I realize I have made a few posts regarding the state of healing and healers in the upcoming patch. I want to give an updated perspective as I have spent more time on the PTS, and in light of continued weekly updates. I have included discussion below, as well as two important suggestions for change, which I have put in
BOLD.
I will admit that I was originally concerned about changes regarding PvE healers considering the initial heavy nerfs to templars, shards+orbs, sustain, cost reduction. The more I've played around with things recently, the less worried I am; providing I am not over casting abilities, I can keep a raid group alive and well buffed for a lung duration fight. I appreciate the recent changes to Luminous Shards and am looking forward to the upcoming heavy attack changes in case I'm in a pinch mana wise and need to weave in a resto-heavy attack. The lack of AoE stam return from repent is frustrating, but definitely not unmanageable with the tanks I've run with.
I'm not here to gripe about any of these aforementioned topics however, as I've made my peace with it, but I would really like to discuss the state of Energy Orbs/Mystic Orbs and how they affect sustain and team synergy. I know this has been brought up before, but as it hasn't been addressed by ZoS, I would like to bring it back to light. Again this is within a PvE context; while I do not PvP, my understanding is that the use of orbs in pvp isn't prolific, so please correct me here if my discussion would have some impact on PVP of which I am not aware.
Premise:
Healers in PvE trials are in charge of much more than just keeping allies alive. It's about giving them buffs, and supporting their ability to effectively dps over a long term fight. A major part of this has been through the use of orbs. Energy orbs: essentially acts as a HoT, with a synergy providing 'mana over time' to the synergizer and nearby allies. Mystic Orbs provided damage over time, and provided a burst of magic to the synergizer, and magic over time to nearby allies. Both valuable skills, and a mark of a good team, as it requires placement of orbs and the synergizing of the orbs to maintain sustain within a raid. I have many variations: each healer running a different morph, both healers running the healing orbs with OT tank running the blue orbs, or both healers sending out well timed blue orbs.
In summary Energy Orbs were effective for a) Healing b) Magic Over time. Mystic Orbs were good for: burst of magic. Although they did dps on cast, and on synergy, it is negligible towards the groups overall dps.
The proposed change, with both orbs returning mana ONLY to the synergizer, makes the healing orb the only viable morph between the two. At least you get heals on top of the mana return; with the lackluster state of mystic orb, I'm having trouble fathoming the benefit of this morph, considering its not really a 'dps' ability...the previous attraction was the burst of magic compared to the magic over time of the other synergy.
In order to reward group synergy, and to allow both morphs to be effective and utilized, I would like to strongly propose that the changes are reverted where one morph gives mana over time in an AoE, while the other gives a burst of mana to the synergizer. Alternatively, have one give a BIG burst of magic, while the other gives a smaller AOE burst of magic. Or something.
Next topic: Usability of the orb skill
Currently on live, with my max mag/health food on, vamp stage 2, and without inner light, (my standard raid set up). I can cast roughly 32 energy orbs in 30 seconds before I run out of mana. In raid I can basically spam cast them to keep up SPC buffs, and they make up my biggest percentage heal, and I am drinking spell pots on cool down and popping my healing parters orbs as well. I get that this isn't good- shouldn't be able to endlessly spam cast something like that over that period of time, and therefore, I am open to the idea of sustain nerfs, and needing to weave in resto heavy attacks. Currently on the PTS I can cast roughly 16 orbs in open world before I am completely out of mana. This is a significant decrease. On PTS this is now behaving as a skill that costs a lot, to ONLY offer one ally resources- coupled with the fact that they can be hard to synergize, and the heal is negligible compared to healing springs in light of the sustain changes, there isn't even a conversation to have....It's almost an unusable skill- especially being able to target luminous shards to my tank or healing partner if they need emergency resources. To reinforce this, in a recent conversation I had with Vanady, she stated "Orbs are dead for templar healers".
Math
I would like to compare stats from live to PTS, but it is hard, given they function differently on each one, and I have different gear. But I would like to give an example from PTS in light of all the CP changes to how Orbs perform (these stats are with full CP allocation, No food, No armor, on a Breton Templar, with all passives allocated).... For a cost of 4269 magic, I can return 3960 magic to
ONE ally. Lets hypothesize and say both healers are running orbs and are responsible for giving orbs on cool down to 6 raid members each. Providing I send only 6 balls, and EACH ONE IS HIT, I need to spend 25,614 magic (
64% of my magic pool) every c. 20 seconds to support my team. Assuming I'm popping an orb, I guess the number goes to 21345 magic, ergo 53% of my mana pool- that's a lot when I need to be healing (which is harder without major mending, and with lower resistances), and buffing with combat prayer. I feel like this REALLY reinforces how lousy this ability is with the upcoming changes.
ZoS, you have stated that you want any class to be able to heal, and put orbs and shards on a shard cool down to reinforce that other classes can be raid supports as well. That is all well and good, however Orbs are essentially unusable due to the fact that they have too high a cost for the upcoming sustain changes, and lack effective functionality in perspective to their cost. Energy Orb heals are negligible compared to cost, mystic orbs dps is abysmal compared to the cost, and the synergy is terrible, only offering one ally some form of resource return. My Second proposal, if you aren't going to revert the changes, or reduce the cost, would be to allow Energy orbs to return resources to both the synergizer and the caster, similar to your initial change with illuminous shards. This would reward team play and strategy EVEN MORE than on live, since as a support, I wouldn't be able to brainlessly spam cast, but my allies would be rewarded by synergizing, and if they synergize, it would empower me to send out more for other allies as well.
For your consideration here is an example of my healing combat metrics report from live, showing the effectiveness of Energy Orbs: