PTS Update 23 - Feedback Thread for PvE Healing

ZOS_GinaBruno · July 2019

This is the official feedback thread for PvE Healing changes. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance and changes.

apri · July 2019

Console player here, so first-hand experience cannot be provided by me. Thus all I can give is feedback based on years of healing experience + reading patch notes. This disclaimer in mind, I think there are 3 major issues for PVE healing, based on the patch notes:

1. Hard nerf of Healing Springs
2. (Unintentional?) nerf of VMA and DSA Resto staves as a side-effect
3. Nerf of Necrotic (Energy) orbs

2. Healing Springs replacement suggestions
the loss of healing springs without compensation will make healing a troublesome experience in endgame situations (vet dungeons, hard modes, vet trials and vet arenas). AOE healing is cost-effective and necessary for certain damage spikes. So we need some kind of compensation if you take away the bread & butter skill.

I don't know the background of the hard nerf on springs but if you want to take the skill away from everyone, you should at least consider giving it back to the meta healers which are Templars and Wardens atm. 2 skills could make up for the loss of springs:

Healing Ritual for templars and Healing Seed for Wardens.

Both skills need adjustments to make them usable AOE spams for those hard damage spikes (in trials in particular): Healing Ritual needs a serious cost cut and Healing Seed needs to get rid of the timer. So my suggestion would be to reduce the cost of Healing Ritual to the level of Healing Seed (2431 if I'm not mistaken) and to make Healing Seed an instantaneous cast by default.

2. VMA and DSA Resto stave suggestions
VMA resto staff: Grants X amount of Magicka on any successful critical heal with Y seconds of cooldown. Adds the same amount of crit as-is.
DSA (Master's) resto staff: Each successful AOE healing effect restores 258 stamina to the healed ally (6s cooldown). Adds 1000 magicka (I think the nerf of the magicka buff was not needed. Buffing someone else and the healer same time makes this weapon more well-rounded in my humble opinion)

Necrotic Orbs suggestions
Well necrotic orbs is a tough one. It is a needed sustain buff skill for trials, also a decent HoT. Having just one orb floating around goes along with serious problems to keep in mind. 1. It is not possible to ensure the person (mainly the tank) actually gets the buff he needs. Someone may steal the orb. And having this one orb being synergized with also reduces the already cut healing potency of this decent HoT on live servers (when stacked) to zero unless the healer can instantaneously recast the orb. However, it is not always ideal to recast it because you may be busy with more important stuff. So it is indeed a hard nerf. Additionally with just one orb around at any given time, what if the orb has been fired in an awkward angle or the positioning of the group goes in an unexpected direction? You have to wait until the orb despawns until you can recast it again. This hits lesser organized and training groups particularly hard.

My suggestions are:
1. Keep orbs as-is on live servers or
2. make them 1-orb-at-a-time-only (PTS notes) but allow multiple synergies from each orb (ideally 4-6 but at least 3 synergies from each orb).

rebrur2 · July 2019

If the changes are made simply to appease the pvp players, then make those changes exist in Cyrodiil only. By nerfing heals to the ground all around like you have, you will end up losing a great deal of your PVE and endgame players, making all healers obsolete, keeping people from using all of the new gear sets that you made players just farm, and ensuring that off meta (NB, DK, Sorc, etc) healers are no longer able to heal. The healing changes are completely unnecessary.

PaigeWimberley · July 2019

Keep the heals as they are already.

FrancisCrawford · July 2019

As per the threads https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6194479#Comment_6194479 and https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483907/minor-lifesteal-mechanics#latest, nobody is quite sure how the increasingly important debuff Minor Lifesteal works. Please improve tooltips, a lot.

akl77 · July 2019

If orbs can be synergised by multiple people and not dissolve, shards should acts the same for fairness.

FrancisCrawford · July 2019

Please make Rushed Ceremony directionless again. My emergency "heal" is Ward Ally, and after this patch I may drop it from my skill bars. And it's good for emergency heals/"heals" to be directionless.

TheNightflame · July 2019

"As always, we will be monitoring feedback about all the balance changes during this PTS cycle"

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483659/you-can-only-have-1-orb-active-at-a-time-why-this-should-not-go-live#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483893/scalebreaker-pts-patch-notes-5-1-0-an-end-game-healer-opinion-on-the-matter#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483890/update-23-healer-changes-pvp-vs-endgame-pve-balancing#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483647/restoration-staff-changes-discussion-thread#latest

You have your feedback^ and lots of it.
video evidence coming soon.

whteva4eva · July 2019

Perhaps make Healing Ritual be able to be cast wherever someone chooses to make up for the Grand healing nerf.

