This change is basically a straight nerf to all fighter survivability and hits the paladin class the hardest.. i'm curious as to the reasoning behind this and what if any planning there is to negate the effect of this hit.
This change pretty much makes sacrament, aid and prayer useless... the amount of health pallys have now the heals without crits are just not big enough to cut it. The ward without a crit is starting to become a lot less useful for the casting speed as well. I enjoyed TSF b/c our heals were actually USEFUL... and now they are are not worth casting anymore. The dev team needs to re-elavaute healing on a pally instead of nerfing ou healing capacity by closer to 75%.
If the reason is to balance our ability to solo zones they have fixed the wrong thing. I don't know about anyone else but I don't click my heals often when soloing easier heroic content, the power procs from T8 raid gear, and the lifetap / stonewill procs from T9 pvp / pve gear is what keeps me alive. If i was spamming heals with no enchanter i would run out of power very quickly. If the issue is PvP there is a system in place to balance PvP CAs and spells, they can just reduce the base #s of the offending abilities in PvP situations. My gut feeling is that the dev team doesn't quite know how to fix the marginalization of heroic content, by the current raid gear. This is a systemic problem that can't be fixed by nerfing one class or type of ability, it is an itemazation problem, the quality of gear obtained in raid zones is so far above the quality from heroic zones it either has to be VERY VERY hard for the casual environment, or largely trivial for the hardcore environment. My suggestion to fix this problem is to expand upon an already tried and true idea within EQ2..... make hard mode and easy mode heroic zones. Each could be balanced based on the expected level of gear of hte participants. Instead of alienating an entire class / archetype make more of a challenge for those geared people who theoretically have put the time / money into supporting / paying for EQ2 more than those who have lesser gear. I don't believe this would take all that much work from a design standpoint, simply figure out how hard x4 raid mobs hit and make the nameds hit a little less than that scaling up as the difficulty of the zones get harder. For example: the library end guy would hit nearly as hard as mobs like easy mode azara the seer hits. research halls hits as hard as easy mode roehn theer. Palace of roehn theer end guy hits as hard as HM palace content, or slightly less to compensate for hte lack of debuffs. The loot wouldnt even have to be amazing, the zones in which the content would require T3 quality gear to compete could have a chance to drop a T3 quality raid piece, but maybe more often drop masters / or a pretty good piece for an alt. Changes like this would require a little effort at first but I believe would help EQ more than trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube with the itemization problem.
I third this thread. What i would like to know is Why? And what do we get in return? More DPS? I hope Kiara can answer these questions for us. Though i have to admit, as much as this hurts us, imagine what the SK's must be feeling, they have bad heals to start now they have no crit heal. -snicker-
This is ridiculous. I rolled a Paladin specifically so I would have the flexibility of playing back-up healer when I wasn't tanking. I don't enjoy playing DPS. I like tanking and I like healing. Now I can only fill one role. I frequently solo heal zones already, and VERY often I find myself the only healer in battlegrounds groups. Those groups are now out of luck. In those cases I mostly stand back and heal. I play like a legitimate healer. What is wrong with this? This is honestly enough to make me unsubscribe. To recapture my old playstyle I'd have to level a warden and then I'd have to regear, reskill, and complete the 2500+ quests I have just to be back at even. This is unacceptable.
This change is going to take our healing back to where it was a couple years ago, back when some of us didn't even keep the spells on our hotbars. We were told that such a scenario was not the intended vision for paladins. So they drastically lowered casting times on our heal spells to make them worth using. Now, to simply make them significantly less effective, is essentially reversing that change. Sure, they cast faster than they used to it, but for minimal gain. This change is directly at odds with the previous statements on how they want the paladin class to utilize heals. The ONLY heal spell we have that I can see being a little bit more powerful than it should be is Divine Favor. I don't think it was ever intended to be a full heal, which is essentially what it is now with decent gear. A much, much more balanced change would be to make just this spell unable to crit. Even with only potency affecting it, it should still get most of us up to around 50-60% health, which is enough to give healers a second chance.
So basically paladins get the shaft on heals again, and INQ still get higher dps then some melees and critical heals?
