Feedback on healing in PQs: It appears that the TOTAL healing across all types of heals has been equalized... Normally, they aren't equal, because wards are never wasted, reactives suffer minimal wastage and HoTs suffer significant wastage. Note: When I say 'total healing' I mean total potential healing, if there was no wastage. Not how much healing is actually used/done. Wards are already inherantly 'stronger' since they prevent damage and are the only type of heal that can allow toons to survive hits in excess of their hitpoint pools. Reactives heal the instant after damage hits, so there is no 'lost time' between damage and heals. HoTs are either cast after damage takes place (a bad idea since you run the high risk of people taking extra damage before your hot goes off) or have wastage, because they are cast before damage goes in so the tick hits asap after damage does fire. Add to this, that wards and reactives have a duration of 30 sec where they are just waiting to be used and most hots last for less then 10 seconds, HoTs are already 'weaker' then wards and reactives and require much more active 'maintance' by healers. This is why, historically, the 'total' healing for wards was least, then reactives with HoTs having the most, theoretical, healing out. If the max healing on all three is identical, the actual healing for the weakest heals (HoTs go way down). Currenly, in PGs, no warden HoT ticks for double digits (and ALL warden heals are HoTs, they don't have any direct heals). When incoming hits are for 50%+ max health there is, it is impossible for druids to 'catch up' with damage taken. They're luckly to get a single target above the 50% theshold before the next hit comes in. Imagine if you changed tanking so tanks couldn't do anything except taunt or they'd lose hate. No dps, no utility, no defensive rotation... I remember when something like that was tested out, actually. It was quickly abandoned because tanks hated it.. it wasn't fun. Changing healing so healers have to non-stop mash heal buttons and nothing but heal buttons (and heaven help you if you have to interupt your healing to cast a cure or joust)... is NOT FUN. Lastly... when heals are percentage based there is, literally, NOTHING a healer can do to get better at healing. Gear doesn't help, AA doesn't help... if incoming damage gets higher? There is nothing, at all, healer can do to deal with it. Take that one step further and imagine it in live content... why give healers any gear at all? They don't have time to cast anything besides heals... and the gear doesn't help them TO heal... it would drive healers too other classes (or out of the game) in droves. The percent based healing in PGs drove me out of those.. and the only PQ I bother with any more is Hate.. and my raid geared warden can't keep the raid geared SK I heal for regularly alive in there any more. My husband plays a mystic (on the same raid force) and he couldn't keep the same SK alive on Scornborne either. One particular thing of note.. balancing healers is NOT about balancing the heal parse.... it's about making it so all healers can do the job.. since the heal parse only counts healing done (unlike the dps parse which counts all outgoing damage) and that some heals count before others and damage reduction doesn't show up on the parse and will actually reduce a healers heal parse... balancing the heal parse doesn't actually equate to all healers contirbuting equally
I have only been in one PQ since the healing changes, but my wards were reduced by about 96%. Not my idea of fun and I haven't been back in PQ. If they make that kind of change on live I will just find another game rather than rerolling as a dps.
I feel like this is a lot of effort for them to go through just for the sake of PQ's. Feels more like testing the waters as a possible "healer fix" than just a PQ Gimmick. I'll be blunt and just say up front I do not like it in any way shape and/or form. From a mystic stand point it's entirely screwed up. My group ward wards for less than my single target wards (opposite of normal) and is based upon my health (All the wards are). Not to mention Umbral Barrier (mystic prestige aa ward which has a higher ward value than Umbral Warding) is 33% vs. Umbral Warding being 45%. So basically if I want to heal to my full extent I need to ignore every stat but my health. This would mean swapping to older expansion equipment. I played with this some in PQ's the other night. I have at least 5 pieces of gear from prior expansions that would boost my health. Loose a ton of potency and other stats, but since those stats won't matter for healing... While wards may have a 30 second duration they expire long before that due to being used up in PQ's; and that is without it being a full group eating away at the group ward. Some of the heal values do not even match their descriptions. Some abilities say 10% and do 3%, others say 10% and mean 10%. It's not only just an issue for healers either. The dragon tree AA ward does nada in PQ's now. It's 3%... Sorc wards same thing and any other non fighter class that has heals (summoners, bards, etc). All things that make a healers job a lot easier. There is also a huge affect on power regen. Sacrifice does next to nothing, maelstrom does next to nothing (heal or power wise), and spirit tap doesn't work right (even though the description has not changed on it). I have not tried the warden tree or beastlord regens in there but I assume it is the same. While the power regen does not matter in PQ's if this is something that is intended for live that will hurt a lot of people. There are power drains everywhere this expansion. I should note that I've been into the PQ's now with mystic, defiler and Templar. So far Templar has the easiest time but it's a lot of button spamming to heal someone actually tanking the dragon and not much chance for anything else. Overall none of the healers I've spoken with like these changes.