Aznarb · July 2019

I'm fine with the change to heal ONLY if you buff class skill healing for every class to be competitive.
Cuz RN only Tamplar and Warden can heal effectivly on PTS.

We've 4 other class who want heal too.
So, do something.

Also for those who don't have read, now Orb don't blow-up under activation, everyone can active it.
So, it's fine.

RogueShark · July 2019

My biggest concern at the moment is what the state of healing will be for non-templars and wardens in this upcoming patch.
@ZOS_BrianWheeler already said that to "offset the loss of things such as Healing Springs stacking, with abilities like Ring of Preservation, or the large increase to Cleansing Ritual."

This does not help a sorcerer or nightblade or DK healer, who has no access to a templar class heal. It doesn't help any mag healer in general, because Ring of Preservation is a stam heal, and an expensive one at that; healers need to block and dodge in content too.

What's been done is that you guys are stripping away the tools that off-meta healers NEED to remain viable in high-end content, and saying that all healers will be fine because of a high-cost stam heal, and an overtuned heal that is literally accessible by a single class. The rest of us need tools to help us remain relevant in the roles that we love and enjoy. Please.

As a sorc, I have Twilight Matriarch. This is it. That is literally all my class gives me for healing tools on others (outside of Negate, an ultimate). Templars, wardens, and even necros to some extent have a number of other class healing abilities to fall back on to help make up for these new changes. I'm sorry, but I can't spam my Twilight Matriarch to victory on things like Lokke Hardmode, or vHoF hardmode.

If you want to change healing up this much, fine; but EVERYONE, not just templars, need the tools to deal with this new setup.

gallach · July 2019

I will repost here what I wrote on another topic.
Let Mutagen morph hits 2 allies expending more magicka to cast it.
Hitting only 1 ally takes 4-5 seconds to buff 4 players in a dungeon, the duration is only 10 seconds, we have only 5-6 seconds to buff team mates, debuff boss, manage our resources, help teammates sustain and deal some DoT before cast Mutagen again. It is impracticable to use Regeneration in PVE group content now.

PaigeWimberley · July 2019

RogueShark wrote: »

My biggest concern at the moment is what the state of healing will be for non-templars and wardens in this upcoming patch.
@ZOS_BrianWheeler already said that to "offset the loss of things such as Healing Springs stacking, with abilities like Ring of Preservation, or the large increase to Cleansing Ritual."

This does not help a sorcerer or nightblade or DK healer, who has no access to a templar class heal. It doesn't help any mag healer in general, because Ring of Preservation is a stam heal, and an expensive one at that; healers need to block and dodge in content too.

What's been done is that you guys are stripping away the tools that off-meta healers NEED to remain viable in high-end content, and saying that all healers will be fine because of a high-cost stam heal, and an overtuned heal that is literally accessible by a single class. The rest of us need tools to help us remain relevant in the roles that we love and enjoy. Please.

As a sorc, I have Twilight Matriarch. This is it. That is literally all my class gives me for healing tools on others (outside of Negate, an ultimate). Templars, wardens, and even necros to some extent have a number of other class healing abilities to fall back on to help make up for these new changes. I'm sorry, but I can't spam my Twilight Matriarch to victory on things like Lokke Hardmode, or vHoF hardmode.

If you want to change healing up this much, fine; but EVERYONE, not just templars, need the tools to deal with this new setup.

I main a sorc healer and i agree with this 100%.

Aznarb · July 2019

gallach wrote: »

I will repost here what I wrote on another topic.
Let Mutagen morph hits 2 allies expending more magicka to cast it.
Hitting only 1 ally takes 4-5 seconds to buff 4 players in a dungeon, the duration is only 10 seconds, we have only 5-6 seconds to buff team mates, debuff boss, manage our resources, help teammates sustain and deal some DoT before cast Mutagen again. It is impracticable to use Regeneration in PVE group content now.

No, just bring back 20sec duration for both morph (I know RR was 16.5 but 20 is better)
Mutagen heal less but have a security burst at 20% + debuff removal like it was
RR just heal overtime for bigger value and more frequently.
Up the cost to 4k-5k and make it able to buff 12 ppl at one time.

With that we have a decent option to work with the loss of Grand healing and it's easy acces for everyone.
Even with that Warden and templar are still gonna be the only one accepted in raid because of their tool.
Cleansing ritual is just stupidly over-performing right now.

RogueShark · July 2019

PaigeWimberley wrote: »

I main a sorc healer and i agree with this 100%.

