After noticing, again, that my grp wards are barely bigger than my point wards, I did some rudimentary data diving. These data points are taken in a guild hall (without any weirdness from Chaos Leech) with all gear equipped. Notice how, in the tooltips, the group ward (Umbral Barrier) is nearly double the size of the point ward (Ancestral Ward). Yet, when cast, the spell watcher shows that they end up nearly identical. I took a second data point, also in the guild hall, with all armor removed, but weapons and jewelry still equipped. Despite a noticeable reduction in tooltip numbers the 'actual' numbers are nearly unchanged. Either something is broken, the tooltips are so erroneous as to be useless, there is some hidden mechanic that affects all heals (or perhaps just wards) AND affects different one differently, or there is some hidden soft beyond which getting more potency, crit bonus, etc makes almost no difference in the size of wards/heals. If things are broken, they should be fixed. If it is 'working as intended' then the devs should do us, the paying customers, the courtesy of TELLING us so. What is intended and the why of it should also be shared, though experience suggests the only answer will be silence.
Very interesting. I'm not a number cruncher usually, so how come unequip armor but not weapons and jewelry? Also what's Chaos Leech? I've noticed that, having replaced a lot of my armor and jewelry to harvest better, doesn't mean I do a whole lot less damage to mobs on the landscape, in AC specifically. There's also a delay I"ve noticed. If I ignore a mob and let my merc attack it while I finish a node, hardly any damage is done. But if I hit it just once and go back to harvesting, the merc eventually starts damaging it. Oddly Kliphin seems not to behave like that, but no other merc I have does that. His programming seems unique and he behaves differently compared to Cla'zakala. I'm guessing there are situational caps. Like the "this encounter doesn't benefit from resolve" effect on many mobs. In the case of the merc, I'd say its due to anti-botting rules. But mercs may be the reason still. If I use Kluuron and he wards me every X minutes, and he's untrained and has little armor yet, the effect can't be very low or I"d stop using him before he gets better. There were a few notes during KA about wards getting a bleed through effect. I didn't pay enough attention at the time. Maybe by now the bleed through is just calculated simply by lowering the maximum effective ward. Pure guessing. It's very interesting.
I took off some of my gear to reduce my stats to see the difference it made (or didn't make) in the wards. The wards were cast in the guild hall, out of combat, so there were zero detriments, zone debuffs, etc in play. The numbers are raw unadjusted by any situational variables, which is why I did the tests there. It's pretty clear there is a cap, but it especially frustrating since the ONLY official information we've gotten about healing in the past year or so is 'more potency = bigger heals'... and the numbers show even THAT isn't really the case.
I'm noticing there has been some fancy footwork about the Critical Bonus since PoM and it seems to be continuing... equipment that used to have it, now doesn't have it in that slot... that sort of thing. It even gets wierd when the plat infuse gives an item something like 7 CB. Eveni n PoM, people were already saying that CB will make a bigger difference than Potency. My armor as a mage doesn't have CB, or negligible amounts from infusing. What if you take off everything on the right, or across the top?
Tooltips have never taken crit bonus into account. And even if they did, there's absolutely no reason why the group ward, which the tooltip shows as almost double the single target ward ends up about the same size. Well, no reason unless the tooltip is wrong or there is some mechanic the devs have declined to inform us of in play.
1.2-1.5 bil is pretty much the most you will see on wards (I'm sure there are exceptions). It is kinda a catch 22. It is annoying for shaman but if they were unlimited in growth, they would never, ever break and you'd need even more bleedthrough.
Wards have been in the game from the beginning. Why do they need this kind of hidden number and cap now and not before? Never played a healer but curious
There are fights where my mystic's wards break 10 or less seconds after they're cast, even with the 50%+ bleedthrough all raid fights have. If heals (of any sort) are capped 1) they devs should actually SAY as much, especially since the devs have said more potency = bigger heals. If heals are capped that statement is a lie. 2) it means that gear upgrades do absolutely NOTHING to increase healing.. even as incoming damage increases...
My numbers are very similar to yours (I'll check it tonight). AND they haven't changed after I upgrade my gear and stats. So I think you have found something!
wards are capped at roughly 1B for 2 years now iirc https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/diminishing-returns-on-wards-when-value-exceeds-1-billion.584307/
Incoming damage and hitpoints have gone up... and it seems heals are still at the old cap... So healers are, effectively, getting zero benefit to their primary 'job' from gear upgrades...
I'll check my Templars heals tonight to see if we are running into the same sort of marginal or near zero gain....though I'd venture to say this might primarily be a ward issue (which sucks considering how many wards Templars have now). Just gotta love the ever growing list of intended/unintended consequences of chaotic leech with no clear path for solid improvement let alone any sort of clear information.
It's harder to tell with heals, since you have to have somebody that takes enough damage and DOESN'T die to see how much heals actually go off for. The tooltip size of heals is generally bigger than the tooltip size of wards, so unless somebody can take a hit in excess of billion points and survive to be healed, there's no way to test a cap on non-wards. Sure there is the incoming heal 'debuff' in all instances, but since the devs have declined to tell us how it actually works, it's effectively impossible to get good data in instances about what is 'happening' with heals. While capping heals (of any type) is a bit of a problem since it means healers can't 'get better' at their primary job, the bigger issue is that the devs refuse to tell us about these things. Heck, it feels like they're denying them with comments like 'more potency = bigger heals' when it's pretty clear there is some sort of cap on heals.
Been that way for longer than that I believe, but until 2 years ago no one but a Channeler's single target ward could reach it. I remember my ward landing for just over a billion back at either end of AoM or in ToT and thinking how the hell could I ever use all that lol. (It was a Myth crit or something, it did not always land for that). But now 140k+ potency later, that same ward still only just goes over a billion.
We have deduced that they're capped.. but devs STILL refuse to give us useful information about current healing mechanics, aside from, literally, telling us 'more potency = bigger heals'. That 'advice' is false, if there is an actual cap, btw. Additionally, incoming damage has gone WAY up and there are fights (even t1 and t2) where that billion pt ward explodes in 10 sec or less. The devs need to address the issue.. either take the cap into account when designing fights or lifting or increasing the cap. Unfortunately both of those take them acknowledging the cap.. which they seem excessively reluctant to do...
