Beyond BoL: Ideas for Healing Ritual/Morphs & HoD & More

tinythinker · February 2016

OK if you're reading this you may have already read some of my thoughts on the nerf to BoL. If not you can do so (and read some thoughtful additions from others) here and also a little over over here. The gist is that one reason that the nerf to BoL is being taken so badly is that lack of mobility, reduced mitigation from class abilities, and lack of viable healing alternative in Restoring Light have made BoL a big crutch. Kicking someone's cruch is going to tick them off.

For the devs (hello @Wrobel @ZOS_KNowak etc): You are *super* busy right now collecting data and feedback on lots of combat-related things, making adjustments, etc. I am not asking you to take time for comments in this thread. But when one of you goes on ESO Live in the near future, it would be helpful if you could explain the situations in which you think HR/morphs and HoD are going to be preferable or more useful than BoL, even a BoL that hits two targets instead of three? BoL lacks a self snare and is an instant cast (beats HR) and heals more than one person (beats HoD).

For the rest of us, excluding reverting BoL to pre-2.30, what changes would you like to see for Templar abilities to make you less dependent on BoL? To make it more of an option rather than a no-brainer?

Here some starting ideas to get things started...

Healing Ritual

I've had so many different ideas for this over the past couple of years, just all over the place. Here are my favorites for your consideration.

"The Light"

In this new version of Healing Ritual, while you walk about praying and healing you are surrounded in a bright swirling glow as your healing energy pours out to nearby allies. You blind your foes, getting Major Evasion for two seconds (or Major Protection for two seconds or inflicting all nearby enemies with Major Maim for four seconds) starting when you press the button to cast the spell. The heal also begins instantly while you are doing a casting animation and still self-snared. The healing is reduced by 20% or so to compensate for the buff. For Lingering Ritual a smallish HoT applies to allies within the ability radius for 8 seconds after the cast time ends (centered on the caster who is no longer self-snared). Ritual of Rebirth restores one quarter of missing stamina and magicka to two nearby allies other than the caster over the course of three seconds.

"The Buff"

In another alternative I've also been considering, you still get the swirling light and self-snare cast time as per "The Light", but in this case the caster's allies gains Major Protection for 6 seconds or until the caster causes damage. Like "The Light", healing starts when casting begins, as does the buff. Basically the animation is for show not a delay in the heal. As with "The Light" the healing done and/or cost would be adjusted appropriately for balance. The morphs could stay the same as they have been since launch or could be tweaked. For example, Lingering Ritual could extend the buffs to 8 seconds, while Ritual of Rebirth could add Major Heroism or something similar alongside Major Protection.

"The Toggle"

Most of my ideas for Healing Ritual have been based on keeping the cast time and the self-snare. This one doesn't. Rather than a specific number of health points that scale with spell damage, max magicka, and healing buffs, have it restore a percentage of their missing health over time as a toggle. Toggling the ability on would drain health from the caster while restoring it to allies. The exact percentage of health restored and the ratio of health drained to health restored would need to be based on internal testing to make sure it wasn't too strong or too weak. But given the risk and self-sacrifice, it would be a really big heal. There is still a risk, but not from the self-snare. Afterward the caster would have a reduction in healing received for a brief time to keep this ability from being abused.

Ritual of Rebirth would reduced the reduction in healing and buff health recovery. The Lingering Ritual Morph would give a delayed heal like it always has, but would be for a percentage of the healing done during the toggle.

At first glance, having a healer risk themselves by trading health for healing may sound like a death sentence for the healer, but again it would be balanced against doing a significant amount of healing to a fixed percentage of missing health. It would have a fast drain and tick for larger percentages of missing health over time. You could still run, sprint, and roll-dodge while saving a 12 player raid on the verge of wiping. And in any case, if you die you can always be rezzed. Hence the need to balance risk and reward to not make it a stealth easy mode mechanic where you just heal everyone to 100% while dying and get a rez after. Since the percentage of health restored goes up over time and since you can't cast anything else (other skills are locked out while channeling), just relying on this all of the time would be waste. It would be a great "Oh crap
button", though.

The cousin to this concept is to drain magicka super-fast instead of caster health, but it's more boring and is like a dull group version of Dark Deal. But it might be workable with some tweaking.