AWinterWolf · July 2019

I'd suggest reversing the nerf for springs, you've already seen the backlash about orbs (and in fairness, sorted the problem.)

Nightingale707 · July 2019

ok, let´s talk about the healing changes (I will already take into account what was posted about 1 orb giving a synergy to all party members)

Healers now: The main healing kit comes from skills, that are available for every class: combat prayer, grand healing, orbs + support skills (will not be talking about those since not a lot changes)
- we buff our teammates with combat prayer to give them minor berserk
- we use orbs as our "spammable": whenever we do not have other things to do (buff, debuff, heal) we will throw orbs for our DDs. orbs will keep a nice layer of HoTs in the group, offer utility (sustain, snyergy) and smart healers will anticipate the direction a group will be moving and make sure to cover as much of that space as possible with orbs. we send them out in different directions sometimes to reach everyone.
- in situations, where there is high damage incoming over an amount of several secounds usually (burst damage situations - like vHoF Assembly General execute, vCR banefull in execute, vSS HMs all have those situations built in) a good healer will know in advance to reapply buffs, throw 2 orbs and then stack some grand healing to heal through that incoming damage. the illustrious healing morph allowes us to stack 4 abilities on top of each other, allowing to heal through high damage spikes in a way that is sustainable for a short amount of time.
- class abilities are used to burst heal individual players, offer utility/synergies, they do not define healers

Healers after the changes:
- we will still buff our teammates, but also, combat prayer suddenly became the ONE singular AoE burst heal available to all classes in this game, and it´s tooltip sits around 7k healing for 2,7k magicka cost. combat prayer currently has an aiming issue where it sometimes will turn your character to another direction, making it hard to aim and impractical to spam.
- orbs got redesigned to "1 orb for all": the current plan is, to allow healers to have 1 orb active at a time, this orb can be synergized by anyone not on cooldown. this only adresses half the issue, why the orb change was discussed so controversial. some trials need a healer to be at some distance from the group (vAS, vCR) so having only 1 orb means we cannot send them out in groups anymore, to always have some in group. it also means that we cannot send orbs in more than 1 location any more, thus making it harder to efficiently support our team.
- grand healing was completely redesigned and lost the purpose it had until now. it is now a ground based AoE HoT that heals for a lot less than it used to, cannot be stacked any more and costs a lot more. healers lost the ability, to put ground AoE HoTs in multiple locations, thus healing players that are out of group because of mechanics/the need to resurect fallen teammates. also the ability to heal through incoming burst damage with non-class-abilities has been drastically reduced, we have combat prayer now, but the tooltip is a lot lower than what you could stack with 4 illustrious healings in 1 spot (7k vs 10-12k)
- class abilities now will becomme neccessary to heal through incoming burst damage, but only 3 classes have on-demand AoE burst heals:
- templars have ritual of rebirth with the highest tooltip and cost: a 12,8k heal for 5,8k magicka cost - I will leave it to your imagination, how long a healer can spam this skill
- wardens have enchanted growth: a 8,7k heal for 3,8k magicka cost, this is a conal heal and harder to aim than the other burst heals but it has a long range
- necromancers have enduring undeath: a 8k heal for 2,9k magicka cost, the only class AoE heal that can actually be aimed at a location and can add a HoT if it consumes a corpse
the other 3 classes simply do not have an option outside of combat prayer to heal multiple targets for a big amount of health at the same time.

now for the other fun changes:
- ring of preservation now lasts 2o secounds, heals for 900 health every 0,5 secounds and costs 2,8k stamina - on a stamina character that is, on a healer the heal is below 300 health/0,5 secounds
- echoing vigor: it took me 10minutes to go on PTS, make a stamina warden and get a tooltip of 41k health over 10 secounds for a cost of 2k stamina, that is a heal that will be put on up to 6 players and stay on them; so you have given stamina DD players the most potent heal over time for the lowest cost and 2 of them stack, giving you roughly 50-80k heal over 10sec ticking away at you... meaning 5-8k HPS, wich is comparable to a healer spamming combat prayer on a group.

if your goal was to make healing more fun and engaging, you failed.
if your goal was to help casual/progression groups clear harder content you failed.
if your goal was to make healers ask themselves, why they even exist, CONGRATULATIONS

edit to add: all my tooltips are from PTS on a breton in Olorime/Jorvulds, Ritual mundus, powered resto, 100 blessed, 81 elfborn, blue max mag/health food

AWinterWolf · July 2019

I don't understand why this even needs to be nerfed. It wasn't broken, there was no need to 'fix' it.

