(edited by BrokenGlass.9356)
Effectiveness of the #6 key on all classes gets reduced by something like 30-50%
How about, no.
Again nerfing players innate healing is the wrong way to go about this. Changing the core of the game to promote healing, just brings us that much closer to the trinity. The entire reason heals are as good as they are is to promote self reliance so we don’t need outside healers.
except that ’zerk groups maintain scholar bonuses…
After rereading the entire thread it seems that there is still a simple fix here.
Vitality gets an internal logarithmic buff to healing received
—meaning the higher you stack Vit the bigger the heals are incoming to you, with a sharp upturn near the Vit cap.
Healing Power gets tied to boon duration (forget every other spitball I threw in this vein on page 1 please)
Effectiveness of the #6 key on all classes gets reduced by something like 30-50%
In effect:
-A character who stacks Vitality, gets a #6 key that works pretty much like it does now.
-A character who stacks healing power gets,
——a. increased boon duration
——b. increased effectiveness of self heals, roughly 3/4 of the self heal of a vitality player.
——c. increased outgoing heal effectiveness which stacks with the incoming buff from vitality.
the scaling of these options will certainly need to be tweaked, but I’m reasonably confident that these simple changes, will result in an overhaul of the defense stats and make them a viably option in all game modes.
I don’t really support combining the two (vit and hp) as the only fix. it breaks a lot of gear sets, and because of how expensive Zealot is to make, I spend a huge chunk of change (real world and in game) getting all the kitten watchwork sprockets… and if you make those selectable to some other gear that does not have the flavor…. I personally would be upset by the change (and before you say it, my opinion does not override the legions of players in this game, and I am aware of this.)
I’d like to mention that the changes proposed here better define the synergy of the play styles provided by, say, carrion, nomad, and zealot
The Zealot is a ‘glass cannon’, who when cracked, can act quickly and repair itself and others.
Carrion is a strong condi build, who when healed by the zealot can keep on keepin’ on, but without support from the Nomad or the Zealot, can’t take the heat like a toughness stacker, but can survive a mistake.
The Nomad is a strictly support and survivability set. It keeps itself up, and buffed longer than the others. But it’s complete lack of damage output means that a good ‘glass cannon’ can still win a fight against it by attrition, because eventually the cannon should run the nomad out of cool downs, and open them up to efficient burst.
Also, a thought occurs to me as I typed the ‘play style definitions’ above…
If all the changes I suggested were made, there should probably be an internal healing reduction to incoming healing based on toughness, simply because they take less damage.
—-Their self healing, or #6 key, should not be affected by this, but the incoming healing from other zealots and nomads should be reduced, and the effects of self applied regen should be reduced to help the balance of PvP.
(edited by BrokenGlass.9356)
I’m so glad that people are actually talking about this now. I’m still band-aiding all my bullet holes, and throwing out trash bags full of tear soaked Kleenex from all the crying I did over the petty mud slinging.
@Pax thank you. I’m so glad to know I’m not the only one that gets it.
As for the kitten mud slingers. Try not to knock the mountain of Dew cans off your desk in facroll nerd rage as I say this, because surely one of you will simply quote this post, and say right after a simply put sentance, that it means the exact opposite, so I’ll simply trust in the brain power of the majority of the readers here who are discussing what could be, and reasons for and against, (of which I have heard good arguments on both sides) to discern my true meaning.
Never did I, nor did any of the folks arguing in the positive on my general point, say that we are the arbiters of what should be.
What we did do is propose what we think would work.
Almost all of the detractors posting here have posts laced with sarcasm, rage, and misdirected hatred, probably stemming from a fear of change (probably why politics moves so slowly…)
Is healing power a wasted stat in PvE in the current state of the game? YES
Should healing power be a wasted stat in PvE? NO
Should the Berzerker, might stack, all DPS all the time, meta be nerfed? MAYBE
Should we force millions (or hundreds of thousands… idk) of players to change what they currently like to play? NO
Should we allow players preferred play style to matter in PvE content? YES
Is the current PvE content to easy? YES
Now I know the swinging of the nerf bat tends to be blocked by active mitigation, usually a torrent of rage , acting as an ageis (see what I did there) blocking change. This works to make change come slowly because the folks at A-Net like to be able to pay rent… and if a mass quantity of you speed runners up and leave, that becomes harder.
Is my proposal THE way to correct healing power? Probably not. Could the general concept of coupling healing power to boon duration be part of the big fix? I think so.
@ those who’ve mentioned it should be rolled into Vitality: I like this idea in general. but I think it will make vitality too valuable in the game’s current state. Will it be too valuable after it is professionally calculated and scaled by the team that DESIGNED the game we all love? Probably not. In truth A-net rarely jumps the shark.