Imho this change is pretty much an outright nerf to paladin survibility. The heals a paladin gets should be altered/changed as this change reverts us back to the same issues we had preior to the stats consolidation where 90% of our healing power was useless Paladin Aid (Single Target heal) This is a single target heal with a 1.5s (0.75s with AA) cast speed - in current game mechanics it is under used. With its fast recast you can spend a large portion of time spaming this in order to generate healing power. This is massively power intensive and takes paladins away from the role of tanking and into the role of healers. As of right now with it criting it has been used more as your "go to button" when you take a damage spike given it can crit quite high Once crits are removed especially for higher content this function is effectivly been rendered useless. Paladins do not *want* to spend all our time clicking this button it is an ineffective use of our time. the crit made it useful to deal with spike damage - it is now useless again. Prayer of Healing This is perhaps my favourite spell of all, in its current state due to the high crit chance I was able to top up my group after an AoE hit allowing the healers in my group to cure first - this allowed my group to survive better and imho was the perfect paladin spell as it protected your entire group. With the crit chance removed the amount returned is making me rethink the red adorn and AA points I have invested in it. a heal of 2-3k to the group is laughable with the amount of health avaialble to people now. Sacrament It has always been our slowest heal, with the high crits it slipped nicely into a secondary lay on hands role of you damage spike and help the healers in putting you in the green again. The heal crit change means it has become useless once more - spending the inordinate amoutn of time casting for a mere 3-4k heal is pitaful - even on live I was often made green by the healers before this spell was even cast. This spell is rendered useless again. Lay On Hands The recast on this means it isn't up all the time - and whilst it is better than it used to be having a heal of 12k when you are buffed up to well over 30k in a raid just doesn;t cut it. It has and never did scale correctly. this should have always been a % based heal which scales with the amount of health a paladin can get as the more geared you are the less and less useful this spell is. Demonstration of Faith This will always be a sore point in terms of healing power as since its a ward it will always be removed first so all heal parses are inflated by it. but what those heal parses do not show is 1.5s casting speed (too slow when its a spell and interupts are not only frequent but expected) and for anythgin harder than the easiest instances its gone instantly. What crits gave this ward was a nice little boost so when you got slammed for a 36k double attack (2x 18k) the ward if it was up and full allowed you to survive what potentially you coudl have eaisly died from. Obviously crit bonus didn't not effect as other heals; but they did hep wioth what is often in raid fights pretty much a one shot deal. In conclusion the heal crit and the massive heal crit bonuses were obtained from raid gear and NEEDED in raids in order to survive. In herioc instances however they were very much overkill and I can understand the reason behind the nerf. However in raid terms where mobs hit you for a lot harder this crit bonus was NEEDED You should rework all the paladin healing spells and AA lines in order to bring them more into scaling correctly against both raid and herioc content. As of right now what you have done is nerf paladins in raids because they were overpowered in group/pve/bg settings at TIMES. So... what do I suggest? First of all all the heals need to be less of a "need to spam" issue in order for the player experiance, somethign you can cast to increase your survibility but not needign to spam these abilities constantly in order to obtain the benefit from them. Secondly they need to be balanced and SCALE so they are as viable in raids as they are in herioc without making one of both overpowered. I shall draw your attention to the regenerating wards on blessing of the paladin as well as the group version on the crusader tree; they were perfectly in line in what a paladin was - a very small ward but one which was cast all the time - in essence it reduced damage by 250 but only every 5 seconds - a small but handy little ward which made us feel like real paladins again where we can do our job as we shoudl as well as "heal" at the same time. That is what we like - small healing bonuses that require little attention from us so we can contonue with the real role of tanking mobs. Suggestions:Holy Aid Change to a 3-5 charge reactive heal with a SMALL damage reduction on for its duration. example current: 2,000-2,500 heal Suggested reduction in heal to 5 charges of 200-250 with a 3% damage reduction. duration 30s recast 20s or something The healing power reduced significantly but it has more "worth"; in herioc setting it will help out the healers but not make them redundant. In a raid setting it will reduce the massive damage spikes somewhat but at the same not make healers redundant and because it has a SMALL componant of damage reduction it will be cast regually for a minor healing power but mainly for the DR. Sacrament In all honesty no-one will miss this ability if it was to disappear altogether since it no longer crits. Instead remove it as a heal entirely and perhaps make it into a small HP buff, i.e. recast 5min increase max health by 5% for 30s and make all spells interuptable/cast on the move. Those are just a couple of random thoughts but hoenstly removing this ability is also in the mix - after the chage this won't appear on any paladins hotbar. Prayer You should keep with the use I have and many others have to reduce the incoming damage on the GROUP in order to survive larger AoEs. Change its recast to 90s duration 15s - and have it "reduce all damage to group by 50% - if healer" so a paladin will work WITH the healers allowing them to survive far more powerful AoEs at close range. Similar to the guardian stoneskin ideal but more paladin (healer) helpful. You will gain same effect but not tred on healers toes by casting massive healing. Demonstration of Faith We like the ward - we hate the casting time, it also generates most of our healing power. If you were to remove this spell completly from our hotbars paladin healing will halve. However I do not suggest anythgin as drastic - change it to : Increase mitigation of self against ALL damage by 2500 for 30s recast 60s and increase max health by 5% it still maintains our role of decreasing incoming damage spikes but it does not heal and removes it from the healing list Lay on Hands Change to % based - that is all.Above all we want to heal.. but not spend all our time casting heals; work out exactly how much damage reduction you wish to give us by using heals and change our healing powers to act more like temp buffs granting a SMALLER heal benefit with a benefit that scales to the end game. I justposted a few suggestions I'm sure you can think of others. but if you send this change live without reviewing paladin heals you have effectivly nerfed our survibility in raids altering the fighter balance once more.