Honor the Dead

A couple of options of for this one:
-also grants the caster Minor Heroism and Minor Mending
-also grants the caster Minor Sorcery and Minor Brutality

The cost rebate for HoD is nice, I'm just looking to sweeten it a little by guaranteeing something for the caster.

And while it isn't part of the Restoring Light skill line, mitigation is also important...

Sunshield

Increase shield strength to 40% of caster's health for Sun Shield and its morphs. Double the damage on activation for Radiant Ward while Stunning those caught in the blast of the activation. Add a Knock Down to enemies in range of the AoE damage effect when Blazing Shield explodes.

Oh, and while we're in the Aedric Spear skill line change the Spear Wall passive to add a 10% chance to inflict Minor Maim (15% reduction in target's outgoing damage) for 8 seconds on an enemy whose melee attack has been blocked.

Leon119 · February 2016

Personally i would love if healing ritual worked like the xivkyn lacerators's in WGT heal.
Leave it as it is with cast time at base skill and when cast makes an AoE centered around caster that functions as a HoT
Make morphs something along the line of:
● grant regen
● larger radius
● longer duration
● no cast time
● ect

Faulgor · February 2016

Healing Ritual was pretty much dead on arrival because there are simply better options for magicka-based healing.

Rushed Ceremony: In the same skill line, already fills the role of "big chunk of health", but unlike HR is instant cast and has a larger range.
Grand Healing: Restoration Staff skill #1, because it can be stacked multiple times, is cheaper and doesn't lock you into a cast it's vastly preferable to HR as an AoE heal.
Regeneration: Probably best available HoT; Mutagen morph is basically the same as Lingering Ritual, just better.
Blessing of Restoration: Best "big chunk of health" heal for any non-Templar, effects the whole group (if it stands in the area) and is instant; gets even better when morphed.
Healing Ward: Good alternative to RC to protect someone in a pinch.
Cleansing Ritual: Only a heal as secondary function, but has a large radius and other benefits (boosting your other heals, offering a synergy and cleansing obvisouly)

There is no spot HR could fill here, especially not with a cast time. And without a cast time, it would be too similar to Rushed Ceremony to deserve a spot in the same skill line.
The only time when using an ability with a cast time is reasonable is before the fight starts. This means, the casted ability would have to provide a buff with a decent duration. Regeneration already lasts 20 seconds and is instant, so a casted HR would have to top that substantially. Further, all listed heals are based on magicka/spell power, and any healer that deserves that name would have speced into those stats - so even if HR had a longer duration than Regeneration, it would still be preferable to simply recast the latter during the fight, unless HR offered something substantially different.

That's why I'd suggest the following adjustments to HR:

Healing Ritual: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 30 seconds. 3 second cast time.

Lingering Ritual: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 45 seconds. 3 second cast time.

Ritual of Rebirth: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 30 seconds. 3 second cast time. Allies with less than 20% Health are healed back to 50%. Effect is removed thereafter.

These changes would offer a heal that fills an as of yet unfilled role.
- Strong buff that is designed to be pre-cast out of combat
- Offers an indirect tool for magicka sustain, because the damage "pre-healed" before combat doesn't have to be healed actively later
- Great utility for builds not focusing on magicka/spell damage, such as tanks and stamina builds

LadyNalcarya · February 2016

Faulgor wrote: »

That's why I'd suggest the following adjustments to HR:

Healing Ritual: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 30 seconds. 3 second cast time.

Lingering Ritual: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 45 seconds. 3 second cast time.

Ritual of Rebirth: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 30 seconds. 3 second cast time. Allies with less than 20% Health are healed back to 50%. Effect is removed thereafter.

These changes would offer a heal that fills an as of yet unfilled role.
- Strong buff that is designed to be pre-cast out of combat
- Offers an indirect tool for magicka sustain, because the damage "pre-healed" before combat doesn't have to be healed actively later
- Great utility for builds not focusing on magicka/spell damage, such as tanks and stamina builds

I really like this idea.

CP5 · February 2016

I wouldn't want fear for trash mobs on an aoe heal, seems like that would just make fights more irritating with a bunch of mobs running around with cc immunity. It is interesting how npcs are getting a lot of cool skills that players don't and adding some to our list of usable skills sounds nice. But I love the idea of % max health heals, that makes investing in health more valuable for everyone and makes sure glass cannon builds don't get insane survivability from it.

