Mutagen clarification

Bwookiee

Ok ive seen some confusion on mutagen healing morph and as a healer wanted clarification on the big heal... Does it happen on a player when they drop below 20% hp, or do you have to apply the spell when they ARE below 20% hp?

Ive heard it changed but the tooltip seems to imply it applies if the players hp drops low but i havent noticed this effect on my teammates.... Anyone with inaight pplease help.

Also if this was changed was it intentional/bugged and or will it go back in a future patch?

Cinna

You can think of Mutagen as a heal with dual function: it is your basic HoT and an emergency heal. It only gives the bigger heal if the target is under 20% hp, but then it also gives the full duration of HoT. For an emergency heal it is incredibly cheap and with such limited skill slots it's nice to have dual function spells. However, it can be problematic to see if someone is 19 or 21% hp...

Considering the stength of the spell remember that there is a passive that increases low health healing. On my characters mutagen brings people back to over half health.

Additionally mutagen has dispel function, which I believe is tied to the 20% pop heal, but have not tested this part.

Dracane

The nice thing about Mutagen, is as soon as you apply it to yourself or an ally, the security heal will be active.

So if Mutagen is on you and you fall below 20% health, the Heal over time will stop and will proc the emergency heal and also heal 1 negative effect. Applying Mutagen is an insurance (basically) to safe your life or the life of an ally.

1 year ago or so, I thought that you have to use Mutagen if your ally is below 20% health. Which would make it pretty useless, as other heals heal for more. But since it will automatically proc as long as you keep it active, it's a very nice thing to have. I choose it instead of rapid regeneration. To be honest, I haven't encountered a situation where an ally was below 20% health. People have enough defense to loose health so slowly, that you can outheal the damage, or people are so fragile that they are 1 shot and you have no chance to heal them. Being below 20% and surviving is a very rare thing in dungeons.

Cinna

Wrong. There is no automation in mutagen, it is not an insurance. Tested ths with mudcrabs very easily not long ago. Please stop spreading misinfo.

Cinna

Automatic life save heal and dispel would make the spell very op considering its cost. For example you could safely sit under siege fire as long as you had mutagen on. ;p Well, that is not the case. I believe it is intended.

Without the automation it is still not useless: if you are a non templar healer and don't know where the hurt ally is (party is spread out, large crowd etc.), or you want to keep someone alive despite them insisting on sitting under siege but wanting to conserve magicka.

Dracane

Cinna wrote: »

Automatic life save heal and dispel would make the spell very op considering its cost. For example you could safely sit under siege fire as long as you had mutagen on. ;p Well, that is not the case. I believe it is intended.

Without the automation it is still not useless: if you are a non templar healer and don't know where the hurt ally is (party is spread out, large crowd etc.), or you want to keep someone alive despite them insisting on sitting under siege but wanting to conserve magicka.

Well, then you've made a wrong test. I admit, my testing was pre 1.6. But I don't see why they would have changed it.

Bwookiee

And there in lies my confusion......if the heal only applies to the player if they are below 20% when applied id rather go with the healing ward shield and go with rapid regen.....but if the heal gets applied to a player if they have mutagen applied THEN drop below 20% mutagen would be better.

Like i said i havent seen the "big" heal from mutagen proc after dropping below 20%....i have heard it changed since 1.6.....suppose ill do testing of my own.

Cinna

Dracane wrote: »

Well, then you've made a wrong test. I admit, my testing was pre 1.6. But I don't see why they would have changed it.

Dear, my test is from April and was conclusive. Many things changed in/post 1.6 and hence your knowledge from before that is outdated I'm afraid. Zos isn't great with their notes as we all know, so it's hard to trace back when exactly they changed it. After launch mutagen had the automatic insurance effect, but it had no dispel back then and the HoT got consumed by the proc. When they added the dispel the burst became front loaded with the required condition that the target is under 20% hp.

If there have been changes since April 18th, then I'll have to retest, lucky it isn't very hard to let a mob whack you to low hp. :-)

PBpsy

I had made the test again a couple days ago .I like to think I was pretty thorough . Mutagen does not proc a large heal if you drop below 20%. It only procs a large heal if you cast it below 20%.

I think it works as intended.otherwise this would make it one of the most OP skills in the game. A cheap-continuous, long duration, 3 target hot, with a 5k+ automatic heal proc exactly when you need it, is almost as good if not better than BOL. In pvp it would just be an insane skill to have. It is just lousy tool tip writing that makes people think it is better that it should. be.

I think the mechanics of mutagen now are pretty good.It is a emergency frantic spam when you see them going down kind of heal. It would be cool if the proc would be at 25-30% though.

Aerathnor

PBpsy wrote: »

*snip*

I think the mechanics of mutagen now are pretty good.It is a emergency frantic spam when you see them going down kind of heal. It would be cool if the proc would be at 25-30% though.

I could see 25% as that is the exact moment things are in execute range, 30% would be op in pvp as you could activate the emergency heal before they ever hit execute range.

I'm happy with it being 20%, but if they ever decide to balance pvp and pve separately I could see the pve version being bumped up to 30%

Cinna

Bwookiee wrote: »

And there in lies my confusion......if the heal only applies to the player if they are below 20% when applied id rather go with the healing ward shield and go with rapid regen.....but if the heal gets applied to a player if they have mutagen applied THEN drop below 20% mutagen would be better.

Consider Ward ally + Mutagen if you're dedicated (especially sorc or dk) healer. Healing ward's initial heal is poor and the end heal gets too often wasted for my taste, from group healer perspective.

Dracane

Okay update. I just tested it myself and Mutagen does not proc anymore if you have it active.

I swear, in 1.5 it used to proc the emergency heal when you fell below 20% health. Not anymore, so it's useless. When an ally is at low health, I cast Ward ally instead of this thing. Okay so I'm going to respec now

Zsymon

Anyone would cast Ward if an enemy is at 20%, so Mutagen is like a poor man's Ward if you don't have the magicka to cast the actual Ward.

It should be automatic, the heal proc is really small, maybe 4-5K if it crits, unless you have a ton of spell damage and the best possible armor sets.

Bwookiee

Awesome thx dracane! Im respeccin too!

Soris

Wtf. This makes no sense. The whole idea of this skill was that and now a stealth nerf/bug? This is just stupid

WyldfireWyrm

So the next test is to see if the system will smart choose the low health target(s) or if it's just random. If it's random, then it's not worth getting, IMO. And I too would like to see an increase in the threshold to 25-30%, especially for the PVE side. Though I could see why this would be an issue in PVP in tandem with the 50% damage reduction. Anyone with a resto staff and as few as 0 points in magicka will be impossible to kill. LOL