Just Like to say I don't support a major nerf of a class just because battelegrounds is not balanced take it away in battlegrounds if thats the issue dont ruin the game for the rest of the Paladins I have never played Pvp and feel greatly annoyed that such a lazy fix is carried out. If it has to happen then what are you going to do to restore our surviability? So much for consultation with players!
QFE IF there is a need for a change, make it a useful one. BUT, at the moment I can't even see a reason, SOE! And the discussion on our server shows I'm not the only one; and I'm not the only one who's feeling is that especially Pallys get crippled once more without a reason. Our chance to heal is not some imba utility; it's one important aspect that defines our class. I'm NOT complaining that we don't mitigate as good as Guardians. I'm NOT whining that we don't do as much dps as SK's or Zerkers. I'm even not complaining that Inquis can do quite surprising dps while both healing and curing. But I do and will consider consequences if main aspects that made me choose that class are taken away, especially - as said before - if there's no need to do so. Seriously: will you consider taking melee crit chances from the auto attack of Inquis and Furies, too? No more crit chances for spells of any other classes than mages? I'd like to hear their reaction. It's even harder to understand why classes are nerfed while others are enhanced a lot. I don't see a reason to "give Guardians some love" as their primary idea was to take damage and not to give it. But, hey, why not; I don't feel "inferior" if other classes are "better" as long as my class is what I expect it to be and always loved for. Stop f...n around with classes that are not out of balance. There's a lot of work to be done that'd help the game and the community more than that.
I would also ask for a reason. Not just a "it's not because of PVP or BG" because we want to know what it is for.
I think fellow paladins we can get around this, they are going to give us something. Instead of Legionnaire's Focus increasing healing crit bonus it will instead increase healing potency by x% (does 2% per point, so 16% with a total of 8 points) also with that if you trade 10 points in to get the increased Devout prayers (paladin tree) and Allied prayers (shadow tree last row) that would be a 15% increase in base healing for both normal heals on top of the 16% bonus. It will still give us a nice heal. Nothing like we have now, however, still something we can do.
If the heal spell is based on MINISTRATION, it should CRIT, PERIOD. That's all they have to do. Only ministration spells should crit, not the others. That will solve all the issues. If they don't want to allow that, we better get 50% base crit bonus for melee, or something, or it's making the class a LOT less useful. Even in TSO I speced for heal crit. I had 50% heal crit back then which was working pretty well, SF made it better of course. With everyone having 25k HP, a 2k heal is kind of ridiculous. How about doubling the base heal amount of aid/prayer/loh/sac ? There are ways to make it useful again, but I prefer the ministration route (all ministration spells crit, others don't)
Well when you consolidate heal/melee/spell crit into simply crit, you run into issues where pallys rolling at 100% crit are critting their spells for a lot. Couple points to make here. 1. Heals are supposed to be an integral part of a pally's surviability. Not allowing it to crit is tying one of our hands behind out backs. 2. So are you now going to remove melee crit from healers, since their DPS is too high? What about bards? I have high level of both class, so I am not asking for all around nerf bats. This is a continued fail architecture. Nerf one class, improve another, give nerfed abilities back at X point in the future. This is a really bad road to go down. You are telling hybrid classes that the way you are architecting them is through nerfs. Maybe should focus more on these types of issues and less on the F2P.