@ those who think healing power is a useless and wasted stat: A-Net seems not to agree with you… and if a stat exists in the game, it should be worth something, sometimes in all game modes.
@those who don’t necessarily disagree with proposed changes for PvE but are worried about its changes to PvP: the condition ‘Confusion’ should be referenced here. Clearly it is possible to change the scaling for SPvP and WvWvW independent of PvE, and perhaps that’s required here.
@ those who think the game needs to be balanced at the encounter level: Your right. It does. But once it has been done…. when you ratchet up the mobs outgoing damage, and improve its AI, and make various AI’s work together…. healing power is still going to need a buff.
@ those who think the nerf bat should never be swung: Inflation sucks, as any American who is even pretending to pay attention can attest.
@ A-net: please read this thread to your design team, frustration, (witty parenthesis), foul hateful kitten and all. Because if they don’t know how we feel already, perhaps one of the ideas in here (for better or worse), will spark the creativity of the team that handles this kind of thing, and I’m betting that they will come up with something better than what any of us have said.
And thank all of you for bringing the spirit of this thread back to discussion once again.
And thanks in advance for all the polite responses.
Hey man, I hear you but, regardless of how annoying some elitist types can seem, the facts are facts. All though you, I and others would like a better healing capable spec, the fact is healing finding its way into the meta will be kitten near impossible if we can get through encounters w/o popping our personal, let alone a heal for others. My secondary is a Guard(shout) and you can still block, protect, and heal a pug group w/o H/pwr.
Only way healing power becomes a thing is if we cant dps our way thru stuff. And that means either a nerf to dmg or a buff to enemies. I prefer the 1st option (because I believe HoT update will provide the 2nd), but hear the rage now.
And asking for healing is not the same as asking for trinity…if it only includes 2/3
But don’t give up hope
I appreciate your realism here, but I’m spitballing ideas as a small part of a larger fix to the game. I didn’t title this thread “the one small fix that will make everyone’s every complaint disappear!” nor did I say that this change will make everyone always want to bring a Healing spec whatever.
and… errr…. of all the classes that can do that without ‘Healing Power’ guardian tops the list.
DISCLAMER: the specific numbers presented above, are RANDOM RECTALY GENERATED NUMBERS. I leave significant decisions of the specific numbers to the design team.
(edited by BrokenGlass.9356)
I feel as though the wide majority of responses have missed the point here. To a startling degree. Specific exceptions speak for themselves with civil tone, and good points.
In making explanations of specific theoretical cases, folks seem to think I’m saying things with words like, always, only, or never… these concepts are absolutes, and are not what I’m talking about.
Lets be clear on what I’m not saying.
A. I’m not saying we should have to have a ‘Healing Power’ guy in the group.
B. I’m not asking for my preferred play style to be buffed. Of my six level 80 toons, only one uses ‘Healing Power’ and its a ranger in Zealot gear, and it does not need to be buffed to any great degree. (Is it sub optimal? Yep. But you’ll appreciate it if you run fractals with me.)
C. I’m not saying that everything needs to be nerfed. I’m saying that there is no point to the 26th stack of might, so why would you use a skill that applies more might on a 25 stack, when it gives no benefit?
Now, lets be clear about what I am saying.
A. What would be nice, is if a person specced into healing power joins your PUG, and tells everyone that he is a support build, then people will have the chance to change their damage rotations to be more efficient because fire field blast finisher spam from everyone will not be required to maintain a might stack.
B. People should not be penalized for spending their time and energy, (and money, thanks gem store!) creating a build to help fellow players, only to be kicked from every group of elitist jerks. They should be able to bring a variety of builds, and be able to synergize with various combinations, not just all ’zerk, all the time.
C. A group of ‘Zerkers should be able to get their 25 stack of might… exactly as they do it now. But instead of blasting 50 stacks of might and wasting 25 of them into dead space… they should have a 25 stack simply maintained through group effort…. and really, if your stack fell to 24 stacks… that 1% isn’t breaking you.
Where the “nerf” to boon duration applies is in sPvP… or roaming in WvWvW. or Open World by yourself, instead of that 14 stack of might that just happens when you use your the same every time damage rotation, it comes out to say 7 stacks of might. Your putting up all the same amount of stacks, but they are falling off quicker.
In sPvP, that 7% dmg isn’t going to make or break you, because your enemy is equaly “nerfed”.
in WvWvW, that 7% dmg wont hurt you, because friendly players will, even when your roaming, show up often enough to help you stack it on up… and in 1v1, that guy is also down 7% dmg, so, back to equal…. again.
So… the only place where is actually harms you, is solo Open World content, which I highly doubt anyone is prepared to say, was to difficult.
I think folks are frustrated becaus I’ve claimed that what I’m talking about could change the way they want to play.
