Lets talk healing balance

* Hi, I've created this thread to talk about the imbalance in power that healer sets currently have. I am sick of having Nature or Celestial as my choice of healer power when it comes to hard content simply because the other two power sets are not viable without causing strain on the rest of the group or content design makes it borderline impossible. My points expressed here are with the ability to solo heal with them as this is the current 'meta'.

I am not alone in my opinion even if others don't realize it, just look at the hundreds of DCUO videos posted on youtube - what healer powers are used for difficult content and do you see a second healer required if it isn't Nature or Celestial in difficult content?



First off I just want to say if you think all 4 current healing power sets are some what balanced and have their own little niche this isn't the thread for you. There is a massive discrepancy of power between Sorcery, Electric and Nature, Celestial through what they offer and how to setup the intended / most effective way to heal with them. This may be difficult for people to realize if they don't run DCUOs most difficult content on a regular basis. There is also a massive discrepancy between the difficulty of elite content between episodes and the way it's designed has a big impact if Sorcery, Electric or even Nature is viable.

All of the power sets have a few similarities since the Electric changes, they all have a 4 man shield, a priority heal, a useless long cast and a super charge that restores health and power. The main issue is the poor reliability of the intended design of the power set in comparison to Celestial. Most of my comparisons here will be to Celestial because it's the best power set to heal with in the majority of scenarios for reasons I'll explain later.

All Powers
With all power sets there is an imbalance of range on how far a heal will reach someone. This is mainly the reason why Celestial is so powerful, Renew and the Admonish / Blight combo will heal as long as the person has rendered on your screen. This is completely broken and unfair compared to the other power sets especially with the low cooldown on Admonish. There are even inconsistencies within the Celestial power set but more on this later...

Sorcery
With Sorcery you have quite a few unique options of healing that the other power sets do not have such as Soul Siphon, Shard of Life, Circle of Protection, Watcher, and Soul Well. The problem here is that some of the options here require too much set up or require a unique situation to be useful;

Soul Siphon and Soul Well require a unique situation, without their respective requites they are a waste of power and are inefficient to use. Soul Siphon single handily allows Sorcery to be viable in ad heavy raids but requires an understanding of how the power reacts since it's a cone type heal which makes your positioning crucial. Soul Well is just a waste, little healing unless ads are killed in the vicinity by which you or your watcher should have healed already.

Shard of Life and Circle of Protection require too much set up for what they deliver with the power cost. Shard is useless outside tank range, in content like SM who is going to stand near the tank in the later rounds, similarly with Circle, everyone will be spread about and the heals provided by Circle are not as effective as a Savage Growth and Metabolism combo or Admonish cB into Consume Soul.

When people think Sorcery they think pet, the watcher is the strongest ability Sorcery Healers have because it can cast an 8 man heal that is as strong as Rejuvenate and has the render distance range (Renew/Admonish), Ritualistic Ward allows you to refuel the pet but it's cooldown is so long that because your other abilities are so weak/limited they can't support the group and results in less control of you preventing group deaths since you can only spam Rejuvenate so many times until you're out of power. You're thinking if just save your shields and super charges for those moments all would be well but those moments happen every 5 seconds in hard content boss fights you just cant keep up.

Electric
Unlike Sorcery, Electric is the most limited power set with what options you have and even less unique abilities.
Electro Genesis, Bio Capacitor and Arc Lightning, some of these abilities like Sorcery require unique situations to use them and most of the time are ineffective to use.

My full thoughts for Electric are here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/lightning-guide.120/page-203#post-3723025

There are a few responses disagreeing with me but they haven't tried to use the power in difficult content so it's hard for them to understand the points that I made.

Nature
So now we arrive to the 'viable' powers starting with Nature. Nature like Electric is limited to what abilities it provides but the Pheromone PI makes that unimportant. Natures PI provides the best reliability for healing because it is so easy to apply and the benefits you receive are insanely powerful. Using Blossom, One stack of Pheromones and you heal a modest amount to EVERYONE, Two Stacks with a lucky crit you heal everyone to 100%. Three Stacks? You're laughing.

The worst thing with the 'recent' update to Harvest you can apply 3 stacks of Pheromones and it will not lose the PI and you'll get the same results as a Two Pheromone Blossom since Harvest reapplies it's own stack of Pheromones and uses it when the power is cast (Correct me if I'm Wrong). Harvest also allows Nature to become a controller which has been present for a while now and I do not know why it has not been fixed since Shard of Life had it's stun removed the same possibility should be here.