SassiestAssassin · July 2019

From what I understand, there are issues with spamming Healing Springs and Orbs in PvP. If there won’t be any separation in PvP and PvE balance, why not adjust the Alliance and Support tools to combat players specifically in PvP?

Instead of making the skill lines only viable in Cyrodiil, change skills to have more use in Battlegrounds and Imperial City. The other team spamming orbs? Get you a skill that corrupts a certain percent of their healing (like Warden’s Corrupting Seed.) Or an armor that does something similar if you’re in melee range.
Pet buffs are an issue? Get a Fighter’s Guild skill that vanquishes pets under a certain health threshold.
Werewolves too much in PvP? An armor set that gives a burst of Dawnbreaker-like damage.

Potentially these could belong to a new (Gladiator?) skill line if changing the current PvP skill line isn’t an option. Make it specifically focus on balancing out other player’s healing skills.

I feel like this makes sense, as there aren’t really any other tools specifically for Battlegrounds-type combat, and negating PC enemy skills. This would give a way to balance PvP without taking away from PvE (and having to rebalance all PvE content.) This would obviously take longer than this patch, but it makes sense to add more skills to spend the ever-increasing Skyshards on.

Hopefully I will have the PTS ready to play tonight to test (though DL ate up all my internet data for the month, so please know I’m serious about this game lol) and give more feedback on skill performance.

I am very nervous about Healing Springs, especially almost halving the heals. I have no idea how to keep Tharayya alive in vDoM without it. I feel like keeping the current live hybrid AoE and healing, but increasing the cost of every second cast might be better to keep up with a moving dungeon group and still force some thought into where you put it.

For Regeneration, instead of upping the cost and decreasing targets effected, maybe have one morph have higher cost, slightly lower healing, but cover up to 6 people? Right now, it’s not really valuable for trials/dungeons except for applying some buffs before a fight. I’d be fine with the current changes if it targets the member with the lowest health I guess.

Orbs. I can see why they need to be non-spammable, but please keep in mind they are the best resource return most classes have. Maybe increase the limit to 4-6 if they’re single-use, or at least 4 if multiple people can activate. Otherwise Trials will be miserable with people fighting over orbs. On one hand, I do think they need to be easier to hit, but slowing them down is not ideal. Can you make their activation radius a bit larger instead?

Insandros · July 2019

rebrur2 wrote: »

If the changes are made simply to appease the pvp players, then make those changes exist in Cyrodiil only. By nerfing heals to the ground all around like you have, you will end up losing a great deal of your PVE and endgame players, making all healers obsolete, keeping people from using all of the new gear sets that you made players just farm, and ensuring that off meta (NB, DK, Sorc, etc) healers are no longer able to heal. The healing changes are completely unnecessary.

Bah every single patch someone says that « if you do this...or that.. you'll loose this...and that.. » and after a year brake cuz i was tired of the same content, got back a few months ago, and surprise, the servers are as much populated, so basicly people will accotumate and go with it, if some leaves, well too bad for them. I sometimes hate their changes but sometimes i love it, i ratehr pay fro changes that paying for a game that stay as is, farming the same *** the same ways for years. At least now it allows you to learn a new way to pay your toon and more likely, teach players to play better and aybe finaly, stop avoiding mecanics or red circles. specialy if DPs also takes a nerfs, finaly, healing will be nice, and we'll stop seing some Sorc tanking and healing and dpsing at the same time in 4 mens.

Tsar_Gekkou · July 2019

I'm pretty sure that springs were gutted due to pvp complaining. I take my healers into CRYodiil once a month to reach rank one, and it's always funny seeing how long I can stay alive spamming springs on myself with heavy fortified brass and mending while a couple of people spam everything they have at me. The orb change makes no sense because you aren't gonna be using orbs in pvp, you'd heal and have a few dps skill in there.

BennyButton · July 2019

Healing is sweet! We totally got rid of magicka healing, now it's just stamdps with vigor

peacenote · July 2019

Hello. OK, I will re-post, but also @Nightingale707's comment summarizes a lot of my concerns very nicely, as well.

In my opinion...