And yes boon stacking is easy, and everyone does it. I’m saying that it’s too easy. And folks all do it… so every blast finisher in a fire field past 25 stacks is wasted if another move has higher dps than that blast.
So if you can hand that job off to one guy… the others can spend time not wasting valuable dps time. Remember the 26th stack of might is wasted. Unless they remove that cap, and they definitely should not.
So if you shorten the boons…. which apparently never have time to help due to short fights…. then you NEED everyone might stacking…. or, someone with boon duration.
Currently healing power is weak, and we all agree that its weak.
So, shorten the boon duration of skills on all classes universaly. Then couple stats together.
This gives people a reason to take healing power. Because might stacking becomes hard without it.
Then, once people open up to having a HP/BD guy in the group, when you up the damage in encounters, it isnt as catastrophic a change. It increases the skill cap, and prevents faceroll play style.
So yes. The encounters need to be made more challenging. The fact that stack n’ whack exists is testament to this.
I’m proposing a reason to take HP.
Nike, thats more akin to the flavor of your post.
Im reasonably sure that Pax and I have a greater vision of what support can be… this is not a thread about what support currently is.
Well said Pax. Thats exactly why I proposed a solution to bring it back to PvE
Oh and.. yes regen should stack intensity. With an exponential logarithmic upward curve to HPS
I hear what you guys are saying about the encounters. They can be avoided with active mitigation. However, dead, dodging, downed, or rezzing ’zerkers are doing no dps for the aforementioned situations. So, if the presence of one full healing power build can make them dodge half as much, be downed half as much, ensure that no one is ever dead, and they are the dedicated rezzer, (rez boosting trait, and lowest dps) the uptime that he or she gives to the ’zerkers will definitely make up for the loss of a slot.
We have all met glass cannons, who seem to fire broken glass, at themselves…. we all know the warrior who dies evry time he tries to land hunderd blades….
Imaging that guy survives his way through his HB and realizes he’s taking damage, gets a good 45 sec of powerful regen stacked on him, aegis, and buys time for him to actually use his heal skill.
And I’ve already said that ‘healing power’ ought to have its coefficent upped… though 3k HPS is to high, I see your piint and agree. Due to the active mitigation, 1.5k HPS for a ‘Altruism’ main stat guy is about right. 800 HPS for a zealot, or 2ndary stat guy is great. If they up the damage of encounters, and they should, then they should increase the healing scaling much more. Though that moves things back to the holy trinity again, but the trinity is different, and not WoW, EQ, or whatever’s trinity of Tank, Dps, Dps, Dps, Healer. Its more…. Boon Aplicator/ HPS, Condi, Condi, Zerk, Zerk. And this can be filled as well by a few hybrid toons filling half of the proposed slots… like a hybrid condi support, and hybrid zerk support, together fill 1 support slot, and half of the 1 condi slot and half a zerk slot.
Thus makes things more dynamic. And rewards build creativity. Not just poppung onto metabattle, grabbing the “latest and greatest” clicking into your toon, and failing to play it correctly. Perhaps metabattle would have so many diffrent builds that people would have to read and explore the why of what they’re doing.
Now, im not saying that you esteemed reader, are that guy that im talking about. But I know you have dragged that guy kicking and screaming as he facerolls his keyboard through a level 31 fractal screaming “oh my gawd! Dodge the mossman! You know its comming!” Then proceeding to 4 man the content anyway.
In those situations, I go get my full zealot ranger with cleric trinkets and runes of altruism, and suddenly everyone but that guy actually gets their scholar bonus. And that guy just keeps barely recovering from the edge of death.
Now imagine a group with 4 dps, who know they can dps through the first big hit because the incomming healing will let them tank the dps. Delay the dodge, trash drops faster. Heal through the dps, boss drops faster.
Turning it into boon duration has all the problems everyone here has posted about. Coupling the two together makes the stat desirable, so some of us will want to loose a damage stat to take it. And I agree that the zerk meta does work better in an organized group… but this generates hate for longbow ranger and ds necro because the dps is selfish… I’m suggesting an alternative which allows zerk to go full dps, with virtually no support, if you bring a dedicated support… OR bring all zerk pluss support, and have everyone spamming the moves. Also condition based support, like blinds, will ben unnafected by the change. Also im not saying that a ‘support’ build ought to be nothing but…. however, if you want to bring an all support all the time build, the meta shouldnt punish you for it. In fact, they should be saying things like, “oh sweet! We have a support ele, let me swap out my phalanx strength, cause my extra stacks aren’t helping.” Then they can take a trait line focused on survivability, or dps, and not have all the builds hardlined into partial support roles. Then we wont lament ‘selfish’ dps classes like necro.
