Dev Discussion GU73: Healers

Nature is really high for setup, but once you start refreshing you're good. I didn't have any problems healing USr yesterday on my nature toon, and she's only 196 right now. I was using Hybrid mastery with Martials Arts (which is her weapon all the time anyway, not specific to revamp. I would do a two-range hold between each setup for power back, and then while flourish (refreshing) is on CD, you have time to do a couple of three-hold ranged combos and one priority heal no problems.

That said, if dps ignore mechanics (hallways were smooth as butter even though troll wasn't stunning adds, G Ghost was a joke, lol) no amount of healing will save them if you're trying to solo heal. It didn't matter how many times i shouted at people (in chat, not actually shouting either, lol) to block on skull and stop killing each other, they wouldn't listen. The tank and troll did though, which was nice. Bottom line, I think most of these problems step from players ignoring mechanics, not from a lack of healing potential (at least according to what the devs are shooting for, namely, not going back to the "I can heal you through anything" days).

Now, I haven't tested healing on my Celestial alt (that's gonna happen today) so I can't speak for Celestial. If you go with power mastery and try to pull off a lot of combos, I have a feeling it's going to be a problem. And that's not cool. Personally, I tend to play Celestial by just using the first portion of the combo in healing role, so I'll probably choose hybrid anyway, but I also want to test what it's like using power mastery and combos, because that should be a legitimate playstyle, and pretty much the only way anyone can battle heal.

Its not a legitimate playstyle. I even tried hybrid to put in weapon combos to try to accomodate for high power usage, but it still doesnt work. Well it can work its just you have to play very carefully and use alot of sodas, supply drops, and even sidekick for power.

There is a fundamental problem affecting power with all healer powers (electric least affected). In general power costs are to high and HOT heals over time are to weak or inefficient.

Some problems.
1) difficult content often requires spamming heals and does not give much time for combo building.

2) HOT again are to weak in general. This really hurts powers that relied on HOTs, sorcery, celestial.

Some recommendations

1) Decrease power costs

2) Increase power pool

3) Give Hybrid role some improved power regeneration for support classes.

4) Decrease combo power consumption for Celestial

5) Turn most 4 person heals into full 8person heals for all healer power sets (ex admonish).

6) Increase the burst heal strength of some of the powers (ex admonish)

Shifting into Insectoid Form lowers my resto by 700, is that intended?

I solo healed US as Nature as well, and while I definitely noticed the HoTs were a lot weaker, my biggest complaint is when people got KO'd (Gentleman Ghost) and a great many apparently had their colas on cooldown, it was struggle to bring them back up to a safe range fast enough without emptying my power bar because Blossom without Pheromones is pathetically weak.

Dunno if its just posted before, but here some things i found on sorcery.

I have 2 Arsenals, 1 for DD 1 for Healing, when i switch to DD, summon Fury, switch to Heal, i still have the Fury out, but not skilled as Healer, same when i try to test Watcher. I've heard it from other ppl too.

Other thing is, when i switch from Heal to DD, i'm still marked as Healer, with my DD loadout etc and my Skills deal damge and healing. Its not so funny to change atm.

Is it intended for sorcery to have 3 powers that can be blocked by allies causing no damage? This seems wrong

Nature dps:
When you use serpent call - harvest or thornburst - roar.
The dot will keep going after roar.
So you get the extra damage from the dot and from using roar on the dot.
I think this is what makes nature overpowered at the moment.

First time doing a raid tonight since Stats matter and i noticed straight away. Took me a while to figure out what was happening. Surely this cannot be intended. it heals the 3 closest even if they don't require healing and just wastes power. at 300 power cost it's hardly a cheap power

Haven't tried to raid with the changes yet but having trouble keeping an experienced group up in alerts. {2 dps 1 tank]
Power is a constant consern. HoT is nonexistant and burst is not as effective. Even though full points in heal tree and completely Special forces modded with 200CR gear.

Both. With 2 healers in USE its a waste for me to go in as celestial. But for USR solo there are some difficulties with celestial but with sodas and supply drops I can get by.

However I was healing USE with another electric player and it was ok. Doable. And solo healing electric for anything that is not elite can be done by almost any skill level. However still takes sodas/supply drop usage.

The question is it passive power regeneration that is the problem, or is it power regeneration from weapon that is the problem, is it power cost in general, or is it maximum power pool?

For me its the power pool and power cost that greatly affect all healers

My guess is the power problem is coming from two sources.
1) Healers don't want to put SP into Might/Power when Might does nothing for their stats. If power was a separate stat then this would likely not be the case but since the choice was made to combine it with might to cater to the dps all roles will suffer with base power issues because of it.
Fix: either split power from might again or provide power with Res and Vit for fairness to all roles.

