Additional context on U23 Healing Changes

BennyButton

Heyo gang!

I wanted to quickly provide some additional context for why many of the healing changes in this update are detrimental to PVE group content when it comes to healers (i.e. excluding them).

In Update 23 it looks like there will no longer be a need for healers in 12man trials anymore, and instead they will focus on being the buff debuff slaves for the other 9 stamcros. The following are some excerpts from two members of the endgame community (please note: I could not care less about PvP, all people do there is complain):

code65536 wrote: »

How much of this has changed on PTS?

• Yes, removing "orb spam" simplifies the healer's job. But it also means anyone can do it. Providing orb synergies for half the group required too many resources and too many GCDs for a DD to do, but now a tank or anyone else can toss a single orb with the cost of just one cast and GCD.
• To compensate for the nerfs in healing output, the healers in this PTS run had spec'ed for spell damage. With less ability spam, they don't need the resource sustain. This further erodes the differentiation between damage specs and healer specs.
• The group healing potential of stamina DDs have been increased
  • From my esologs of the Lokkestiiz HM pull, Echoing Vigor from stamina DDs had average ticks (so this accounts for a DD's much higher crit chance) in the ballpark of about 5-6K raw healing. EV ticks every 2s, so that's about 2.5-3K HPS.
    • EV from a tank is about half that strength; while tanks spec heavily into Healing Done in their CP, that does not come close to compensating the loss from low crit rate and low stamina/WD.
  • From my esologs of the Lokkestiiz HM pull, Ring of Preservation from stamina DDs had average ticks of 1-1.3K raw healing. RoP ticks every 0.5s, so that's about 2-2.6K HPS.
    • RoP from a healer had an average tick of <500, and RoP from a tank had an average tick of <700. While healers and tanks spec heavily into Healing Done in their CP, that does not come close to compensating the loss from low crit rate and low stamina/WD.
  • For comparison, from the esologs of the same Lokkestiiz HM pull, Illustrious Healing from the healers had average ticks of around 3K. It ticks once per second, so we're looking at 3K HPS.
  • These are three multi-target AoE HoT abilities. Echoing Vigor lasts for 10s. Ring of Preservation lasts for 20s. Illustrious lasts for 12s. EV and RoP can be freely equipped without restriction and require no sacrifices from a player except for a single bar slot and a single GCD every 10s or 20s. In contrast, Illustrious requires the sacrifice of weapon choice. The EV/RoP figures are from players in full stamina DD spec, whereas the Illustrious is a healer in a spell damage spec and healer CP.
  • This, however, does not extend to magicka DDs because magicka DDs must either sacrifice weapon choice to equip a resto staff or morph choice. For example:
    • Using Energy Orbs means not having Mystic Orbs (which now do a pretty decent amount of damage).
    • Magicka nightblades using Funnel or Refreshing Path can no longer effectively do damage with those skills.
    • Magicka dragonknights using the Cinder Storm morph are sacrificing their class ground DoT

So what's the point of the dedicated healer when multiple stam DDs casting a RoP every 20s (yes, the healing from multiple players' RoPs do stack) provides more group healing than a restoration staff ability? What's the point of the dedicated healer when a tank could sacrifice just one bar slot and one GCD to provide the synergies that in the past required multiple GCDs and thus a player dedicated to shouldering that burden?

(boy was it hard to trim that quote down, so many good points)

Nefas wrote: »

Too long;didn't watch:

1) The Healer playstyle regardless of class is simple, straightforward, boring, there is not much room for skill-play nor a semblance of a skill ceiling any more as the playstyle is too generic.

2) The new playstyle opens up new possibilities, new raid-play, new builds and compositions for healers or raid teams who wish to completely forgo traditional healers.

3) Healer role further excluded from content if changes as is go live.

4) Orb Change (multiple synergies off of one orb)/Other Changes (such as Budding Seeds, Barrier, etc) are absolutely fantastic.

5) Healing is still fine for most content except two fights (vHoF HM execute, vSunspire Lokkestiiz HM)...but the level of healing needed for most content doesn't need to be delegated to actual healers...and you won't really need actual healers to do serious healing as of the PTS Week 3 which only exacerbates #3

Thanks for the TL;DW @Nefas

I'll try to remember that you introduced some new abilities to help offset the loss of things such as Healing Springs stacking, with abilities like Ring of Preservation for those stam healers we've never asked for, or the large increase to Cleansing Ritual for templar healers that were already one of the two only real healing class choices. It was also really cool of you to nerf restoration staff abilities but non-class abilities were buffed or changed (just in time to sell those skill lines in the crown store, am i right?).

As always, to be sure that that you will be monitoring feedback about all the balance changes during this PTS cycle, i have tagged you below!

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

RogueShark

Can we also appreciate that they thought an RNG-based, caster-focused heal via power surge is a solid 'solution' for sorc healers? What with how much crit we stack, it'll really help in those high-damage phases. And we're never out of group for any serious content like vCR kiting or vAS+2 healing, so everyone will always be close enough to get those RNG-crit-proc'd heals too! What a reasonable, well-thought-out solution.

Healing is a total dumpster fire next patch



Edited for sadness-induced typos.

Grandma

if the healing situation goes live like this i'll probably just stop playing for a while. i hate stamina dps, i don't like tanking, and my favorite role was healing, and i enjoyed magicka dps. Mag dps and healing are deleted, stam dps and tanks are further glorified and overpowered. As always. Patch notes have been doing this for years. I'm not really surprised, just disappointed. Maybe some day they'll bring back healers and i'll join again.

Iskiab

Hits the mark but missed one thing I think. Echoing vigor doesn’t stack and while it’s possible for multiple DD to use ring of preservation it’s not for echoing vigor.

Have one mag healer and one stam warden healer instead. Echoing vigor’s tooltip can double from what a DD can do, and use powerful assault for an additional raidwide buff. When I was doing the numbers on a stamwarden they can break 100k HPS with echoing vigor and rune, so dps won’t have to waste GCDs healing. It’s overall more efficient.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=163045

This has been setup for pure support, but realistically the builds main healing is from 3 GCDs every 10 seconds so should be contributing in dps and could use relequens. It also breaks 100k HPS without raid buffs.

Sandman929

10/10 for the Heyo