-03-2017, 06:43 PM	#87
Mermut Well-Known Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Nero said: ↑ “ Can't wait to hear shammys cry because BT on certain raid encounters is at 80%+ per ward layer, or because there is so much focus damage, that is only mitigated by DRs or DPs that effectively makes them useless.” ugh... I hate mechanics that are designed to penalize specific classes

11-03-2017, 06:56 PM	#88
Clintsat Member Posts: n/a	Nero, I'm also basing my observations on the solo/heroic encounters. Maybe I am not into hard enough encounters yet but I am not seeing any appreciable bleedthrough and even my super small Fury wards have scaled very high. Maybe we are getting excited over nothing, but it currently looks a lot like the way KA was at expansion launch and that was really rough on non-warders. Though, arguably it made me a better healer.

11-03-2017, 07:07 PM	#89
Vunder New Member Join Date: Jan 1970 Posts: 0	Nerf this....Nerf that... I remember that about channelers 3 xpacs ago (including beta) We got nerfed all the heck....got crappy epic spells and adorns and still one of the most powerful heals in game....RL's just don't know how to use them. Pair us up with a druid for best results...but not required.

11-03-2017, 09:07 PM	#90
Sudedor Active Member Posts: n/a	I think one of the things that bothers me most about Wards in general is the really unclear nature of them. For example: Let's say a character has 5 million "natural" hit points. He then has the Dragon AA which gives him another 5 million HP of personal, regenerating Ward. He's with a healer who then drops another 10 million HP worth of Ward on him. Effectively, this character has 20 million HP, right? As a Healer, I don't really know - certainly not with any ease - exactly how close this guy is to death. By the time he starts taking damage, he's already lost 75% of his effective HP. I should have started healing him long ago. It would be immensely helpful if we had some sort of gauge on this. I mean, obviously the server knows what his effective HP are, it knows everything. I would love to see a multi - level health bar. For instance, in my UI at least, health bars are green. What if instead they were red. Then, over top the red bar, a green bar that represents the current ward amount. This way, I can see how close to breaking all the Wards are, even if they aren't mine as a Priest. As the Wards go away, the red bar is revealed, as the red bar goes down, you get black and die at zero. The problem with this of course is that the green bar would need to be partially transparent so that I could see if someone needed actual health under their Wards. Even a separate bar for Wards would help. Anything that lets a Priest know what his situation is before it gets to the "OH (@&*#" stage.