I believe that the changes on the table for healers will make us a lot less mobile and will remove a lot of options from our arsenal to be a flexible, resulting in less of us playing healers and most 4mans not running a healer at all, which unfortunately is already "a thing."
They also will make it a lot less fun to be a healer, greatly reducing our options for a rotation or what we can "do" during fights, since we can't usefully double cast two of our main abilities but we still need them on our bars.
They are a big step back from some of the earlier changes to make it easier for all classes to be a healer if they so desired.
Finally, they will make it extremely hard for groups to handle difficult content in trials, because abilities are nerfed with nothing being buffed in its place that can make up for the changes. This will further widen the gap between the elites who attempt hard content and even the mid level players who are trying to see and complete the content, let alone the new players who enter with hope and quickly realize it isn't just time and practice that will get them that Sunspire skin, but possibly years of effort trying to find eleven people willing to attempt a Trial with someone who doesn't already have the clear.

The announcement about Orbs, from my perspective, does very little to alleviate my personal concerns about these changes, because my biggest issue with "one Orb at a time" idea, combined with the "one healing springs at a time" change, is that I can no longer cover multiple areas of a raid or dungeon. This not only limits my usefulness as a healer, but limits the types of strategies groups can use for harder content because stacking is going to be the only option. If my most powerful heal (combat prayer) requires me to stand and face where I am healing, and my single orb is slowed down even more to be sleepy molasses, I've basically got one much less powerful healing spring or one very RNG-heavy regeneration to maybe reach someone not standing right next to me. Who cares that my orb can travel in one direction and hit more people? I currently cast it in three or four directions! Forget about me being able to run around and participate in any mechanics, be it rezzing or adding DPS or an actual mechanic, because I will now be stuck standing by the area where my heals are most critical. When they are needed at all, which, given all of these nerfs and the buffs to vigor, they may not be since people will be relying even more on self-heals.

Oh, but yay, we've fixed it so that stacked DPS relying on orbs for resources will be OK. Yippee. (Yes, a little sarcasm there.)

There have been a lot of posts on the forums attacking the healers that are objecting to these concerns, assuming that all healers do is spam healing springs or orbs and accusing healers of not being willing to learn a new play style or not wanting to becoming more skilled. These posts are distracting from the real issue here which is that skilled healers do not spam two skills but use the flexibility of all three skills (orbs, springs, and regeneration) to be able to fully participate in fights, be mobile, save/cover pugs when a new player is struggling, heal extremely difficult content, and have somewhat of an interesting rotation.

Finally, these changes have opened up debates about "what a healer is for." Without some type of official statement, there is no real way to end this debate and also just distracts from the real issues at hand. That said, I'd like to express that ESO has been, for many years, by far the most fun game in which I've ever healed, because I've always been able to add to the fight in other ways, including a % of the DPS. For me gutting the healer role so that we are healbots and not relied upon for support or adding some DPS takes all of the fun out of it and removes one of the core things that made ESO great all of these years. I will quote and reference an old Deltias page: "Healing is still my favorite role in ESO and in large part because you don’t just ONLY heal. You do damage, execute the boss and defend your allies." I couldn't say it better myself. Also, check out his old "top five tips to healing in ESO." I understand that not everyone thinks this is how healers should heal, and the game has evolved significantly since that time, but every single change to healers since beta that has reduced our ability to be flexible, add to the DPS, and be more than "just a healer" has slowly removed the fun out of being a healer. With each patch power creep makes our DPS less important, which means providing support and participating in mechanics fills the gap. And now those options may also be dwindling. Again, this is my personal opinion.

And, here is my previous post with more specific feedback about the abilities, from the other thread:

Namarkas wrote: »

I mean I get the general direction with those changes, steamlining all ground AoE over time abilites so they behave the same.

But... this is BORING. We don't want this.

Divoria wrote: »

I hope the devs will have enough sense to listen to players (such as Storm and Anima) who know what they're talking about, because they spend the majority of their time ingame, healing.

In most cases when ZOS proposes changes, be it good changes, buffs, nerfs or pointless changes, we adjust and move on. This is not the case, because there is no SOUND reasoning behind this. None. I play with good healers in my guild and they DO NOT just spam springs and/or orbs. They work hard to buff their DDs, give them sustain, debuff the bosses and keep everyone alive, because this is what is needed if you want your group to clear hard content.

There is so much work to be done as a healer, especially in more challenging content such as vHOF last boss HM, vAS HM, vCR +1/2/3 etc. The amount of incoming damage and debuffs players are getting in certain content cannot be healed reactively. Maybe top players in this game will learn to live these changes, and optimize their group in such a way that they can still clear HM DLC trials, but you're absolutely annulling any chance for progression groups to clear the hardest content. And you haven't even said why. This is not the way to go, ZOS. You're gonna lose people. Don't stand in stupid.

Well said. I am not well known in forums or in game, but I have templar, warden, and necro healers and therefore spend the majority of my time healing. My main is the templar healer.