The biggest reason why Nature is viewed as the easy mode power is because of Bug Form with Hive Mind. There's something like an 80%~ power refund. The main weakness of Nature was that it was power hungry to set up those massive heals. Bug Form just eradicated that weakness and would've resulted in Nature being the most broken healer power set in the game if it wasn't for Celestial's Range and Concentrated Ground Super Charge. But if the content doesn't require either of what Celestial provides just stay Nature, it provides the easiest and best way to heal as long as you have good reaction time because all of the abilities have low cooldowns.

Celestial
This power set has it all, fast burst in Admonish and Divine Light, amazing super charges and tons of heal over times with A cBlight and both variants of Consume Soul. It is the most power efficient because of the combo system it has on some of it's abilities and the range it possess. There are no situation type heals that require you to do anything drastic and because of the range of the healing on Renew and Admonish you really don't need to.

Celestials only competition is Nature since you can basically spam with it. But for content like Survival Mode where range is king Celestial is the best choice here since you can heal everyone where ever you stand as long as there is line of sight with Renew and Admonish. With Concentrated Ground being the best survival ability in the game Celestial offers more than any of the other power sets could provide.

The versatility of the power set is on par with Sorcery but unlike Sorcery most of the heals are not that situational and you even have the option to battle heal which adds a whole new dynamic to the power set.

However range is the issue, how is balance achieved when Celestial has access to powers which lets them heal across the universe so to speak? Especially since Admonish has the lowest cooldown of all 3 heal 4 members type abilities and provides a 0 cost strongest in game 8 man heal over time. Blight cA also has this range but I wouldn't recommend using it because the setup time is too long in fast/unexpecting damaging content.

Consume Soul was built to have a higher initial heal over time then drop down to regular heal over time numbers, for WOTP cCS it's even higher so whenever heal over times are applied for Celestial you get so much more efficiency in casting the powers than you would against any of the other powers including Natures Savage Growth / Metabolism. (I think both variants of consume soul have this feature, correct me if I'm wrong but I definitely know WOTP cCS has this)

There are also inconsistencies with the range of powers in Celestial, since only a few of its powers have that range was it intended or is it a bug? Divine Light has the worst range of all the power in Celestial however its still the highest in compared to other abilities in different power sets and the effect is very powerful and efficient in comparison.

All Powers

I think to solve some of the issues all powers need a standardized range setting. Whether it be give the range of Celestials Renew and Admonish to Sorcerys Rejuvenate and Ritualistic Ward, Electrics Bio Surge and Bio Capacitor and Natures heal over times (Giving Blossom that range will just be completely over powered)

This may be harder to judge for the unique powers in Sorcery and Electric and I would say Nature doesn't require this treatment to any of it's other heals since the Pheromone PI is very easy to use and is more practical than any of what these powers offer.

For Sorcery and Electric I would argue Soul Siphon, Arc Lightning should get the the extended range. I would also say to give all 4 cast time powers this range as well and reduce the cast time by a second or so or give it a better effect while casting. The heal over times from Bloom and Invocation of Renewal are not that useful at all.

For the other abilities I've mentioned like Circle of Protection I'm not sure what to suggest since I tried that with Electric and many people said Electric would lose it's identity if it went through. There is a struggle in the community to decide whats good for the power set in comparison to what people now like about the power set even if it inferior to it's counterparts.

The devs stated with the update they are changing power costs and power mechanics in general so there's no point in discussing that until after it hits test. But currently if you're not Celestial or a Bug your abilities don't provide that much power to practical use efficiency unless the design of the content is favorable to your power set. For example, Sorcery was very viable in Throne of the Dead because there were a ton of enemies for you to cast Soul Siphon with, the arena was small and the end fight basically required two healers anyway so there was nothing straining the group being Sorcery because all of your abilities could be used effectively, the areas in DWF are similar but the power suction mechanic ruined viability completely.

Besides from range changes I'm not sure what is actually feasible to suggest since they may not want to spend resources going over support roles but I thought since Stats Matter is coming maybe they will spend time going over Support Roles.


My opinions on the viability of the power sets have come mostly from my own opinion and just discussing with other people how they felt about the power sets.

I have a fair amount of experience using each of these power sets and hope you don't think my opinions are just excuses that I can't do better but feel free to disagree and discuss successful loadouts you've used running difficult content in current relevancy. May that be Prime Battleground to Nexus to Paradox Wave to Throne of the Dead to even RNGseid War Factory. I would love to see it.

