Spirit Mender Cost

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PyrrhicJordan
PyrrhicJordan
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Before I begin I just wanted to say this is from the perspective of a Necromancer Healer.

On live, the main reason to use Spirit Mender and it's morphs as a healer is to proc the Undead Confederate passive that increases the magicka recovery/stamina recovery by 200, while also providing slight heals to the group.

As the Spirit Mender and the Spirit Guardian morph last for 16 seconds, this means as a healer I return 1600 magicka from the passive. This, along with the Reusable Parts passive that reduces the cost of the Spirit Mender by 25%, means that on live the cost of the Spirit Mender is inline with the magicka restored and is sometimes cheaper depending sets/enchantments used.

Whereas now on the PTS, the Spirit Mender cost has been increased by approximately 77% meaning the Spirit Guardian now costs far more than the resources returned from the Undead Confederate passive. Even with the Reusable Parts passive the return of resources is too low compared to the cost of the Spirit Guardian.

Sustain on Necromancer Healers is weak compared to their Templar and Warden counterparts, but it is still manageable and never causes any real issues. With this change to the Spirit Mender, I feel sustain for Necromancer Healers will be more of an issue as the Undead Confederate passive is essentially useless.

I appreciate that the healing for the Spirit Mender was increased by 90%, but the Spirit Mender was useful as it was cheap, healed, and activated the Undead Confederate passive. Now it is too costly and it makes more sense for healers to use the new Restoring Tether that costs nothing as opposed to the Spirit Mender that costs too much compared to the magicka it returns, thus making the Undead Confederate passive obsolete to Necromancer Healers.

All I'm asking is that the cost of the Spirit Mender be kept the same as it is on live, or to change the Undead Confederate passive so that it more reliably provides sustain for Necromancer Healers.


Edited by PyrrhicJordan on July 7, 2019 10:03AM
  • wheem_ESO
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    I'd like to see a change to the Undead Confederate passive, personally. The numbers right now don't really make it very much of a sustain passive for Magicka, and obviously a cost increase makes that calculation even worse (though the Intensive Mender morph will actually get a very small cost decrease, apparently).

    Overall sustain on a Necromancer is significantly worse than most/all other Magicka classes in PvP, and the Mystic Siphon change won't really help that. As long as you can LOS the tether, and/or have it canceled by a player respawning, it's not a reliable source of magicka regeneration.
  • RiskyChalice863
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    I mean, the healing was increased by 90%, while the cost only went up 77%. In terms of raw healing output, this is plainly a buff.

    It may nerf one’s ability to keep Undead Confederate up, but just prioritize keeping it up over casting something else if you’re having trouble with sustain. You’ll get double the healing from it, so it can probably replace some other healing ability you’d otherwise have cast. It’s now a 16 second smart heal with actually respectable healing output.

    And that’s not even mentioning Intensive Mender—which now heals for more than before (about 27% more) and is cheaper than before (about 11% cheaper). Intensive Mender got a large buff. Try using that instead. You can literally get 3.8x more healing than you were previously getting, with just 1.78x the cost. And with reusable parts and potentially summoner’s armor, the cost is not going to be very high anyways. In fact, with no other cost decreases at all (which isn’t realistic), the new Intensive Mender would cost just 1426 Magicka. The Undead Confederate proc you get from this would make you 800 Magicka back while it’s up. But let’s say you also have about 300 spell cost reduction and 12% reduction from light armor, and are a Breton. That’s a more realistic scenario. Intensive Mender will cost about 1005 Magicka in that scenario. So Undead Confederate would almost pay for it. So that’s basically an almost free ability that is 3.8x stronger than the heal you’re currently using. I think it’d be worth trying out (though obviously the downside is having to make room for it in your rotation every 8 seconds, instead of every 16 seconds and losing the damage reduction).
    Edited by RiskyChalice863 on July 8, 2019 9:50AM
  • PyrrhicJordan
    PyrrhicJordan
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    I mean, the healing was increased by 90%, while the cost only went up 77%. In terms of raw healing output, this is plainly a buff.
    While it definitely is a buff to raw healing, it is a substantial nerf to sustain, something Necromancer Healers already have issues with.

    It may nerf one’s ability to keep Undead Confederate up, but just prioritize keeping it up over casting something else if you’re having trouble with sustain.
    It doesn't nerf ones ability to keep Undead Confederate up, you're still going to have a 100% uptime with Undead Confederate. The issue is that even with the 100% uptime, Undead Confederate still provides fewer resources than the cost of the Spirit Mender. Thus, if you're having issues with sustain it is more beneficial to not cast Spirit Mender at all and just cast another spell.

    And that’s not even mentioning Intensive Mender—which now heals for more than before (about 27% more) and is cheaper than before (about 11% cheaper). Intensive Mender got a large buff. Try using that instead.
    Even by using Intensive Mender, Undead Confederate doesn't match the cost. And that's with the ideal circumstances you mentioned in your post.


    The main point I'm trying to convey is that with the increase in the cost of these abilities, the sustain of the Necromancer Healer may suffer as the Undead Confederate passive don't make up the cost of the ability. I understand this is quite a small issue compared to other changes coming with this patch, but I feel it shouldn't be overlooked.

    I feel that if these changes are to go live, both the Spirit Mender and the Undead Confederate passive will become useless to Necromancer Healers.
  • Seraphayel
    Seraphayel
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    While it definitely is a buff to raw healing, it is a substantial nerf to sustain, something Necromancer Healers already have issues with.

    It doesn't nerf ones ability to keep Undead Confederate up, you're still going to have a 100% uptime with Undead Confederate. The issue is that even with the 100% uptime, Undead Confederate still provides fewer resources than the cost of the Spirit Mender. Thus, if you're having issues with sustain it is more beneficial to not cast Spirit Mender at all and just cast another spell.