Kaliki · February 2016

Faulgor wrote: »

That's why I'd suggest the following adjustments to HR:

Healing Ritual: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 30 seconds. 3 second cast time.

Lingering Ritual: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 45 seconds. 3 second cast time.

Ritual of Rebirth: Cast restorative blessing on nearby allies. Restore 5% maximum Health every second for 30 seconds. 3 second cast time. Allies with less than 20% Health are healed back to 50%. Effect is removed thereafter.

I really like your idea. This way templars would provide some basic healing throughout the fight while topping that up with either healing or damage, depending on what is needed.
I can imagine that with such an ability templars playing in well-organised groups could rely on this spell plus BoL for emergencies and focus even more on dps.

Perhaps that would give the class as a whole a new direction. Being the class that can best provide group healing while doing damage?
I mean since sorcs seem to have an ability that is better than BoL now and all...

eliisra · February 2016

I got really excited when hearing about changes to Healing Ritual. Than I read the patch noes. I'm obviously super disappointed, it's just as bad and useless as before. Definitely makes the nerf to BoL even harder to swallow.

The only thing they can do with Healing Ritual is drastically reducing the cast time.That's the fundamental flaw with the skill.

Heals need to be instant or close to instant, to function in ESO. The TTK is to short in PvP to allow cast time healing. Same goes for boss and NPC's dmg in endgame PvE, heals needs to tick in instantly.

Cast time heals: By the time you're finished casting the ally is either dead or on full health again from HoT's.

Second issues with Healing Ritual is that you 5/10 times get interrupted or cc'ed and the heal never goes of. Anyone that actually played around with the skill in PvP can confirm. You also loose mobility when using it, putting yourself in greater danger. The radius is tiny.

They could also re-design the skill into some type of group buff, than the cast time wouldn't be that game breaking. Could squeeze it in during safer period.

Cinbri · February 2016

Know what?! Irealy, really want to see how Wrobel on ESO Live will answer on question "Why while other classes heals were buffed, templar heals were nerfed and templars left without burst dd, aoe CC, strong defensive abilities, any escape, strong non-revamped passives and heals?"

Kaliki · February 2016

Cinbri wrote: »

Know what?! Irealy, really want to see how Wrobel on ESO Live will answer on question "Why while other classes heals were buffed, templar heals were nerfed and templars left witohut burst dd, aoe CC, strong defensive abilities, strong non-revamped passives and heals?"

This is a good question.
I was just playing my sorcerer alt and wondering: it has mobility, the best shields in game, CC, synergises with destro staff, major sorcery buff + self heal through range damage... also arguably better passives.

What is the concept behind the templar class? What is unique about them?

Tankqull · February 2016

eliisra wrote: »

I got really excited when hearing about changes to Healing Ritual. Than I read the patch noes. I'm obviously super disappointed, it's just as bad and useless as before. Definitely makes the nerf to BoL even harder to swallow.

The only thing they can do with Healing Ritual is drastically reducing the cast time.That's the fundamental flaw with the skill.

Heals need to be instant or close to instant, to function in ESO. The TTK is to short in PvP to allow cast time healing. Same goes for boss and NPC's dmg in endgame PvE, heals needs to tick in instantly.

Cast time heals: By the time you're finished casting the ally is either dead or on full health again from HoT's.

Second issues with Healing Ritual is that you 5/10 times get interrupted or cc'ed and the heal never goes of. Anyone that actually played around with the skill in PvP can confirm. You also loose mobility when using it, putting yourself in greater danger. The radius is tiny.

They could also re-design the skill into some type of group buff, than the cast time wouldn't be that game breaking. Could squeeze it in during safer period.

and for casting it premature to keep its CT it requires a bigger range and to not snare the caster.

DHale · February 2016

While I agree with you and most of us do they are not going do anything. I will bet 100 dollars they will stealth nerf a lot more things before going live: toppling charge is still not fixed and even standing on my rune performing puncturing sweeps on Craglorn mobs healing is less on pts than in live so I confirmed the nerf I suspected. I just don't think they will make any improvements. They had ppl working on this stuff for months to get it half baked. To say they are going fix stuff for live... Not happening.

Beyond BoL: Ideas for Healing Ritual/Morphs &amp; HoD &amp; More

Beyond BoL: Ideas for Healing Ritual/Morphs & HoD & More