I can only say for Sorcery: Since they wont give Sorc an 8 man heal that isnt channeled(IoR), I´d go with:

Rejuvenate - Reduce -alot- the power cost. Its just too high.
Ritualistic Word - Halve the cooldown. If you dont have alot of range, you should be able to at least cast your heals faster.
Soul Well - Better HoTs and allow -much- faster stacking. By the time you cast the third SW, the first one is almost over.

PI's:
Bad Karma - buff its on-hit-heals and make it last longer, like SW duration.
Golden Soul Aura - give it a longer duration, like they did to RSA(not 5m long, just longer, like Ice Armor´s 48s)

Debatable:
Circle of Protection - Better HoTs, even if the sigil(not the sparks) duration is made shorter. Thats a hit I would take.
Ritualistic Word - Yeah, again. Keep it as a 4 man heal, but make the 3 ticks 8 man.

Is this for PvE and PvP in one swoop? Because though you mentioned flexibility and range problems, you forget there's actually little efficiency and effectiveness. Rarely do the two concepts actually converge and play out well.

Correction on Celestial:

Consume Soul and the cleansed counterpart have the same exact base heal values.
The only difference is that Consume soul.is slightly cheaper and therefore the third most power efficient heal in the powerset.
Malediction cBenediction being the first, and Admonish cBlight being second most power efficient.
Though Healing over Time may be good in PvE, its exactly what hinders it in PvP minus the lack of good burst available.
It also can do burst healing but its very taxing power wise and hence you need combos to bump your efficiency up.

Other than that, spot on.


For Sorcery:

I've never had ANY issues with the powerset for healing.
Its main strength is localized burst and hot but there are ways you can definitely heal ALL Content and do it with little power used.


For Nature:
Its 1234 in human and bug form. Always has been.
Spam harvest and do cross poll for the waves/echoes. That's it.
You don't get 80% power back BTW. Its more like a base of 35%

I forgot to mention this is mainly for PvE. I stopped PvPing after Season 3 was dropped so I don't really have any current opinions in regards to that.

I know consume has the same base values but I'm sure WOTP cCS (Ordinary CS not sure) 1st heal over time tick is higher than the rest.

I've tried Sorcery in DWFe at relevancy, there was just too much damage going on for the long cooldown of Ritualistic Ward. When the ads explode you literally have no way to heal the entire group efficiently and because of the pools placing CoP was difficult. Hoping for the watcher to regen power during the cooldown of Ritualistic Ward wasn't really ideal.

For bug form I just looked at some of my videos and looking at the numbers for the power back its much higher than 35% but probably isn't as high as 80%. But it might as well be 80% because power drain is not noticeable lol.

Bug form you get a lot of power back and more for every allied healed. It depends on your vit so you will see +500 and +26 +23 +27 so it varies. If enough allies, you can literally spam your powers and get MORE power back than what it took to use it. I believe the small tics are roughly 1/100 vit +/- 5.
Also, it ticks me off seeing people using bloom as a heal. It's like electrics using ionic drain...

Hey, what did Ionic Drain ever do to you?

N

Nope. Same base heal on the burst of CS and cCS. The efficiency of cCS is actually about the same as Divine Light which makes it kinda pointless to use unless you wanna string hots together or stack them.. even then, cleansed curse is a knockout heal that's stronger than consume soul and it does stack.
worth mentioning Glyph stacking/alternation is far superior to CS/cCS stacking for nearly identical power usage PcDL is OP as a healer. 25m range with individual glyphs having a range 3m and a stronger burt than Divine Light. Cooldown is way shorter too which is nice, so you can get two off in the period of Divine Light's cooldown.

That's also why I said base of 35%. Not a flat 35%
Vit and allies affect the powerback mechanic but at the base, its 35%.

For Sorcery its all about using adds to your advantage in DWFE.
You shouldn't need circle on the group unless the tank is repositioning the fight. If you have a second tank, put it on the tank and use Shard of Life on the other tank.
Rit word is an ally heal. No clue why people are oblivious to that. Soul Siphon is bread and butter there and so is Soul Well stacked.
use boon when necessary. I used to use Baleful in healer role. Its not common, but its got a pretty nice supplemental hot and if it hits all the adds, that's hot for days.
Though, Grand Summoning is your SC of choice in DWFE. Grand Watcher throws out big heals and good bursts of power.
using Rit Word does power him, so its not bad.

I tried it out and you can't clip it and the heals are very pathetic. People have 20k plus health tanks have 30k plus and ionic drain heals you of 200 per tick. Bosses hit hard and here I am giving you fetus heals instead. (Not baby heal... fetus heals)

You do realize that there is a big burst heal at the end of Ionic Drain? And depending on your stats, it can be very decent.