    Even by using Intensive Mender, Undead Confederate doesn't match the cost. And that's with the ideal circumstances you mentioned in your post.


    The main point I'm trying to convey is that with the increase in the cost of these abilities, the sustain of the Necromancer Healer may suffer as the Undead Confederate passive don't make up the cost of the ability. I understand this is quite a small issue compared to other changes coming with this patch, but I feel it shouldn't be overlooked.

    I feel that if these changes are to go live, both the Spirit Mender and the Undead Confederate passive will become useless to Necromancer Healers.

    It's only a nerf to sustain when you're wasting your resources otherwise. As he pointed out, the buff to the healing amount which almost doubles it output is significant and could replace any skill you might have used in between for the Magicka cost. For me it's a good and plausible change. Intensive Mender will be incredibly strong after the change, it was already very strong before and now its healing is increased roughly by another 27%.

    You somehow want to equate Magicka cost / Magicka recovery but undervalue the huge healing output from the skill.
    Edited by Seraphayel on July 8, 2019 12:08PM
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  • Saelent
    Saelent
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    Put simply, they had to put more cost (a difficult to call reasonable amount) when they upped the healing (a reasonable amount) because they didn’t want the torch and pitchfork wielders to start scream over powered and P2W.

    Undead Confederate definitely needs a buff now to make up for the increased difficulty in sustain.
  • Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
    Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
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    The healing tether doesn't cost anything anymore, just got to have a body, there's your sustain.
  • Vicarra
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    From the point of view of a magnecro tank, I also agree that this passive needs a hefty buff to compensate for the massively increased cost. Otherwise, the mender becomes a skill that sits in the toolbox because it simply isn't worth the cost. I can't use the other pets because they have no utility for a tank, but I -need- to look at every possible source for sustain. On live, I keep the mender up constantly because my sustain is so much worse without it.
    PAWS - Positively Against Wrip-off Stuff!

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  • Seraphayel
    Seraphayel
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    The healing tether doesn't cost anything anymore, just got to have a body, there's your sustain.

    Yeah this is another Synergy that should be considered - Mender + Siphon which in the end is a huge plus for healing output and even a plus for Magicka as Siphon now costs nothing to use anymore besides a corpse.
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    Aldmeri Dominion
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  • wheem_ESO
    wheem_ESO
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    The healing tether doesn't cost anything anymore, just got to have a body, there's your sustain.
    And it'll still have issues in PvP, as I've mentioned previously. Mystic Siphon will be roughly half the Magicka return of a Templar's Rune or Warden's Netch over the same duration, but requires a corpse (the targeting of which can be finnicky at times), can be broken by LOS or a targeted player respawning, doesn't buff resistances, doesn't provide Major Sorcery, doesn't cleanse, and has fairly weak damage that is incredibly easy to avoid in almost all situations.

    I think it's trying to do too much at once, and ends up being pretty weak in all aspects because of it. Magicka Necromancer's sustain in PvP is really bad, and neither Mystic Siphon nor the Undead Confederate passive are good enough. The changed around Mystic Siphon will be inferior to other class' sustain options in PvE as well, but at least you should be able to get the full duration often enough.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    While it definitely is a buff to raw healing, it is a substantial nerf to sustain, something Necromancer Healers already have issues with.

    It doesn't nerf ones ability to keep Undead Confederate up, you're still going to have a 100% uptime with Undead Confederate. The issue is that even with the 100% uptime, Undead Confederate still provides fewer resources than the cost of the Spirit Mender. Thus, if you're having issues with sustain it is more beneficial to not cast Spirit Mender at all and just cast another spell.

    Even by using Intensive Mender, Undead Confederate doesn't match the cost. And that's with the ideal circumstances you mentioned in your post.


    The main point I'm trying to convey is that with the increase in the cost of these abilities, the sustain of the Necromancer Healer may suffer as the Undead Confederate passive don't make up the cost of the ability. I understand this is quite a small issue compared to other changes coming with this patch, but I feel it shouldn't be overlooked.

    I feel that if these changes are to go live, both the Spirit Mender and the Undead Confederate passive will become useless to Necromancer Healers.

    Sustain is not the ultimate end goal though. Ultimately, you want to be outputting as much healing/DPS/utility/defense as possible. Sustain is just a means to that end. It is only good because it allows you to continuously output your healing/DPS/utility/defense better over time. But if an ability taxes your sustain more than before but also outputs twice as much for your team than it used to, then it’s not necessarily a nerf to your overall output. In fact, where, as here, the buff to output is greater than the increase to cost, your output will in most cases be buffed by the change.*

    And it also gives you the option to just cast the ability less, in order to keep your sustain where it was before, while not lowering the healing you get from the ability. For instance, let’s say you cast the ability every 28 seconds instead of every 16 seconds. If you do that, you will use the same amount of Magicka on this ability as you used to, while getting slightly more overall healing from it. On the flip side, if your build CAN handle keeping it up as much as before, then you simply have a more powerful healer than you did before.

    And again, that’s not even mentioning Intensive Mender, which got a massive flat buff. Its cost was lowered by 11% and its healing increased by 27%. Intensive Mender is now basically multiple smart burst heals for a base cost of just 2160 Magicka. It’s very strong, with the only downside being it takes more upkeep due to the 8 second duration.

    * To illustrate this point with an extreme, let’s say Graveyard got changed so that it costs 25,000 Magicka but has an effect of instantly killing all enemies within 50 meters of you. Your logic would lead to the silly conclusion that that’s somehow a nerf because it would make it harder for a Necromancer to sustain and sustain is all that matters. But of course it’s an obvious ridiculous buff. This game is about maximizing output, not maximizing sustain for the sake of sustain.

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