I'd suggest, whatever fix is done to balance healing is run by more than just a select few folks. Seriously, if whatever fix is put into play "balances" healing by making healers equally ....screwed, I won't complain. I'll quit.
I wouldn't say it's a select few folks. Anyone 105+ can go into the PQ's to test them out and see how they feel about them. Though seems less and less are running the PQ's since this change. Only one that seems to fill up now is SoH and even that is a lot slower than it used to be. Whether that actually has to do with this change slowing PQ's down or just people loosing interest I don't know.
I wasn't specifically referring to PQs. We don't actually know that this is proposed balancing fix for the game at large.
You're right, we don't. However, it is my concern as it seems an awful lot of work just for healing PQ's. I can't recall any mention or complaint about how heals worked in PQ's nor as much effort put into anything heal related strictly for PQ's ever before. Certainly not enough for them to go so far as to ask for feedback about it specifically in discord.
Fwiw, I worry that they will ask...the WRONG people if that pretty bad system is okay. The last time they had a guy advising them that didnt know the difference between reactives and hots...
I know lots of nice people.. doesn't mean I want them fixing my computer, my car or operating on my knee
just wanted to point out about your healing explanation. yes wards are most efficient and HoTs are most tricky ones. buuuut .. wardens for exemple are designed to have multiple HoTs running at same time to prevent the fact that said target has no heal in any given time. also, HoTs are most efficent heals manawise. but whe you speak healing it feels u put clerics reactives and shaman wards so much higher. Reactives have their issues too. Number of hits, like wards. A HoT will keep going full duration. reactives and wards might deplete a lot faster and a while back .. they could deplete before your spell was up again. so that was balanced that way. All I can say about the current healing in PQ is that .. as PG .. it feels a different game (less than PG though) I don't want to have to play differently on 2 types of fights/instances. I checked. all in all .. small warden spell will heal for around 21% or max health with hierophantic doing 96% of max health (entire duration) .. but that was always the warden issue ... full of small ticks. with the potency increase to the roof, we got used to being able to full heal anyone in an instant. So healwise, wardens must be one of the best. Just because we have so much ticks running all the time, it's easy to keep a group alive (as long as damage isn't higher than Hp of course). wardens were one of the only classes who could easily solo heal phoenix with the curse on .. almost full fight. templars and defilers could too .. but struggled more. and not sure about furies, but I think they don't have enough HoTs to keep up. so yeah ... wardens are heal gods. But in PQs we are back to reality were heals weren't that high. I kind of like it. buuut it also demands that u rethink your heal rotation. and I don't like it. I don't want to feel like I need to know 2 heal rotations if I'm in PQ or heroic/raid. I don't mind that my ticks don't fully heal .. it's even nice in a way (would need to get used to it again though) but I'd prefer something normalized through all content. Last thing. I wonder how to make %based heals being able to get better in a different way than just better quality of the spell and how to make AAs relevant with % heals ? I kind of don't like .. because ... if we start to need to heal more to keep group alive because our heals heal for less. it also means we'll have less downtime to dps. so we won't feel our toon getting stronger with more stats. but also .. if done poorly .. people could end up again being able to heal 100% heal with any heal (and we don't want that)
and you're wrong in saying none of wardens ticks are double digits. Our clearwater current isn't %based. it still heals with potency (the ward is %based though) and the fae heals seem also to heal for full. still I don't like some stuff, like howling with the pack heals not depending on our damage .. and all that. havig everything %based kind of means u don't need to work anymore. Any healer with enough HP could come and do the job .. and that would feel disheartening
It's not that you don't 'have to' work.. it's that you CAN NOT. That's even more depressing. What you see is what you get... if it's not enough to do the job, well, you're sol.. 'cause nothing you do will change anything. Box healer toons with dunking birds on the heal buttons and you're set.
For warders it creates a situation where upgrading your gear could prove more of a detriment to your primary role than a boon. Like I mentioned in a previous post I could swap out multiple pieces of gear to prior expansion stuff (or even pieces older than that) and gain health. More Health>More Wards. I'd simply never upgrade them and I don't think that's something the dev should be encouraging.
Yes, you get hp's from enhanced vigor but there are still older pieces that, while loosing potency, will still net you more health. Like I mentioned before I took them into the PQ's strictly to play around with the healing.