There has been a lot of talk about making healers more relevant. This will do the opposite, at least in PvE. For most content, people will run without healers and rely on self heals. Many groups already are; this will be the nail in the coffin. (I am not usually this cynical but perhaps THIS is the plan to fix dungeon finder... make it irrelevant so no one uses it?) For the hardest content... I am not sure but I suspect it will just make that content out of reach for almost everyone.

As a healer I am extremely disappointed with everything I see here:

Healing Springs:Converted this ability into a true AoE HoT, rather than a hybrid spammable hybrid HoT. Increased the duration from 3 seconds to 8 seconds, but you may only have 1 active at a time.

Boring! I can't position heals in multiple areas anymore? This is ridiculous.
Regeneration: Increased the healing per tick by approximately 98%, but reduced duration to 10 seconds. It now only hits 1 ally per cast.

1 ally per cast? Really?? Ok, let's take an ability that was only useful in dungeons anyway, make it less useful, and more likely to NOT hit the other poor folks that are standing somewhere else from where my healing springs happens to be.
Necrotic Orb: You can only have 1 orb active at a time. Decreased the speed to 2 meters per second from 3 meters per second to help it deal damage or heal targets more reliably as the orb passes them.

Has been discussed at length here already and I agree with 100% with everything that was said.
Blood Altar: This ability and its morphs no longer have a cast time, and now cost Health rather than Magicka

I probably won't be standing in my own healing springs, and regeneration probably won't hit me, so sure, let's reduce my health when I put down a Blood Altar. Why not?

Let's take stock here. If people aren't all stacked together, each of my heals can only hit ONE PERSON (ok, area, maybe, in some cases) AT A TIME. But Blessing of Protection (Combat Prayer) was buffed, and now Circle of Protection (gee, seems a lot like Rune Focus now, doesn't it?) can be morphed to heal people standing in my circle.

I've been pretty vocal about the repeated Breath of Life changes.

But putting this all together it really seems like healers are being put in an extremely boring role where we are supposed to STAND AND FACE THE PEOPLE WE ARE HEALING to be effective. Otherwise, here's a few other heals where you might be able to help your group out, but generally not. This all seems like PvP changes to me. They make absolutely zero sense in a PvE environment.

Healing is not going to be fun anymore. I truly... I have no suggestions for ZOS except to say... please, no.

profundidob16_ESO · July 2019

so last night I completed vLOM as pure healer and I have to say I like healing alot more now. It's become a full time job in vet content rather than pressing you 1-button-I win "healing springs" only when you really need it and play half dps/tank the rest of the time along with buffbot role.

I noticed just like tanks never had an aoe taunt which forces them to actively do the tanking job with limited tools (single target taunts + aoe cc) now the healers too no longer have easy aoe burst healing and need to combine weak aoe/single hots with strong single target burst heals in order to keep people alive.

I kinda of...really like this ! Healing becomes an actual fulltime job again

luen79rwb17_ESO · July 2019

What a hot mess just for the sake of changing things because they want to. We need a fair explanation to what's the point to all of this.

profundidob16_ESO · July 2019

After healing veteran content on PTS last night I do have 1 important piece of feedback to devs regarding Healing springs:

"Healing Springs (morph): This ability now grants 30 Magicka every time it heals an ally, rather than restoring 330 Magicka for up to 3 allies healed by the initial hit. This will result in a higher return if you hit all 6 targets for the full duration, but will require more coordination to obtain."

In practise this does not seem to work the way it's intended. I DOES indeed take coordination to place your healing springs morph to cover more people but even when you do so, the mobility of fights nowadays causes them to never be able to stay in it, causing the dedicated function of this morph to go almost completely to waste. Recasting wastes even more magicka.

At least you should revert the magicka on return for each healing tick to "on first cast" so that healers are rewarded for intelligent play regardless of mobility of the targets they are healing !

Zayoo · July 2019

Nightingale707 wrote: »

ok, let´s talk about the healing changes (I will already take into account what was posted about 1 orb giving a synergy to all party members)

Healers now: The main healing kit comes from skills, that are available for every class: combat prayer, grand healing, orbs + support skills (will not be talking about those since not a lot changes)
- we buff our teammates with combat prayer to give them minor berserk
- we use orbs as our "spammable": whenever we do not have other things to do (buff, debuff, heal) we will throw orbs for our DDs. orbs will keep a nice layer of HoTs in the group, offer utility (sustain, snyergy) and smart healers will anticipate the direction a group will be moving and make sure to cover as much of that space as possible with orbs. we send them out in different directions sometimes to reach everyone.
- in situations, where there is high damage incoming over an amount of several secounds usually (burst damage situations - like vHoF Assembly General execute, vCR banefull in execute, vSS HMs all have those situations built in) a good healer will know in advance to reapply buffs, throw 2 orbs and then stack some grand healing to heal through that incoming damage. the illustrious healing morph allowes us to stack 4 abilities on top of each other, allowing to heal through high damage spikes in a way that is sustainable for a short amount of time.
- class abilities are used to burst heal individual players, offer utility/synergies, they do not define healers