Folks missed what I meant, I think. (my fault for putting up so much text ;p ) I’m not saying that people are having trouble stacking might, in fact the contrary… what I’m suggesting, is that with the stats coupled (‘Healing Power’ + ‘Boon Duration’), only one or two players would have to focus on it, meaning that condi builds would be able to focus on stacking damaging conditions. And while ‘stats do not matter once combat stops’ this would be the first step in making them matter in just such an occasion. (ie: letting you bring 25 might stacks, fury, regen, swiftness, and ageis from the last trash fight to this one, making combat more reactive as all the ‘DPS’ can skip their might stacking rotations ((usually the only rotation most of them know)) and use the highest DPS rotation, which is much different at full buffs.)
And while I agree that healing power does scale poorly, and it should have its effectiveness increased… and while I understand that the A-net team is resisting this for fear of the trinity resurfacing, quite simply, it can’t due to how agro tables work. Even if they push the stat up to the point where a ‘healer’ becomes viable…. (and they almost are, as my Zealot ranger can attest) there cant be a ‘Tank’ as such.
also, this change, as I said, would require a rebalance of current boon duration. in Most cases shortening them by a lot. And making the new stat (call it ‘Altruism’) scale exponentially. so the 1 sec of protection I get from earth attunement in ‘Zerk gear, becomes 3 in Zealot gear, and 8 in Nomad. (or something like that, I’m not a math or coding major.)
The point of what I said, was how to make these stats, and this play style viable. not why it currently isn’t, for the Nth time. (you sound angry, want a hug?)
Healing Power, is currently a ‘wasted’ stat. Now, this is not my opinion, it seems to be the collective opinion of all non guardian players. However, there is a simple fix, that would make the Meta accept this, because what I propose would allow players to, theoretically, carry their 25 stacks of might around for awhile. And before you say, “But that’s to strong! They should have to work for their 25 stack of might!” They all do. every ‘Zerk build worth its salt brings a fire field, and blast finishers. People are spamming aoe might stacks so fast, that there is only a short ramp up time in each fight. Only ’trash’ mobs don’t experience a full 25 stack.
“Well, you have my attention…. what is this simple fix your talking about?” you ask….
‘Healing Power’ is rescaled to include ‘Boon Duration’,
…So a player, such as a Nomad Guardian, gets rewarded rather than punished for bringing ‘sub optimal’ DPS to a group… and because they can maintain a higher boon stack for longer, not everyone needs to bring fire fields and blast finishers. They can concentrate on say, laying down 31 stacks of bleeding… (Lookin’ at you sword/sword warrior in sinister gear.)… or focusing on keeping the target, stunned, dazed, knocked down, or whatnot… (Lookin’ at you lightning hammer elementalist)… perhaps your ranger can work on keeping up perma fury on everyone, rather that bringing a torch (condi weapon, if the tooltips are to be believed) in a ’zerk build, just to help everyone blast more.
Now, I understand that not every Meta build has this problem. ‘Zerk Necro for instance, can keep 25 stack of might on itself, and 25 stacks of venerability on the enemy… but people don’t like necros… why? Not because they do crap DPS… in fact they do great DPS (see what mine does to the ‘Elemental Source’ for instance.) But they don’t help others do it better.
All that gets thrown out the window if ‘Boon Duration’ gets added to ‘Healing Power’ now the Zealot elementalist can have the ‘Fury’ on attunement swap trait from arcane last long enough to cast ‘Churning Earth’, or Resistance could last just a few seconds longer than (The warrior heal that does that… which escapes my mind at this moment)
Now, of course, each boon should have its duration scaled differently. For instance,
Might should be affected most, and Stability and Resistance the least.
These all already have unique algorithms for that, as traits and runes that buff specific condition durations already attest.
Now, I know some of you are thinking, “but now I’ll never burst down a bunker guardian!” or “but that means whole zergs will be carrying perma might, fury, regen, swiftness, and stability!” which is only partly true. What this does, is it makes stripping boons much more viable. And also increases build diversity. A Nomad guardian will last forever, but do virtually no damage…. and he will get face stomped (face step let down) by a properly kitted Necro. this changes nothing about the rock paper scissors element of PvP. Especially if the skills that currently provide boons are reexamined after the initial ‘Healing Power’ + ’Boon Duration" patch.
So in short, this idea encourages build diversity in PvE, and will upset the balance in the short term for PvP…. no worse than the introduction of the Revenant… probably less.
I’d love to hear the thoughts of the community here, but especially the thoughts of the A-net balance team.
I too am having this issue, it is recent… 73 levels passed without incident, then suddenly game breaking annoyance. Im currently specced into soul reaping because I love the playstyle, and this is cutting my functionality. with all due respect, a patch is necessary.