Dev Discussion Episode 33: Rewards and Artifacts

The idea of this artifact is not to augment your priority heal. The idea of it is to entirely and completely change the way you use that ability. It goes from a button-mash-when-things-go-bad to a hit-it-once-and-focus-on-other-things kind of deal. The heal-over-time from the pet isn't that strong but the first instant heal becomes more or less enormous.

I can see not liking it. I can see this artifact isn't for everyone. But I also get the some people find it useful.

I haven't leveled mine yet-- It doesn't seem to be a "must have"... though i'm thinking it's really good combined with arbiter of destiny or flood of power.

I like the Orb of Arian in theory, and like many players, I find it to be one of the better healer artifacts... at level 160.

And yet, like so many players, pre-level 160, I find it to be more of a detriment than a help.

The x3 heal for x3 power gives a much needed powerhouse single target heal. And yet, tapping your power reserves like that makes for a few moments where the rest of the group will need the pet to top them off as well while we recover Power, and the 50% priorities heals just don't cut the mustard.

I would humbly suggest a minor tweak that would make the artifact, in my opinion, far more usable the whole way along, rather than just at level 160.

Level 80: Spectral Acolyte casts Priority Heal at 100% of your Priority Heal every 1.5 seconds for 3 seconds.
Level 120: Spectral Acolyte casts Priority Heal at 100% of your Priority Heal every 1.5 seconds for 6 seconds.
Level 160: Spectral Acolyte casts Priority Heal at 100% of your Priority Heal every 1.5 seconds for 9 seconds.

It ends at the exact same place. And mathing out the total value of the heals, the level 80 by healing for twice as much but for half as long works out to be exactly the same amount of healing. The level 120 lands 4 100% priority heals, instead of 6 50% ones the way it currently does, giving it just a marginal increase. The level 160 is identical to the existing level 160.

But this way, it becomes a go to "Oh Crap" button when a large spike of damage comes in that only hits part of the group (like people who don't block during Sea Beast's slam). Lowest immediately tops out, and then every 1.5 seconds, somebody else is catching a priority heal, while you focus on the broader group healing to keep the entire group up.

In my opinion, that minor tweak would make it infinitely better while leveling, without changing it one iota from it's final and balanced state.

Additionally, a tiny tweak that would make the Orb of Arian infinitely more appealing.

If we use the priority heal while the Spectral Acolyte is already up, dismiss him and summon a new one, refreshing the pet instead of ignoring it. Especially once we hit that 9 second duration, there are just too many times where we might need the priority heal again while the Acolyte is already up. And blowing our entire power bar to cast it, only to watch our Spectral Acolyte throw out one last heal and then float away, kinda blows.

Think of it like, well, any other heal in the game where there is a burst heal followed by a Heal Over Time. Galvanize, for example. Burst heal plus 3 second HoT. If you use it again after 2 seconds, you get the burst heal and then you get a new 3 second HoT that overwrites the old one, resetting the duration, rather than having the HoT just get ignored because 'it's already active'.

That's how the Acolyte should be: refreshed with any Priority Heal usage during the duration, rather than ignored.

And I still absolutely feel that those 50% priority heals just don't work well enough to balance out the huge power cost; it needs to always be 100%, but with shorter durations at the lower breakthroughs so that the total healing provided stays equal, but more useful in it's distribution.

Doesn't particularly matter for me now that I've got mine to 160, but working with it between 80 and 159, I found that quite often I had to remove the artifact because it was hurting more than it helped.