Healers after the changes:
- we will still buff our teammates, but also, combat prayer suddenly became the ONE singular AoE burst heal available to all classes in this game, and it´s tooltip sits around 7k healing for 2,7k magicka cost. combat prayer currently has an aiming issue where it sometimes will turn your character to another direction, making it hard to aim and impractical to spam.
- orbs got redesigned to "1 orb for all": the current plan is, to allow healers to have 1 orb active at a time, this orb can be synergized by anyone not on cooldown. this only adresses half the issue, why the orb change was discussed so controversial. some trials need a healer to be at some distance from the group (vAS, vCR) so having only 1 orb means we cannot send them out in groups anymore, to always have some in group. it also means that we cannot send orbs in more than 1 location any more, thus making it harder to efficiently support our team.
- grand healing was completely redesigned and lost the purpose it had until now. it is now a ground based AoE HoT that heals for a lot less than it used to, cannot be stacked any more and costs a lot more. healers lost the ability, to put ground AoE HoTs in multiple locations, thus healing players that are out of group because of mechanics/the need to resurect fallen teammates. also the ability to heal through incoming burst damage with non-class-abilities has been drastically reduced, we have combat prayer now, but the tooltip is a lot lower than what you could stack with 4 illustrious healings in 1 spot (7k vs 10-12k)
- class abilities now will becomme neccessary to heal through incoming burst damage, but only 3 classes have on-demand AoE burst heals:
- templars have ritual of rebirth with the highest tooltip and cost: a 12,8k heal for 5,8k magicka cost - I will leave it to your imagination, how long a healer can spam this skill
- wardens have enchanted growth: a 8,7k heal for 3,8k magicka cost, this is a conal heal and harder to aim than the other burst heals but it has a long range
- necromancers have enduring undeath: a 8k heal for 2,9k magicka cost, the only class AoE heal that can actually be aimed at a location and can add a HoT if it consumes a corpse
the other 3 classes simply do not have an option outside of combat prayer to heal multiple targets for a big amount of health at the same time.

now for the other fun changes:
- ring of preservation now lasts 2o secounds, heals for 900 health every 0,5 secounds and costs 2,8k stamina - on a stamina character that is, on a healer the heal is below 300 health/0,5 secounds
- echoing vigor: it took me 10minutes to go on PTS, make a stamina warden and get a tooltip of 41k health over 10 secounds for a cost of 2k stamina, that is a heal that will be put on up to 6 players and stay on them; so you have given stamina DD players the most potent heal over time for the lowest cost and 2 of them stack, giving you roughly 50-80k heal over 10sec ticking away at you... meaning 5-8k HPS, wich is comparable to a healer spamming combat prayer on a group.

if your goal was to make healing more fun and engaging, you failed.
if your goal was to help casual/progression groups clear harder content you failed.
if your goal was to make healers ask themselves, why they even exist, CONGRATULATIONS

edit to add: all my tooltips are from PTS on a breton in Olorime/Jorvulds, Ritual mundus, powered resto, 100 blessed, 81 elfborn, blue max mag/health food

Good comment on the Ring of Preservation... But come on, how could they have known that? They are only the developers of this game. Cut them some slack please. It's not their job to know or even be able to roughly estimate such things...

BennyButton · July 2019

I just made a bow/bow stamwarden healer on PTS. This makes me think ZOS and HBO's GOT creators joined forces to subvert expectations

stileanima · July 2019

I'll re-post here what I've written elsewhere.

So I've had the time now to think a bit more about the Grand Healing and Orb changes, and I want to add this line of thinking to the mix:

From what I understand, the goal of the Orb (week 2)/Grand Healing change is to promote that healers do other things in their spare time aside from "spam" these two skills (the goal of the inability to have more than one active at a time, specifically, not the nerf to their healing output).

This got me thinking a bit about what else I am actually able to do as a trials healer in the meantime rather than cast these two skills.