2) HoT have lowered effects & cooldowns. This leads to spaming HoT's hoping desperately to get useful healing out of the ability while instants are on cooldown. HoT used to be the main method to conserving power as a healer and now it is a power drain. The only viable means of healing is to only use instants of which leads to extremely stressful gameplay for everyone.
Fix: Significantly raise the HoT effects and match cooldowns to the instants. This will prevent spamming and significantly lower overall power use plus give healers time to use their weapons to regen power on their own which should offset the lack of points being put into base power for the most part.

Problem is on my same toon my dps side has about 7,000 more power than my healer. Why the difference? Specing into might gives power (as I agree it should) but spewing into Resto gives zero power which I believe is wrong. Traditionally healers always had the greatest power pools, no longer the case. With the weak HOTs and healing, who would want to sacrifice resto for power? Give support roles power with their stats.

electric pftt could use another power that can destroy objects. Only overcharge and volt bolt seem to destroy or damage objects. On daily missions i just use my weapon on tanks or planes. I'm testing other things too.

Also, vb and blast in pvp sometimes do zero damage to enemy players despite animation happening

The supercharge Regeneration for Nature is currently useless the way it is currently implemented as it takes way too long for its effects to start (2-3 secs) as compared as before which was immediate. The main point of this ability was that it is usable while controlled so it is mainly used when things really go awry and you've just been knocked down or got controlled and needs an urgent heal to save someone that can't wait for you to use your breakout ability.
The way it is currently setup you're better off breaking out and using 2 immediate Blossom. You'll have the same result quicker than Regeneration which has been made a useless supercharge due to its too long delay.

Last night I didn't have a problem keeping others up but i did have a troll but no tank i only have t8 mods being that i run 5 toons through out the week. Now i did do power might and it seems to be the way to go. The celestial and sorcery healers in my league are all agreeing the extra power seems to be more important the the extra resto.and most of us are running hybrid style seems to have the least amount of issues

My only problem is Ritualistic Word.

I never would have thought I'd say this. But.....healing is too easy. Even as celestial I had no problem solo healing jfae. Later tonight I'll try use. No one takes damage. The few times things got dicey I was kind of low on power and if someone else didn't drop a supply I would. Didn't even have to pop a cola. On my electric heal cr 197 with mostly 7 expert mods I solo healed us reg leaving both bosses up. This is without drinking a nutri or league buffs.

Idh prob w/ healing as far as power... and I use celestial/nature.
Wonder if ppl complaining about power cost/low HoT ticks have the stats to even complain.

Yes, we lost a lot of stats but tbh... healers were super op for a long time. Think people just aren't used to it.

I have a 200 CR/337 SP Celestial Healer and agree that the power costs could be reduced a bit. Certainly would be nice to remove the power cost on the combos. That alone would helpful tremendously.

I can solo heal the JFAr/USr but my power bar is usually at about 25%. Before the stats revamp, it was at about 80%. I rarely need to use a soder. It does seem like the heals in general are lower, ESPECIALLY the Priority Heal. Hardly worth using.

I tested all 11 weapons using the Hybrid system and using either their basic tap range or hold range attacks. Because WM no longer gives power back, it's useless to use ( which I think should be changed back for power regen ).
I performed fourtests:
Draining my power bar and timing how fast I could regen my power using the range tap
Draining my power bar and timing how fast I could regen my power using the range hold
Performed my rotation using the range taps in between and timing how long until I ran out of power
Performed my rotation using the range holds in between and timing how long until I ran out of power

Based upon my testing, ironically, I found Brawling hold range regen'd power the fastest. I didn't test using weapon combos as that would typically take too long in between needing to cast heals to be viable for actual combat.

SOOOO...I tried using the "Superpowered" option last night and spec'd into Might and Power. I did take a 5% hit on my resto, but I was able to still solo heal JFAr/USr and definitely had more power to spare when needed. This might be the best option going forward until changes occur, despite the description recommended hybrid for support roles.

In general, power costs are too high and heals out are too low. I understand you wanted to make content take longer, but that's counter productive. If a player plans on spending "X"# of replay badges on content, then the limited factor is time. Not a great business model tbh. I'm not saying the content should be easy, but it isn't. For end content players with high CR/high SP, other than the Elite raids, it's pretty straight forward...and it should be. That's the reward for the time and energy we have put in to building our characters up. I'm not crazy about content we've been playing for almost two months, over night taking longer. Yes, everyone is still learning their powers and as the DPS's figure out the best loadouts, that time will be reduced. Outside content and alerts take about the same time. Raids, take almost twice as long. About 22 mins, compared to 12 mins before.

Why was the Resto cut in half?