Yes, it does give very nice burst at the end....too bad for a majority of content adds and bosses don't pitter patter hit, they do big damage quickly.
Channeled heals like Ionic or Invocation will more often then not get your group killed. Again for "most players"

Eh, I still use it. I like that burst heal. Lol, it's ok man. Some people just can't keep up with our epic healing skills

The healing powers are all more or less fine currently.
True, the range of some powers is kinda restricted, but thats ok.
Even in SM you can work with a electricity healer and if you run 2 healers it shouldn't be a problem.
Every other content has smaller rooms with enough range for all healing powers.

And about your restrictions of powersets.
Every power has some different options, but let'S face it. Every power has their cookiecutter-loadout.
But you have enough options to play different loadouts.
Most options have sorc and celestial I think, but even electricity hase quite some nice options for loadouts

Btw, Harvest does NOT stun, it encases... thats different to the stun of shard. (We coud argue if it'S "too op" with the harvest encasement or not, different story though)

Sorry, when I mentioned the ads explode I meant they disappear from the map, Soul Siphon is pretty much useless when that happens. You don't need the circle on the tank at all, that's a massive waste of the heal over time since there's limited options on healing the group as is in this scenario.

Ritualistic Word is used as a 4 man heal and heal over time but when it's on cooldown you don't have any other options if you take Circle and Soul with you. I could have tried stacking Soul Wells instead of Circle to see how effective that was though.

Only problem with running Grand Summoning is you're relying on that supercharge for most of your healing since you would sacrifice Circle, Shard, Siphon etc, building it up using it and wiping was basically DWFe because of the randomness of the mechanics in the fights, when you don't have super charge to use it your in a worse position unless you set up two armories for the situation. Even so Soul Siphon is useless when the ads disappear and Sorcerys other abilities do not support the rest of the group.

Do you see anyone hitting high rounds with electric healers? I've tried and like I said before you become a burden to your group.

Cookie cutter loadouts that are sub-par in effectivness compared to Nature / Celestial. I'm not saying to change the abilities the power sets have currently just to tune them to become more powerful and more forgiving to use like Nature and Celestials abilities.

Please do tell me these nice loadout options that work in hard end tier content in content relevancy at the time I'm pretty sure I've tried most options available because I really do want to make it work. It just doesn't compete.

PVE healing is balanced in my opinion well im not expert as electric but i saw ppl have solo DWFE as electirc healer so .....
Nature celestial sorcer are same good as healers but there is huge dif when we talk about DPSing .
Sorcer is nr 1 celestial is nr 2 nature and electirc is nr trush .
Devs have plans about power balance just give them time to make it right .

Please show me video proof of electric healers beating DWFe with the group CR being 168 max. No one completed it during then with electric I'm fairly sure. If there's no proof it probably doesn't exist, beating that raid with a power that has such a negative reception would warrant an upload. Beating it after the relevancy period is meaningless.

This thread isn't about DPSing and like I mentioned in the beginning of my thread if all powers were perfectly balanced why are there no videos of Sorcery and Electric healers beating hard content in CR relevancy?

PS :
Learn how to play before u post ( cry )

Hard content, the first two are not hard content. The third one is past relevancy and doesn't look like they beat darkseid. The following video on that channel they used a Celestial heal for the Omega feat and were way past relevancy. I can show you multiple Electric videos soloing easy content, I frequently use Electric too, I have a bunch of videos I can PM links to you if you like.

But It's clear you didn't read my first and following posts or understood them correctly.

I wont waste time arguing with you since you have no idea what you're talking about and are just posting to spite me.

Yea right shame i didnt recording last time when i was 168 lets face it bro u wrong .


You right dont waste time arguuing better use this time to learn how to play .
What is hard content ? There is no souch thing in DCUO .

Please stop posting irrelevant links here.

First video is normal mode, not elite so it doesn't matter. Second Video is a solo nature healer in again normal mode.

At this point you're just embarrassing yourself, unless you can post a video in the criteria I've mentioned previously please stop spamming in this thread.

Here, I'll mention it again so you can easily understand:

DWFe Solo Sorcery or Electric with the whole group CR at 167/168
ToTD Elite, This ones a bit more forgiving, you can use Sorcery easily here
Nexus/Paradox Wave at it's prime with a Solo Sorcery or Electric Healer.
PBG was doable with Sorcery back in the day but feel free to post that.
FOS2
Any SM that uses Sorcery or Electric past R11 without the support of a Celestial Healer.

Any other elite raid in the "Episode" era is not difficult.
An exception is any difficult feat that the "Episode" era produced within it's CR relevancy, Blackest Night feat etc.