Let's consider a Templar healer in vSS for example, on Yolnahkriin HM. For this boss, my bars look like this on live:

Guard, CBP, CoP, Illustrious, Orbs
Rune, Ritual, Blockade, PotL, Guard

All of these skills are essential to have on my bars at the moment. Perhaps I could take off Guard, which would make it so that I have to focus the tank a bit more instead of having to throw Orbs at my group. But what I/others enjoy about guarding the tank is that it enables us to not have to focus him, so we can instead spend more time buffing our group/debuffing the boss.
So let's say that I remove Guard and add some damage or stat-boosting skills there instead, or let's say I keep guard and, because of the HoT nerfs, I now have to focus the tank more instead. I guess I don't see how this is more attractive than having to throw Orbs for the group to synergize-- Needing to spam heals on the tank to make sure he doesn't die vs. needing to keep orbs in the group to make sure they can sustain. It's the same thing in the end, really, isn't it? "Spamming" x skill to accomplish x goal.

Or let's say I remove Rune instead and opt to keep Guard, and I add a DoT on my bar to keep up. This will hurt my sustain a bit so I'll probably have to heavy attack a bit more. I don't see how this is any better or more attractive than casting multiple Orbs. Instead of filling the gaps between my HoTs, buffs and debuffs with Orbs, I'll now need to fill them with heavy attacks so that I have enough Magicka for said HoTs, Buffs and Debuffs.

This boss (along with many other fights) is I think a nice example about which we can ask the question: What is a healer actually supposed to do now that we don't need to throw Orbs? What does ZoS actually want us to do?

There is 0 incoming damage in this fight aside from the Flare, and the damage that the MT takes from the boss. So if I don't need to be healing or providing many Orbs for resources for a good portion of the fight, and if I don't have the bar space for dps skills, what exactly should I be doing instead? CBP lasts 8 seconds, more if you use Jorvuld; Illustrious now lasts 12 seconds; Ritual lasts 24 seconds; CoP stays for 20 seconds; PotL debuffs last 9 seconds.

Many healers at the moment consider Orbs as their "spammable" skill, just as a Magicka DD might consider Force Pulse their spammable. Orbs are the go-to spammable skill of an experienced healer because probably someone can always use an Orb if we throw it. And now, some healers have gone a step further and have introduced new "spammables" into their rotations, ie another unique synergy that we offer DDs to give them Major Slayer for the Lokkestiiz set (on my Warden, for example, I now throw even fewer Orbs than before because I aim to throw a lot of Harvests as well). Just as a DD aims to fill the gaps between their DoTs with their spammable, healers aim to fill the gaps between their HoTs/buffs/debuffs with something. I'm just not sure what that something should turn out to be should these changes go through, because there are so many other essential group support skills that are long buffs, debuffs, and HoTs that we need to have on our bars.

Another option might be, let's say that instead of adding damage or stat-boosting skills to our bars, we must now add skills that help boost our healing output/team's survivability during the moments where damage output is higher (for example, during the Flares on Yolna HM). What then should we do in the meantime when no healing is needed/no damage is incoming? To me it seems like we'd largely just be waiting around for those healing-intensive moments to happen, doing very little otherwise.

RogueShark · July 2019

profundidob16_ESO wrote: »

so last night I completed vLOM as pure healer and I have to say I like healing alot more now. It's become a full time job in vet content rather than pressing you 1-button-I win "healing springs" only when you really need it and play half dps/tank the rest of the time along with buffbot role.

I noticed just like tanks never had an aoe taunt which forces them to actively do the tanking job with limited tools (single target taunts + aoe cc) now the healers too no longer have easy aoe burst healing and need to combine weak aoe/single hots with strong single target burst heals in order to keep people alive.

I kinda of...really like this ! Healing becomes an actual fulltime job again

...Healing has always been a full-time job.
Excluding 4man content (which is what you enjoyed so much), because healers are literally not needed in 4man content... I have had friends CARRY (as in, they paid) people through vBRP with 2 DD + 1 tank setup (plus the carry). That's arguably some of the hardest 4man content in the game, and it was done without a healer. It will be even more easier to refuse healers from 4man content with vigor changes; DPS can heal themselves potently, they don't need you.

These changes really hurt in trials, especially veteran HM, and they distinctly hurt off-meta healers.
I'm glad you're enjoying it, but healers are not needed in 4man content now, and they definitely won't be needed in 4man content next patch.

Aznarb · July 2019

BennyButton wrote: »

I just made a bow/bow stamwarden healer on PTS. This makes me think ZOS and HBO's GOT creators joined forces to subvert expectations

That exactly what i've think to do too.
Look like the best healing option right now.

only 1 class can heal enough, warden..